JIM REEVES MUSIC

Over the years of releasing new Jim Reeves music I have received countless inquiries from fans who are interested in how I got involved in doing this. I've never really discussed this publicly but this is my chance to do so now. 

In 1998, I was asked by Richard Weize of Bear Family Records in Germany to write the liner notes for  "Jim Reeves and Friends: Radio Days, Vol. 1" — a 4-CD box set featuring some 15-minute radio shows Reeves did for various branches of the U.S. military. When I asked Richard how many words he wanted, he couldn't tell me except to give me carte blanche and say I should be as thorough as possible in writing about the dozens of tracks in the set. This was easier said than done because at that time, these recordings were not generally available, and he was either unwilling or unable to furnish me with any copies so I could listen to them! Yet he expected me to write knowledgeably about them. Though his confidence in me was flattering, it meant I had to scrounge these up on my own. I implored other Reeves fans to help me, and even beseeched strangers to share their copies of songs with me. Sometimes the best I could do is convince somebody to merely play a selection to me on the phone. Nevertheless, I produced a 7,000 word booklet for Bear, and Weize called me to praise it, making only two minor changes.

That's the last I heard from the guy — 14 years ago — although he did send me a damaged copy of the boxed set. I give him credit for assembling compilations on long-forgotten stars, though some of them have personally complained to me about his supposedly cutting them out of the loop. Ed Gregory, the convicted bank fraud felon who for a few years owned the Reeves estate, told me one time, with a mixture of admiration and contempt, that "Richard is an absolute genius at not paying anybody any royalties."

One final point on this subject of Bear: Their 16 CD Jim Reeves boxed set apparently has been altered such that it is not tuned to A-440. You cannot play guitar or piano along with it. I speculate this might have something to do with the necessity to cram as much material on the CDs as possible within the time constraints. So I suspect the songs were speeded up. Although the technology now exists to change tempo without changing pitch (and I used this on a few of my overdubs), it would seem that this was not done on Bear's Reeves set and hence this means Jim's voice has been subtlety changed. A big revelation to me is when I hooked up a turntable and played some of Jim's vinyl records for the first time in many years. The sound of his voice was startlingly richer and more lustrous when compared with their digital equivalent on Bear's CDs. So my appreciation for Jim's talents even increased when I re-listened to his records.

After Tony Wall in England gave me paperwork in 1999 showing that some of the overdubs that Mary Reeves had done of Jim's songs remained unreleased, I approached Kevin Parks of Soundies in Chicago with the proposition of putting these out on his indie label. He had earlier contacted my wife, Julie, webmistress of "The Jim Reeves Way" (www.jim-reeves.com) and invited her website visitors to contribute their comments for the liner notes of Soundies' re-issue of the soundtrack from Jim Reeves' movie, "Kimberley Jim."

It took more than a year of my pestering Kevin before the project moved forward, but he eventually got RCA/BMG to agree to license Mary's unissued overdubs. However, the record company was initially unable to locate any of the music I requested, until I gave them matrix numbers. Even then they kept sending me things that had been put out years earlier. That's how unfamiliar they were with the repertoire of one of their most successful artists. (I have since found Sony to be about the same. I remember when they sent me a copy of "I'm A Hit Again," claiming it was Jim Reeves when it was so obviously not). Finally, RCA/BMG located most of the songs I wanted. I listened to them and gave advice as to how they should be mixed, the sequencing on the CD, the packaging and of course I wrote the liner notes. I was invited to the mastering session in New York but Kevin Parks oversaw the post-production. When the CD was pressed, I was surprised to discover that Parks had decided to restore the harp intro on "I Love You Because" that was not on the overdub and when I asked him why, he replied "because it was cheesy." He also came up with the title, which was a bit of a nonsequitur, calling it "Unreleased Hits." (Many wondered: how could they be "hits" if they were unreleased?) 

