Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

White Christmas was one of the best musicals to come out of Hollywood, and certainly one of the biggest holiday films of all time. It's amazing to think that record companies couldn't come to terms to produce an actual soundtrack album. Bing Crosby was contracted to Decca, and Rosemary Clooney was contracted to Columbia. Thus, there was never an "Original Soundtrack Album" made of the movie White Christmas. Instead, what was released was an album featuring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Trudy Stevens (the dubbed-in singing voice for Vera Ellen) along with Peggy Lee substituting for the absent Rosemary Clooney. The album was called "Selections from Irving Berlin's White Christmas". It contained all the songs from the movie re-recorded with Peggy Lee. Meanwhile, Roosemary Clooney released her own 8 song 10" EP containing her versions of most of the White Christmas songs. How confused and dissapointed the fans and record buying public must have been in 1954! This CD, "Ultimate White Christmas" is a compilation of those two discs, along with three additional unrelated Clooney holiday songs thrown in as bonus tracks. Overall, this is the closest thing you'll ever find to the elusive White Christmas soundtrack. Unfortunately, when you yearn to hear the songs as you remember them from the movie, some of these versions just don't measure up. Arrangements differ from the movie versions, and, while Peggy Lee is a fine singer in her own right, she has a totally different sound and style from Clooney. This is evident in her version of "Love You Didn't Do Right By Me". She seemed determined to make the song her own, and oversings to the point where she sounds like she's yawning into the microphone. On the Clooney tracks, the arrangements of the White Christmas songs are vastly different from the movie and, once again, leaves the listener disconnected. A few of the songs have harpsichord in them, which was never used in the movie. The three additional Clooney tracks were pulled from another '50's holiday recording and do nothing to enhance this CD. The songs "Suzy Snowflake" and "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S" sounds as if they were recorded for a children's album. While I give the producer credit for the effort made to compile all the songs into one "utlimate" package, I give this CD overall low marks because of the poor digital remastering of the recordings. It sounds muddy and muffled. The packaging is also second-rate and looks as if it were done using a greeting card program on someone's home pc. This project could use major label budget and expertise. Until then, watch the movie on DVD and savor the songs as you know and love them.