The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Joe/newyorkmusicalsguy

To the best of my knowledge - fewer boxed sets are being put together and marketed these days. Dionne Warwick's most commercially successful songs have been re-issued "way too many" times with "way too many" compilations. The remastered original albums (some with bonus tracks and original artwork and updated liner notes) are great; however, I suspect they are not very profitable. Example: the four Rhino Handmade Warwick reissues released 4 or 5 years ago and comprised of "6" Scepter/Warwick albums are still available (these were supposedly limited to 5000 copies each). If - in fact - there were only 5000 copies - those are pretty dismal sales figures. They are 4 TERRIFIC RE-ISSUES! ................. The 5 Warner Brothers/ Warwick albums are also a welcome addition for Dionne Warwick devotees! ......... Any Dionne box set should include an abundance of previously unreleased material (buried in the vaults) as well as material that was never remastered and released on CD. Perhaps we could put together a request list and forward it to David Nathan @ soulmusic.com. Last year his record company released Dionne's remastered "Hot Live & Otherwise" 1981 Arista album. I realize there are numerous legal barriers involved in acquiring distribution rights to much of this material. I recall that some planned re-issues never materialized as a result of these legal roadblocks.

Ron

David Nathan is really one of the heroes of this kind of music, seeing great reissues to this day of this kind of music. I wonder what became of the Warner UK project he had lined up comprised of Dee Dee Warwick's Atco sides; as he's made so many great discoveries in the vaults, I'm sure he'd jump at another Dionne project. (If only -- and I know it's a pipe dream! -- he could resume the Rhino Handmade series, acknowledged to be financially unprofitable, as he left us hanging with future content referred to in the liner notes of the released titles, and then those next releases never came!!) Like most reissues and projects I've hoped for in the past, good things come to those who wait...so it's terrific that we're such a patient lot here!