Be that as it may, I was proud to have brought this project to fruition and happy that Mr. Parks was so approachable. He's a good guy and the CD is still worth buying! I am especially fond of the new treatment on "Just Out Of Reach." I had loved Perry Como's version and had been disappointed with the arrangement that Chet Atkins had used on Jim's LP cut. Fortunately, the overdub completely reshaped that by changing the tempo of the accompaniment and adding pretty strings.

In November 2001, I was the winning bidder of an eBay auction of seven 16-inch electric transcription disks (ETs) from the Armed Forces Radio & Television Service consisting of some installments of the "Jim Reeves Show" from the old American Broadcasting Network. These particular disks commanded a hefty sum (over $2300), because they were so rare. (I remember how a Reeves collector and hoarder went on the internet and lambasted me for paying so much, even though he bid only a few dollars less).

The first problem was how to extract the audio from the disks. A Google search led me to an audiophile named David Lawrence in Arizona, who had built his own customized turntables in order to be able to play the old transcriptions. Between the two of us we developed a proprietary method for restoring audio that we later learned is very similar to that being done by world-class engineers for Capital records. Mr. Lawrence has subsequently been hired by the Country Music Foundation to help preserve some of the rare recordings in their collection.

When I finally got a chance to listen to the seven transcriptions I'd bought of "The Jim Reeves Show," I was struck by the fact that the program revealed a whole new side of "Gentleman Jim" with which I had been unfamiliar. This whetted my appetite to acquire more. Over the course of the next couple of years, I managed to purchase additional shows from Jim's series. To help defray my expenses and to enable other fans to enjoy them, after consulting some top patent and rights attorneys, I formed an indie label called VoiceMasters and began putting some of these programs out on CD.

For the mastering of the CDs, I hired a young fellow from California named Brian Hazard who, besides being a keyboardist/singer/songwriter, also runs a company called Resonance Mastering. Even though Brian primarily works with rock musicians, he is a skilled engineer who labored many hours to get the Jim Reeves transcriptions sounding just right. You would not believe how much work that entailed; it was a multi-step process. Brian enriched the existing sound through computer enhancements. I think they turned out better than we dared hope and sound fantastic.

The old ETs of Jim's national radio show had been recorded off a network wire and there was sometimes cross-talk on the line (making the material unusable). On a few of the shows we heard a heater in the studio going on and off. The way the disks were cut and the alignment of the grooves not only required a special stylus for playing, but also meant that not as much sound was captured. Then there was the usual surface noise inherent in these disks — like pops and clicks. It's problematic to remove unwanted artifacts without also eroding the sound you do want. As it turned out, I never did use any of the material off the first seven shows, because they did not contain any new songs by Jim. However, I knew he had done new material on the program because I had some scripts. Fortunately, as I obtained more installments of his show (I think I have about 44), wonderful new songs surfaced.

As for the content of the shows, I didn't like the pacing and the repetition. So once we had them transferred from analog to digital, I laboriously edited them and consolidated shows to add musical performances by Jim and reduce superfluous dialog. This became apparent to fans when Bear Family later tried to jump on the bandwagon and release some of Jim's radio shows after I had done so. While theirs were intact, they sounded deadly dull by comparison.

The first CD I released on my own label was called "Around the World," the title track of course sung by Jim Reeves. He had never recorded that song for RCA, and only performed it on his radio show. The same was true of this Pat Boone hit, which Jim also covered:

LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND

One of Jim's sisters, Vergie Reeves Thomas, wrote a letter to fans which appeared in the first VoiceMasters CD. Leo Jackson and Ray Baker later did likewise. Once VoiceMasters was established, I was approached by other people who had Jim Reeves material to sell — like the original tape of Jim's concert with the Nashville Symphony, that Mary had promised in various interviews over the years to release, but never got around to doing. As my tax returns would document, I spent tens of thousands of dollars buying rare Reeves recordings from a multitude of sources. From a purely economic standpoint, this made no sense, because these CDs were all quite costly to produce and were only pressed in limited quantities. But it was a labor of love for me, pure and simple, to rescue Jim's wonderful recordings lest they be destroyed. (As I have said many times, inaccessibility is just another form of destruction). Heirs of the Reeves estate who stand to profit in the future from Jim's royalties have me to thank for rescuing a lot of Jim's music that would otherwise have been lost, and getting him increased visibility and air play worldwide. Brian Hazard also mastered the Symphony CD, "The Unforgettable Jim Reeves: Live."

