Geffen Records
2006
The Definitive Collection
About This Album
The chief drawbacks to this album lie in its title and its marketing, not its contents. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Universal Music, repository of the largest catalog of vintage music in the world, embarked on several reissue programs with different price points aimed at different consumers. There was the 20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection of best-ofs, relatively short single-disc packages at a discount price. And there was the Gold series of two-disc compilations. In between was a series called The Definitive Collection, full-priced, single-disc collections. A given artist might have releases in each of the series. The trouble, of course, lies in the word "definitive," and when it comes to Bing Crosby, co-compiler and annotator F.B. "Wig" Wiggins, an official of the International Club Crosby, immediately acknowledges the problem. "The 'definitive' Bing Crosby -- on a single disc -- is almost a contradiction in terms," he admits at the outset. Instead, Wiggins prefers the word "representative," which he uses twice in his liner notes to describe the album. Unfortunately, it is the word "definitive" that appears in the title, and it is reinforced by a sticker on the shrink wrap declaring, "His 22 Greatest Hits.
Track List (try tracks 4,12 and 21)

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