There has been so much in the way of material lost since the advent of recorded music that it is not funny. Saying that, there has been a Herculean effort in the last twenty or thirty years to ensure that no morer material is lost, resulting in material such as “Forever: The Complete Motown Albumsâ€. This 87-track collection is further cleaned up and provided to listeners and individuals that may be new to The Marvelettes, a sixties girl group that is best known for songs like 1961’s “Please Mr. Postmanâ€, 1966’s “Don’t Mess With Billâ€, and 1968’s “My Baby Must Be A Magicianâ€.
This set focuses on the act’s first five albums – Please Mr. Postman, The Marvelettes Sing, Playboy, The Marvelous Marvelettes and On Stage: Recorded Live – immediately tuning listeners in to what made the act so special in the first place. After listeners digest everything that is on that section, they are further treated to different mixes and rarer recordings of songs; for those that were not alive or cognizant of their surroundings during the period when The Marvelettes were recording, there is an exhaustive set of liner notes that will further hope to provide context to the tracks that are included here.
Tracks like “Maybe I Dried My Tears (For The Last Time)†are reproduced for possibly the first time on legitimate CD; at the very least, most listeners likely have not happened upon the track for years, if not decades. Further inclusions, such as studio blends of previously mono tracks, give a different interpretation to what The Marvelettes intended for their music. For anyone that wants to see other acts from the period and from the genre chronicled in such a full way, make it a point to pick up “Foreverâ€. For fans of The Marvelettes specifically, purchase of Forever will make it all the more likely that the second volume of tracks will be released.
Top Tracks: I Want A Guy, Strange I Know
Rating: 9.2/10