I then began exploring the plethora of radio transcriptions that Jim had done specifically for the U.S. military, and shows like "Country Style U.S.A.," "Navy Hoedown" and such. These disks were much more readily available, were likewise considered "public domain," and had been used by labels far and wide which had released excerpts "as is" without any attempt to clean them up. I felt some of Jim's performances were outstanding, so we set about applying the VoiceMasters restoration techniques to them. The result was a significantly improved sound.

Around this same time, a friend of mine, gospel singer Chris Kibbe from Connecticut, started telling me he thought I should overdub some of the Jim Reeves material I was amassing. I told Chris he was nuts — that it would be far too expensive for me to do this, unless I won the lottery. But Kibbe wouldn't give up, and hounded me for a year. More or less just to get him off my back, I finally capitulated and sent an email to an orchestrator whom Chris had worked with named Milton Smith, from North Carolina. I wasn't expecting much, but to my surprise Mr. Smith made himself available at a good price. He's a musical genius, and I don't say that lightly. Milton has the distinction of having been hired to play piano by Elvis shortly before the superstar's death. In fact, Milton was at Graceland the day Presley passed away. Mr. Smith readily grasped what I was trying to do with the Reeves tracks, and embraced my view that Jim's voice had to be the star in any new musical arrangement we applied. (It's too bad that engineers for other labels haven't appreciated this fact. Some of the repackagings I've heard of RCA masters are deplorable in that they have subdued Jim's magnificent voice to the background accompaniment).

The first overdubbed CD I released was called "There's Someone Who Loves You" (mastered by Brian Hazard), and it is simply beautiful. It is a mix of tracks derivative of radio tapes (which had a superior sound to the ETs) and demos that Jim cut in studios around Nashville like Starday and Nugget. By the way, I have never used any recordings Jim did as masters for RCA. All my releases come strictly from non-RCA material, that is p.d. or was auctioned off by rights holders who disclaimed any further interest in it. The trick has been to track down these rarities from obscure sources.

The title track came from an old demo Jim cut with just his guitar in Hollywood back in 1954. The song has such an interesting hook it's one of my favorites. I have no idea why Mary Reeves never overdubbed this tune. As was the case with my subsequent releases, this CD also contains new vocal renditions by Jim of some of his standards, that are actually superior to his RCA recordings.

In addition to using Milton Smith for orchestrations, I also hired David Johnson, a very talented guy who also does a lot of work in the gospel music field. David is a bit of a "mountain man" — sort of a Grizzly Adams type — who has a cabin on the side of a mountain where he assembles his musician friends, using some old analog mics for a warm and rich sound. He can orchestrate for multiple instruments and I sometimes used his arrangements alone, when I wanted an "acoustic feel" for a song. In other cases, I combined his arranging skills with those of Mr. Smith, as I did with "There's Someone Who Loves You." In the sample below, you first hear how the original demo sounded. I think you'll be amazed by how it went from a moth to a butterfly when we added instrumentation. We also greatly improved the tonal clarity of Jim's voice.

THERE'S SOMEONE WHO LOVES YOU


Even though the quality of the source material was better than the ETs, there was still the problem of tape hiss and in some cases a "muddy" sound (which I personally worked on correcting, after Brian became unavailable due to other pressing commitments). I labored long hours experimenting with noise removal techniques and applying various equalization (EQ) curves, to get the right sound on Jim's voice. We got a lucky break in that his accompaniment was usually so sparse, it not only afforded us a chance to build up a band around him, but also to apply a little reverb to his voice and give him more "presence" to more closely resemble his RCA tracks. This required a light touch so we wouldn't distort the background music.

