All I Really Want to Do / The Sonny Side Of Cher

This CD presents the first 2 CDs by Chér, both produced by Sonny Bono following his estrangement from Phil Spector. Using the same Hollywood studio and engineers and as many of the same production techniques as he could approximate, Sonny Bono's attempts at replicating the sound of his erstwhile boss were rudimentary and low-budget, lacking, for example, strings, horns or even backing singers. Nevertheless, they and the contemporary recordings by Sonny and Chér (I Got You Babe was recorded towards the end of the sessions for Chér's first album) have considerable charm and achieved great commercial success, sparked by the success of the lead single, Bob Dylan's All I Really Want To Do, which outsold the rival version by the Byrds in America in 1965. In my opinion, Chér's best work was that which she did with Sonny in the sixties.This should have provided a welcome opportunity for me to replace my much loved but long lost vinyl copies, but I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it because so many of the tracks have been artlessly truncated by the re-mastering engineer, often losing between ten and twenty-five seconds. This is a reprehensible practice and quite needless since with a program time of 65:35 there remains almost fifteen minutes of capacity on the disc to accommodate full-length versions of every track. Unfortunately there is currently no CD alternative for acquiring these full albums, though all but three of tracks (all dropped from the second album) appear on The Best Of Cher: The Imperial Recordings 1965-1968 and from the sleeve details appears to have consistently longer track times, so this would seem to be the better value purchase, unless you must own her covers of Ferlin Husky's Time, Edith Piaf's Milord or Charles Aznavour's A Young Girl.

Cher is a great artist but cannot give more then one star due to the CD not arriving twice

Wonderful to hear her early stuff with alot of songs I didn't realise she sang or that Sunny wrote

Quality is very good and matches my original LP which I like very much but do not get the opportunity to listen to very often..

great

Here we have a delightful repackaging of Cher's first two studio albums, and a wonderful slice of Sixties ''Flower-Power'' nostalgia. Like all of her releases from this decade, both LPs were released on the Imperial label, and produced by Sonny Bono, her then boyfriend and singing partner, who would become her husband.The first album, 'All I Really Wanna Do', named after the Bob Dylan song which gave Cher her first hit single, peaked at no.16 in America, and no.7 in Britain upon it's release in 1965, and is a real bag of treats. The other Dylan covers, 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright' and ' 'Blowin' in the Wind' are particularly fine versions, especially the former, as well as Ray Davis' 'I Go to Sleep', and 'Girl Don't Come', which had provided Sandie Shaw with a major hit. 'Come and Stay With Me', although slightly inferior to Marianne Faithfull's, is still an enjoyable cover, which is very largely what this album is, a collection of covers. Cher had very little control over the song choices she was given, but back in the Sixties, not many of the girl singers had. Sonny provided one of the few originals, 'Dream Baby', a nice song which was typical of it's time and place, and fits in nicely on what was a pretty good debut.This cover heavy formula hadn't changed when she released her second album, 'The Sonny Side of Cher' in 1966, and once again, it met with bigger success in the UK, where it reached no.11, as opposed to America where it only rose to no.26, although it fared better in Norway. The most famous track, the haunting 'Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)', written by Sonny provided Cher with another big hit single, and his other contribution 'Where Do You Go', although far from great, found great success in Canada, and some in America. The choice of cover songs that Cher recorded here were more diverse than the first album, including a real golden oldie, the show-tune 'Ol' Man River', which was given a contemporary, but easily forgettable treatment, and I regard her version of Tom Jones' 'It's Not Unusual' as really rather pointless. Much better was 'The Girl from Ipanema', Edith Piaf's 'Milord', and Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone', which provide the highlights along with 'Bang Bang' on what was an enjoyable, but pretty uneven album.I very much enjoy Cher's early music, although her mid to early Nineties work as a rock-diva will always be my favourite, and these are pleasant, easy-listening albums which are unmistakably 1960s in their (sometimes not-so-great) production and song choice. Cher had an appealing deep voice even as a late teenager, and as you can see by the pre-cosmetic surgery pictures on the front, she was quite the natural beauty. If you appreciate the sound of Sixties folk-pop, and the songs and songwriters that this great decade spawned, then this two-on-one release is for you.

I never knew Sonny Bono wrote Needles and Pins. This revelation apart it's standard 60s fare. Her cover of Girl Don't Come just proves Sandie Shaw's a better singer and her cover of Marianne Faithful's Come and Stay with Me is charmlessly inferior. The bonus is you get to see Cher's original face on the cover.

'All I really wanna do' summed up this album. The songs each in their own right a stanza to the lives and loves of the young in those days of easy living and free loveSome classics on there, 'I go to sleep', 'Blowin' in the wind', and 'Girl from Ipanema' were standards in those days and were well re-produced by Chers distinctive deep voice. The original version of 'Bang bang' featured on this album, when you hear it you know its a far cry from the later version and see just how much she evolved and developed her style.Quite a melancholy collection but Chers voice is loud and true. The recording quality as far as the background music is not too good, its Chers voice that shines through and thats flawless!Not everyone loves the earlier Cher albums but true fans will come to love these pieces. Its her voice afterall that makes her music and her attitude and vibrancy which is unfettered on this album.