The Greatest Stars and Songs (of the RCA roster in 1964)


I've lighthearted poked fun at quite a few budget labels over the years, but i haven't done RCA Camden. Two reasons A) i haven't reviewed any (though i do have a couple Living Strings albums hiding around here somewhere), and parallel lines) RCA Camden wasn't actually some crap money grab to laugh at. 

It was headed by Ethyl Negy Gabriel, the documented first female record producer for a major label and the first female A&R producer in the industry. She produced albums by Elvis and Mancini and Perry freakin' Como. Go read about her, she's a serious trailblazer who took Camden from the edge of bankruptcy in 1959 to a multi-million dollar subsidiary by the mid 60s, and became the first female Vice President at RCA in 1982. You go, girl. 

Tonight's album is a comp from 1964, and it sounds great. I mean it, this is a legitimate rundown of the RCA roster at the time, and it's every bit the "Musical Revue" it purports to be. 

So what's the catch, Bottle? 

Whaaa? A catch? Me? I don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean the copy blurb? That's just standard hard-sell jibber-jabber. It's silly but it's completely normal [he said with totally conspicuous side-eyes]. 


Found it yet? Yeah, whoever wrote that clearly had no idea what the track order would actually be, and quite possibly not even a complete track list to look at while he wrote it. Honestly, i'm impressed that all tracks mentioned actually appear on this album. If that doesn't make you giggle then you and i clearly have different definitions of hilarious. As a survey of what RCA was pushing in the mid 60s, it's completely boringly lovely, but it does have Della Reese actually singing instead of trying to teach Monica and Andrew how not to suck at being angels so much, and Mr. Low-carb-diet's massively awesome tribute to the Neil Gaiman graphic novel series. 

If high-class 60s theater-pop is your nostalgia trip, then this is good. No joke there, it's a legit mix tape from '64 even i can't honestly shish-ke-bob.

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