Milton also augmented what was already on the original recordings by, for instance, adding piano fills to what the original pianist had done -- and playing in a style that matched the original pianist.

One recurring problem we had when working with these radio tapes is that members of the studio audience would sometimes cough, usually at the most inopportune time, thus threatening to ruin otherwise solid recordings unless we could come up with clever ways to fix this. It was very tricky to eliminate these extraneous noises. In some cases when a cough came on top of instrumentation, we had to have musicians play the same notes anew and try to match the originals exactly. We even did this vocally at the end of one song where the final syllable of what the Anita Kerr's sang was marred by applause. (I challenge you to figure out which song this was!)

On "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Jim sang much too quickly, so I used sophisticated software to slow the tempo without changing pitch. I also lengthened the song by repeating a chorus. Making edits on "voice isolation" tracks is one thing, but trying to edit monaural recordings that had instruments in the background — such as what we primarily had to work with — was a lot harder. For example, if we wanted to cut after Jim completed singing a phrase, sometimes there was lingering music behind him. So if we cut into it, you would hear an abrupt edit. To get around this problem, we sometimes covered up abrupt edits with "cross fades" and the overlay of an instrumental punctuation to hide any conspicuous edits.

As we tackled all these challenges, a synergism developed amongst all of us who worked on these overdubs. Everybody felt honored to be dealing with recordings of the great Jim Reeves, and that is part of the secret as to why they ended up sounding so great. Sometimes musicians would stop by the studio and ask to play on Jim's tracks for free. We assembled quite an array of musical talent!

Each of the CDs I issued (a partial list follows) contain previously unreleased new songs and new vocals by Jim. In fact, to date I have released about 88 tracks fans had never heard before. (I find it amazing that the Bear Family 16 CD Jim Reeves boxed set is still being marketed as "complete," and containing all Jim's known recordings, even though my releases proved it does not).

Along the way I have had a lot of fun producing the overdubs. I spent considerable time carefully analyzing the songs, figuring out what treatment to give them, choosing what instruments I wanted to play on each cut, and how the background vocals (BGVs) should be arranged. I left the actual implementation to my team, and then ruthlessly critiqued the results. Not a note got played without my approval, and I probably exasperated some of my associates by asking that things be re-done over and over until I was satisfied. I did this not only because it is in my nature to be a perfectionist, but because I felt Jim Reeves would have wanted it this way.

I worked hard to always make sure Jim sounded as good on my releases as he did on his famous hits. I took my role seriously, realizing that I was stepping into an elite and very small circle of people who had been Jim's producers — Fabor Robison, Steve Sholes, Chet Atkins, Anita Kerr, Jerry Bradley and now Larry Jordan. I derived great satisfaction from the fact that Leo Jackson told me on more than one occasion that he felt I had done a consistently good job on Jim's voice (even though he did not always appreciate overdubs...mine or Mary's).

My philosophy was that what we were doing was like putting a new frame around a great painting. We were merely showcasing Jim's exquisite and timeless voice in a new setting. It was my goal to make these overdubs sound like Jim was still alive today and had just recorded them. The consequence of all our hard work is that Jim's music got more radio airplay worldwide, ranging from XM/Sirius satellite radio here in the U.S. to the BBC and many other broadcast outlets around the world.

Wesley Pritchard, a well-known gospel singer who often appears on the Gaither TV shows, rounded up the singers for the BGVs and we recorded them at Mill West Studios in Fayetteville, NC. His brother, Byron, handled vocal engineering. Wes and I discussed what approach to take and we experimented with various arrangements to get them exactly right. One time Wes even brought the vocalists back into the studio the day after Thanksgiving to sing a different (and improved) arrangement as we were facing a deadline from the CD manufacturing plant.

