Eddie Fisher May I Sing To You/As Long As There's Music CD

Recorded between 1953 & 1958. Originally released on RCA (3185) & RCA (1647). Includes liner notes by Robert W. Rice.

This discount-priced two-fer reissue combines two quite different Eddie Fisher albums from the 1950s. May I Sing to You, made when most LPs were only ten inches in diameter and containing only eight tracks, was Fisher's album for 1954. (Primarily a singles artist, he only recorded one a year for most of the '50s.) It was subtitled "Eddie Fisher Salutes Some of the Great Singers of Our Time," and on it he took on the signature songs of seven male singers who had preceded him. At the time, it was not the greatest idea for a song collection, since those tunes remained identified with those other singers even after the brash 25-year-old had sung them. In 2002, when Tony Martin was not well remembered for "Begin the Beguine" and Bing Crosby's theme song, "Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day," has not turned out to be a timeless standard, Fisher's renditions of such material seem less like appropriations. Four years later, at the end of his RCA contract, he cut As Long As There's Music, an album that was ignored in 1958 but that turns out to be the best LP he made for the label in the '50s. This is really a collection that belongs with his later work. (Collectables should have paired it with one of his '60s RCA albums instead.) His voice is lower and sounds more natural than in his belting tenor days, and he is singing good songs by great writers that have not been overdone. If Fisher had had the chance to make more albums like this one, he might have a higher rank among the pop singers of his era. As it is, old fans can rediscover it here at a reasonable price and in good sound fidelity. ~ William Ruhlmann

"2 LP's On 1 CD" B/W "As Long As There's Music"

2 LPs on 1 CD: MAY I SING TO YOU (1954)/AS LONG AS THERE'S MAGIC (1958).