Vol. 4-Radio Radio: Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio [Box set]

Four discs-79,74,74,71 minutes approximately. The sound overall is pretty good to good. Obviously the older tracks suffer the most in sound quality, but the performances themselves make up for any sound deficiencies. The discs are snapped inside a tri-fold long box. The cover of the box and the booklet have the same b&w photo of Dylan early in his career. Inside the holder is a page of b&w photos of a number of artists in this collection. The attached booklet contains notes on a few of the performers in this set. On the back of the outer box is a list of song titles, performers, song lengths, and year it was released. As with the previous sets, this is not endorsed by Dylan or his record company. This is probably closer to a 3 1/2 star collection of music, simply because of the many well known tunes (more so than the other sets), and because of the comparative weakness (though still interesting) of some of the lesser known songs in relation to the other sets, which seemed to have a better selection of lesser known songs.

This is the fourth in a series of 4 CD releases from Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show. As with the other sets, Dylan's voice is nowhere to be heard, and while his witty, sometimes wry comments would add to the experience, the music more than makes up for it. Similar to the previous sets, there are a number of familiar songs throughout the collection, but having so many different genres of music in one set, even familiar songs, is really nice. The music is from a number of genres like jazz, city and country blues, folk, r&b, country & western, bluegrass, and a few songs that defy categorization. All the tracks were recorded between the 1920's and the 1950's, with the majority from the 40's and 50's. The songs are broken down into categories like Money, Night, Blood, War, Work, Nothing, Something, Madness, Cops and Robbers, Truth, Lies, Noah's Ark, Goodbye, etc., with several genres of music represented in each category.

Artists range from the well known like Lefty Frizzell-"My Baby Just Likes Money", Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters-"Money Honey", Professor Longhair-"In The Night", Ike Turner"-She Made My Blood Run Cold", Fred Astaire-"The Way You Look Tonight", Buddy Guy-"This Is The End", Bo Diddley-"Crackin' Up", June Christy-"Something Cool", Conway Twitty-"It's Only Make Believe", Brenda Lee-"Sweet Nothin's", and Frank Sinatra-"I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'", and so on. But it's the relatively unknown artists that give this set added depth. Performers like Mel Blanc-"Money", Nervous Norvus"Transfusion" (which has to be heard to be believed), Wilmer Watts & The Lonely Eagles-"Fightin' In The War With Spain", Daddy Cleanhead-"Something's Goin' On in My Room", Emmy Oro-"A Fish House Function', Cousin Emmy-"Ground Hog", Dick 'Two Ton' Baker-"Bert The Turtle", and many more. These unknown performers are every bit as good as their more well known counterparts, and in some cases, are even better. Their songs give a depth and a feel of what music was like in America during this period.

This collection is another good example of the depth of music you could hear on the jukebox or on the radio, or maybe even in your house, both throughout the country (the well known artists) and regionally (the lesser known performers), during several decades of America's past. If you like to musically roam through a number of genres over several decades, this is something worth purchasing. This is a good example of music that in today's tight, formulated recording and radio play lists you would never hear. Besides good music, it's a refreshing change to hear so many types of music from the past when music seemed a bit more honest and real.