I became such a fan of Wes Pritchard and the other fine singers I told him I wanted to hear more of them on my recordings, not less. A case in point is the song "My Lips Are Sealed." On the first vocal arrangement, the singers only added soft "oohs" on the chorus when Reeves sings "let there be laughter, not one single tear." Although I thought this was very pretty, and I left it intact, I felt it didn't go far enough. I wanted to take advantage of such pleasing voices so I told Wes that I wanted them to sing the words at various points, to repeat refrains as Jim sustained notes: As Jim holds "so," they quickly sing "that once we loved each other so." Jim sustains "beat" and they quickly sing "my heart may cry with every beat." Jim sustains "complete" and they sing "without your love I'm not complete" and so on. But we made sure they do not do this on all of his refrains, so as to avoid too much repetition. In some cases we had them sing in unison with him on "my lips are sealed," and in other instances they just echoed him. I am very pleased with the final result. One sidenote is that on the original recording Jim just started singing cold, without any intro. Milton Smith invented an upsweep of the strings. The other advantage to having the BGVs sing the words is we were able to cover up some studio chatter at the opening of the song. It worked great!

MY LIPS ARE SEALED

In listening to RCA's classic version of "Distant Drums," (which became one of Jim's biggest hits and made it to #1 in England for five weeks in 1966), I noticed that there were no BVGs. Since I had a copy of the original demo, I decided I wanted to add an all-male chorus to the song when we overdubbed it. On the first part of the audio sample below, you hear an early vocal arrangement. But then we decided the men shouldn't be singing in unison with him so much, (such as when he sang "So Mary..." and "love me now...") I also felt we needed to hear Jim more clearly. From around 1:11 in this sample, you can hear how we have restructured the BGVs and brought Jim up in the mix. The other problem concerned Leo Jackson's piercing guitar licks which resulted from his amplifier being next to Jim when the demo was cut under the auspices of ex-bandmember Tommy Hill at Starday. Hill's engineers tended to do a very poor job so there were typically problems with any demos made there. Since this was a mono recording, (instead of multi-track where you can adjust the volume of instruments individually), we had to come up with a creative solution to the problem of Leo's guitar being too loud. In order to try to mitigate the bracing sound, we zeroed in on the frequency of Leo's guitar at the point where Reeves sings about bugles blowing and electronically turned down his volume. You can notice the difference on the latter part of the sample when you hear his guitar again around the phrase mentioning bugles. We used the same technique to soften Mel Roger's drums. Milton's arrangement with the strings and the French horn is very sophisticated and I am thrilled with this treatment. In fact, it showed up in the #3 spot on UK radio playlists in late 2008 and early 2009.

DISTANT DRUMS

One shining example of David Johnson's talent concerns a new song I premiered called "How Many Tears From Now." I had seven copies of this tune on tape and thought I had listened to every one of them. My conclusion was that the song was unusable because it was so badly overmodulated. Then one day I happened to put one of the tapes on and to my surprise realized I had never heard it before; it was a far better copy than the others! I loved the melody, but it was only a short song — just Jim and his guitar — so Mr. Johnson invented a turnaround. What he did to bring this new song to life is spectacular. The sample below starts with the original demo, and then around :24 you will hear how we have improved the fidelity on Jim's voice plus you'll be able to listen to David Johnson's new instrumental break.

HOW MANY TEARS FROM NOW

I worked from original tapes, as further confirmed by the fact that the demo Bear has in their boxed set of "Deep Dark Water" has no mistakes in it. However, years ago Mary told me about hearing Jim seemingly sing a word twice on one of the demos, and how everyone laughed when they first heard it. Her story was borne out when I obtained the original. As Leo Jackson pointed out, it wasn't that Jim made a mistake — it was the fact that someone at Nugget studio (where Reeves recorded it), did a sloppy edit of two "takes." So Jim appears to sing "someone one was..." Listen to the sample below of the raw demo with the redundant word, and then how it sounded after we edited it and overdubbed it. Both Milton and David Johnson combined talents for this superb overdub:

