Instrumental Gems of the '60s

The follow-up of 'Instrumental Gems of the Fifties' now focuses on the following decade - 1960s. This collection proves that even in the rock & rolls era, instrumental records still came strong.

This 40-tracks on 2 CDs fulls with incredibly good, but rare, music from the rock decade. The selections are pretty various; from the orchestral (David Rose's "The Stripper") to the electric guitar (Mason William's "Classical Gas"). There are No.1 hits like Lawrence Welk's "Calcutta" and Paul Mauriat's "Love Is Blue". There are 3 top10 hits from Ferrante & Teicher ("Exodus", "Midnight Cowboy", and "Theme from the Apartment"). There are several hard-to-find one-hit wonders such as Robert Maxwell's "Shangri-La", Whistling Jack Smith's "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman", Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", and Don Shirley Trio's "Water Boy". Many great themes of the decade also presents including Nelson Riddle's "Route 66 Theme", Neal Hefti's "Batman Theme", Billy Strange's "James Bond Theme", and Percy Faith's "Theme from 'A Summer Place'".

Amazingly, although this album does miss several key instrumental artists such as the Ventures or the Shadows, it doesn't weaken the whole album even one bit. Probably because the selections are great and the styles are varied enough to cover every listeners' tastes.

Too bad that this album was out-of-print long time ago, and now can only available as used items. (The minted one is very expensive and really hard to find.) But if you don't mind the used album, it is a really good purchase for instrumental fans.