Freddy Martin Hits Collection 1933-53 (3-CD)

Freddy Martin and his orchestra played the ''sweet'' style of dance band and easy listening music which appealed to the broad spectrum of middle America during the 1930s through the '40s and into the early '50s during what is sometimes called the golden age of popular music. The great jazz tenor saxophonist Johnny Hodges called him ''Mr. Silvertone''. He pioneered the ''Tenor Band'' style that became the norm in the dance band business, with an all-tenor sax section, and enjoyed successful lengthy residencies at prestigious hotels, as well as becoming a fixture on sponsored radio shows. He recorded for Brunswick, before moving to RCA, first coming out on their Bluebird before switching to Victor and RCA-Victor, and during the 1930s, '40s and early '50s enjoyed a constant stream of big sellers, which mostly featured one or other of his vocalists, but with his big hits coming with classically-based orchestral pieces, notably his long-running No. 1 with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.

This great-value 75-track 3-CD set consists entirely of his recordings which, before 1940, were credited with a Top 20 chart position in Joel Whitburn's ''Pop Memories'' or Elston Brooks' ''The Weekly Top Ten Tunes For The Last Fifty Years'' books, or the Your Hit Parade chart, or appeared in one of the Billboard charts thereafter. It naturally includes his other No. 1s ''I Saw Stars'', ''Symphony'', ''To Each His Own'' and ''Managua, Nicaragua''. It's a substantial, enjoyable and nostalgic journey through an era when pop music was continually changing, but his distinctive style of music remained a constant.