DEEP DARK WATER

The great Jim Reeves actually did make a mistake on the song "Lonesome Waltz," when he sang "walch" instead of "waltz." When RCA released it in the "Touch Of Sadness" LP back in 1967, they left the mistake in. However, in the computer age, we had more flexibility in fixing it. Since Jim had sung the word correctly later in the song, we were able to sample it and then paste it into the wav form over the mistake. It is a testament to Jim's greatness as a singer that he sang not only with such perfect pitch but also such careful phrasing that we were able to make the substitution. Just listen to the "before and after" sample and engineer David Lawrence's skill as an audio editor. By the way, I am very proud of having been able to dramatically improve the clarity on Jim's voice. The original that RCA used sounds foggy, but mine is far better. The difference is night-and-day. (Just try listening to this cut on your car stereo sometime and see what I mean). I was able to indulge my love of fiddle and mandolin by using these on the tune.

LONESOME WALTZ

Besides all the imperfections we had to deal with, we also had to electronically "tune" some songs cut at Starday to bring them on pitch. This was because the piano at Starday was out of tune and the other instruments tune to this. I still don't understand why the perfectionist Mr. Reeves ever tolerated all the problems at this studio for as long as he did. Finally, he must have gotten fed up, because he did his later demos at the far superior Nugget Studios.

To add freshness to these old recordings of Jim's, we used strings, flute, French horn, oboe, trombone, dobro, harp, clarinet and even a Bosendorfer grand piano (which is the world's finest and averages $58,000!) Sometimes we changed directions in mid-stream. For instance, the first attempt on "Read This Letter" — which featured a string treatment — didn't work so well. I decided to scrap it and start all over, giving the song more of an acoustic feel. Like Jim, I'm not overly fond of steel guitar but occasionally it can be used sparingly to great effect, which we did. We also added some electric guitar in the style of Leo Jackson. The first part of this sample is the (abandoned) string version, and then starting around :55 you can hear how we adopted a totally new approach (which was used on the one we released).

READ THIS LETTER

In my book, "Jim Reeves: His Untold Story," I discuss the possible reasons why Jim never felt secure enough to place himself in the hands of one of the big-time arrangers like Nelson Riddle, Ernie Freeman, Gordon Jenkins, Billy May, et al. He was in and out of New York and LA often enough, he easily could have recorded there (like Eddy Arnold did). I think Jim short changed himself by not doing this. When I got the tape of one of his last demos, "Crying Is My Favorite Mood," I realized this would lend itself to a Nelson Riddle-style treatment, so that's what I gave it. One revelation is that the original demo had a 45 second instrumental bridge that had been cut out by RCA and is missing on the Bear boxed set. Since I worked from original sources, I was able to include this. Jim did this song at Nugget in June 1964 and though he is credited with writing it, it was actually composed by his east Texas buddy Al Courtney, who was at that point serving hard time in a Louisiana prison. Reeves had bought a number of songs from Al to help him out financially. Bill Pursell played piano on the demo, which gave the number a jazz feel. (Mr. Pursell, in case you don't know, has Doctorate of Musical Arts, Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees, is a noted composer and arranger who has also worked with the Nashville Symphony, and since 1980 has been an Associate Professor of Music in Nashville). My orchestrator, Milton Smith, did a splendid job arranging this song, notwithstanding the fact that the piano at Nugget was also out of tune. (Poor Jim had the worst luck with pianos!)

CRYING IS MY FAVORITE MOOD


One of the more interesting challenges was when I decided to overdub "I'm A Hit Again" — the last song Jim ever recorded, and which I had was the first to release. On the original recording, which Jim cut quickly one day at his office, Reeves sang it through just to get the words and melody on tape. He didn't bother to pace it correctly. But in order to add music, we needed to have room for some instrumental fills. So I turned to George Bradfute, who owns the former Reeves home in Madison, Tenn. and uses the studio downstairs where Jim cut the original track. The first thing George did is create a new but much longer rhythm track, by replicating Jim's guitar (playing on top of him, in the same tempo). Then he cut up the original and repositioned Jim's phrases where we needed them on the new rhythm track. Doing this in a way that was consistent with how Jim Reeves would have sung it, had he cut a master on the song, required real genius. The point of duplicating the guitar is so we could turn Jim on and off without you hearing his guitar drop out. Once George had Jim placed where we wanted him, Mr. Bradfute got some musicians friends together and they added "period"instruments like upright bass, steel, etc. This was a real time consuming project but George was up to the challenge. Mr. Bradfute commented as had David Johnson, that Jim's rhythm guitar playing was so even, that when they used the electronic equivalent of a metronome, it revealed that Reeves was right on the mark every time. He was amazing. In the sample here, you can first listen to the raw demo. Notice how Jim moves right along without allowing any pauses between phrases. Then listen to how we changed him in the latter part of the sample. You never hear his guitar "stick out" against our new rhythm backdrop. It's magic!

