Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Da Doo Ron Ron � The Crystals
2. Be My Baby � The Ronettes
3. He�s Sure The Boy I Love � The Crystals
4. He�s A Rebel � The Crystals
5. Uptown � The Crystals
6. There�s No Other Like My Baby � The Crystals
7. A Fine, Fine Boy � Darlene Love
8. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah � Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
9. Why Do Lovers Break Each Other�s Hearts? � Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
10. (The Best Part Of) Breakin� Up � The Ronettes
11. Not Too Young To Get Married � Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
12. (Today I Met) The Boy I�m Gonna Marry � Darlene Love
13. Wait Till My Bobby Gets Home � Darlene Love
14. Baby, I Love You � The Ronettes
15. Then He Kissed Me � The Crystals
16. Do I Love You? � The Ronettes
17. Walking In The Rain � The Ronettes
18. Born To Be Together � The Ronettes
19. You�ve Lost That Lovin� Feeling � The Righteous Brothers
20. Unchained Melody � The Righteous Brothers
21. River Deep, Mountain High � Ike & Tina Turner
22. Spanish Harlem � Phil Spector

Disc 2:

1. White Christmas - Darlene Love
2. Frosty The Snowman - The Ronettes
3. The Bells of St. Mary - Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
4. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - The Crystals
5. Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
6. Marshmallow world - Darlene Love
7. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - The Ronettes
8. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - The Crystals
9. Winter Wonderland - Darlene Love
10. Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers - The Crystals
11. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love
12. Here Comes Santa Claus - Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans
13. Silent Night - Phil Spector And Artists

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2421 in Music
• Released on: 2006-12-04
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Box set
• Running time: 94 minutes

Customer Reviews

Back To Mono!
I bought this as a Christmas present for my dad, my way of apologising for stealing his vinyl copy of Echoes Of The 60s many years ago. This is a superb collection of Phil's finest moments. It's unusual to see a one disc Spector retrospective on compact disc so if you're not ready to jump on the Back To Mono 4 disc boxset I strongly advise you buy this. The sound is absolutely pristine as you might expect - Phil would never let it be released otherwise. Good packaging which I was impressed to see includes details of who played what on these miraculous mini-symphonies. It's a cliche but they really don't make 'em like this anymore. Genius.

The Christmas album is included as a seperate cd which has been widely available for a few years. It's magic! Let your cynicism be blown away by the goddess Darlene Love.

Not "definitive", but probably the best value Spector compilation of all time
This release gives you, at a bargain price, most of the Spector masterpieces that the average person would want. In the days of vinyl, I had the Christmas album and a "best of the rest" with a very similar listing to the second CD of this set. In the absence of such a collection on CD, a few years ago I bought the "Back to Mono" box set, which is more of a "definitive" collection, and priced accordingly. If this double set had been available then, I would have bought it instead.

Buy while it's still on the catalogue. Bargain Spector compilations like this don't appear very often. You can, of course, buy the Christmas album on its own at any time, for not much less (and sometimes a bit more) than the price of this set.

Double CD of glorious pop and festive joy
Phil Spector the oh so slightly unhinged producer is credited with pioneering the wall of sound approach to making music, which is where this collection gets its name from. That basically means that Spector threw as much as possible into the mix. Thundering percussion, strings with more layers than an armadillo on a firing range, harmonies so glutinous they would put a class of five year old off sweets for weeks, and Spector was never a believer of less is more. Indeed it's fair to say he was a believer of more is more then some more should be chucked on top in case the original more wasn't enough.
However this is no easy thing to do and make it sound as wondrous a much of the material on here does. It could be a dicophonous disaster but Spector knew what he was doing and what's more he had the songs and the artists to pull it off. This is pop music so gaudily effervescent, so giddily emphatic that it makes even the lushest of contemporary music -Girls Aloud at their capricious best say- sound like Bonnie Prince Billy. Next to Spectors corpulent beauties virtually everything else is reduced to a size zero non-entity.
T o hear The Ronettes peerlessly perform "Baby I Love You" or "Be My Baby" is to hear pop at its zenith -so melodious and sonically impelling that you could be stood in the middle of a minefield, foot hovering over potential oblivion, and still become caught up in the song. The same goes for The Crystals "Then He Kissed Me" while "River Deep, Mountain High" is one of the most staggering moments of halcyon pop ...well ever. Tina Turner may have gone on to be a lumbering embarrassment but here she is incendiary. I love "You've Lost That Lovin Feeling" as well which is ironic because the other Righteous Brothers track here is the now hideously over-exposed "Unchained Melody" which has been reduced via karaoke ciphers to something I have lost that lovin feeling for.
The second CD is re-issue of the 1963 Christmas album which for many people is the definitive Christmas album and they are right, because for two weeks out of fifty two this is the most evocative festive celebration on the planet. This album along with "The Fairytale Of New York " , "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" and "Snow" by the Cocteau Twins is the spirit and magic of the consumer madness that Christmas has become aurally restored to something approximating it's original spirit.
Curiously the previously un- released song here, "Silent Night" is sung by Spector with only an acoustic guitar as backing. Proof that even this flawed genius needed to drop that wall of sound every once in a while.