The Old Spanish Trail

Back by popular demand, The Toscanini Collection is a reissue of RCA's 1992 compendium that encompassed all of the recordings Toscanini made with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and NBC Symphony. A new addition to this amazing collection is his approved recordings with the BBC Symphony from the 1930s that were not included in the 1992 edition.

Although he lived most of his life in Nashville, Marty never left the west behind. He proved that he could masterfully reinterpret classic western ballads, as well as write new ones every bit as good as the old ones. His western recordings for both Columbia and MCA are complete here, spanning the years 1958-1979. The set starts with The Hanging Tree, then encompasses the best-selling Gunfighter Ballads albums that included such classic tracks as El Paso, Big Iron, Tonight Carmen, Mister Shorty, and The Cowboy In The Continental Suit, as well as the El Paso sequels like Feleena From El Paso and El Paso City. Marty mixed self-composed epics with many of the greatest vintage western songs to create a tapestry of music that powerfully evokes the old west and the west in transition.

If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate the 1970s. John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier who returns to his brother Aaron's frontier cabin three years after the end of the Civil War. Ethan still has his rebel uniform and weapons, a large stash of Yankee gold, and no explanations as to where he's been since Lee's surrender. A loner not comfortable in the bosom of his family, Ethan also harbors a bitter hatred of Indians (though he knows their lore and language well) and trusts no one but himself. Ethan and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Aaron's adopted son, join a makeshift band of Texas Rangers fending off an assault by renegade Comanches.

This second 11-CD set is the first complete collection of all of Nat King Cole's recordings from the final half-decade of his career, a total of 292 masters. The set includes all of the following albums, in many cases including rare 'bonus' material from the same sessions: Nat King Cole's only in-concert recording, 'Live At The Sands' (1960) ' universally regarded as one of the great live albums of all time. 'Wild Is Love'