International Jim Reeves / Kimberley Jim / My Cathedral & Some Friends

If you're a Jim Reeves fan, you need to add this to your collection.......

These 4 albums were overdubs made by Mary Jim's wife made in 1966 and 67 in RCA's Nashville Studios keeping a promise She made to him to update the old recordings. And Friends is the 1969 Duets album RCA issued. Higly recommended by Me.

Two of the albums collected here, "The International Jim Reeves" and the "Kimberly Jim" soundtrack, have been previously issued on CD. The main appeal for most avid Jim Reeves fans will be having the "My Cathedral" album on CD to get decent versions of the several nicely overdubbed songs, and some of the tracks on the "...And Some Friends" album. Personally I wish BGO had issued the "Best of Jim Reeves Sacred Songs" LP on the same CD with "My Cathedral", plus issued the "I Love You Because" and "There's Always Me" albums on a CD. Those albums had added strings and updated instrumental backings. Hopefully BGO or another company will consider issuing them on CD so we can have those in better sound.My opinion on the four albums on these two CDs:"The International Jim Reeves" is a good album, but I don't think the "remastering" improved the clarity of many songs. To my ears, the vocals on some of the tracks remain slightly "muddy"."Kimberly Jim" is the soundtrack album for Jim's only film. I've never cared for most of this material, but other fans might like it."My Cathedral" in general is a good album. Pulling the title song from the "We Thank Thee" album for a new album of sacred performances was a good pick as it's a great song. However "Mary's Boy Child" being a Christmas song has always seemed a little out of place here. The overdubbed versions of "He Will", "Beyond The Clouds", "Make Me Wonderful In Her Eyes", "The Flowers The Sunset The Trees" and "I've Lived A Lot In My Time" are wonderful. Audio on "Teach Me How To Pray" still seems below average. The cover photo of Jim looking slightly upward is dignified and appropriate."....And Some Friends" is a mixed bag. Nice cover photo, which was also later used as the cover photo on the 1976/1977 Readers Digest LP box set. The two duets with Dottie West are included, and their voices fit together well. I wish RCA would have overdubbed these two duets with better background accompaniment at the time this album was released. A couple 1950's duets with now-unknown female singers were overdubbed and the their vocals sound very honky-tonk compared to Jim's. There are some good songs on the album like "Stand At Your Window", but after I bought the LP decades ago, I have almost never played it.I wonder if all of the tracks on this reissue were actually taken from RCA masters. Or if the songs were TRULY "digitally remastered", or just copied to digital format. When I was listening to "But You Love Me Daddy" I can hear vinyl surface noise on this CD reissue. I'll need to listen to more of the tracks and pull out my old albums to compare them more.Although I'm glad to have "My Cathedral" on CD, again it would have been better to combine it with the "Best of Jim Reeves Sacred Songs" album which has some nice string overdubs and remixes, rather than reissuing the "International" and "Kimberly Jim" CDs again.

a great cd set of Jim reeves it also has the movie sound track of his movie Kimberly Jim.

A gift for my wife she loves Jim Reeves

Great CD copy of these four excellent albums. Great value. You won't be disappointed!