I'M A HIT AGAIN


I will never forget the first time I heard "Gypsy Feet" one day after I came home from junior high school. My Mother was in the kitchen with me getting ready to fix supper when the song began to play on the radio. She commented that somebody was sure trying to sound like Jim Reeves! Then we realized it was Jim; it's just that the tune didn't seem to fit him. He must have agreed, because he never recorded this for RCA. He only made a demo. I could never have imagined that day so long ago that in the years to come I would be in a position to re-work that recording and give it my own twist. The original demo was of exceptionally good fidelity but consisted merely of Jim playing rhythm guitar and Floyd Cramer adding a bit of rhythm on piano. In my opinion, the RCA overdub was over-produced and did not reflect what the song was about. I wanted a more earthy treatment, using primarily instruments that a traveling band of gypsies might actually play — like tambourine and fiddle. Orchestrator David Johnson understood exactly what I meant and came up with this terrific arrangement, even lengthening the song. Leo Jackson told me enthusiastically, "you outdid yourself on this one!" It was his favorite overdub. I realize that some purists don't like overdubs; they want to hear the music the way it originally sounded. But that is not being realistic. "Gypsy Feet" is a case in point. There is no way this track would ever be played on the radio with just Reeves and Cramer playing on it. It needed a commercial sound, and we have given it that. In the sample I've posted here, I am letting you first hear the raw demo, and then how we have transformed it with new accompaniment.

GYPSY FEET

People ask me why I didn't write about any of this in my book, "Jim Reeves: His Untold Story," and the answer is, because the book was about Jim Reeves, not me. But I realize fans are curious to know more about the new music on Jim that I have put out, hence this little essay. All I can tell you is that these releases were never about money; they were simply a way to enjoy the artistry of one of the world's greatest singers, and help perpetuate his legacy. I'm glad I was able to do this, and I have to confess I had more fun doing the Reeves overdubs than practically anything else I've ever experienced.

Click the links below to find out how you can buy copies of these CDs!

"Jim Reeves: Heartbreakin' Baby" (12 overdubs plus a 45 minute interview with Jim by famed deejay Bill Mack).

"The Unforgettable Jim Reeves Live" (14 tracks, including 4 new songs, plus Jim in concert with the Nashville Symphony as well as a show he did in Oslo, Norway).

"I Call Her Heartache" (24 songs, including 7 tunes fans have never heard before, plus unreleased demos, alternate takes, remixes and complete versions of songs that had been edited before they were released earlier).

"I've Forgotten You" (Includes "I'm A Hit Again" -- the last song Jim ever recorded -- which we overdubbed in the same studio at his former home, where the song was born. Contains 13 sparkling overdubs. One of my favorite albums.

"There's Someone Who Loves You" (14 all new overdubs, including unreleased vocals plus new songs, and 2 unreleased interviews with Jim and the Blue Boys).
"Shepherd of Love" (12 songs, including new vocals by Jim and new overdubs). Includes the incredible new version of "Distant Drums," as well as the title track, which was dedicated to Jim's young rodeo star friend, Judy Ford. (No wonder Mary never released it).

The five initial CDs I put out consisting of Jim's radio show have been out of print for years, and are now collector's items. (I warned you they were in limited supply, and I wasn't kidding!)