Television's Greatest Hits, Volume 1: From the 50's and 60's

by

Various Artists

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Ah, memories! I remember buying this on vinyl when it first came out in 1985. There are a few tracks on the 2 LP version that were left off of the CD version because of time constraints. The LP version was hosted by Don Pardo. The first track on side one was "Peter Gynt-Morning Suite", where Don Pardo signs on and begins the broadcast day. Side one ends with Don Pardo announcing a "Test of the Emergency Broadcast System" and then playing "Duck and Cover", a Civil Defense Department public service announcement telling kids how to survive a nuclear bomb attack. Side two ends with Don Pardo announcing "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by". Side three ends with the "News Medley", which features Don Pardo introducing a "medley" of TV news reporters saying a line or two. Side four ends with Don Pardo announcing the end of the broadcast day and then playing "Our National Anthem". Everything else on the album version (65 TV themes from the '50s and '60s) is the same as on the CD version. How much you enjoy this CD depends on how much nostalgia you feel for old TV shows. Personally, I love this stuff. It must be pointed out that some of these themes have been rerecorded for this album. It's hard to say how many are rerecordings, but to my ears, over half of them seem to be rerecordings. But I honestly don't mind that. They went to such lengths to make the songs sound as much like the originals as possible, that most people probably won't be able to tell the difference. This is a great trip back to the Golden Age of TV theme songs that is a blast for nostalgia buffs like me.

I have to admit, I've been hooked on the sound of TV themes ever since I set a tape recorder next to a TV set around 1980 when I was 9. When I heard about Television's Greatest Hits in the mid 80's, I had to go and buy the LP. I still have it today. And I had some of the same complaints that some of the other reviewers have now.... that some of the songs were re-recorded, such as Gilligan's Island,Beverly Hillbillies and Wild Wild West. However, other themes were presented as they were shown on TV.

Especially of interest, were the ENDING credit Themes tacked onto the intro themes in shows like The Flintstones, the Jetsons and the Addams Family. TV Tunes really has neglected the area of ending credit themes on all of their subsequent albums and CDs.

Since this album was produced before a lot of studio technology was commonplace to "clean up" old recordings, a lot of the original recordings on this release do sound pretty thin or fuzzy at times. TV Tunes releases done after this got increasingly better done as time went by.

So, keeping in mind that this was TV Tunes first collection, it's actually not bad, but it could have been a lot better had they used more original soundtrack recordings and attempted to clean up the sound on some of the oldest themes.