The Lettermen’s name was retro but their sound was progressive. With three baritone vocalists, they wove their kaleidoscopic harmonies around the melody, trading leads and alternating highs and lows in dynamic clusters of close harmony. Their vocal arrangements were soft and smooth, but there was a lot going on! The group was born in a new decade, one with a growing market for stereo albums, and their modern sound was born to thrive in a stereophonic world.

When you hear the Lettermen’s breakthrough 1961 hits “The Way You Look Tonight” and “When I Fall in Love,” with their gorgeous close harmonies, it’s easy to imagine the influence this sound had on 19-year-old Brian Wilson, who’d start taking his Beach Boys to the charts the following year—assisted by the same able producer, Nick Venet. In fact, the Lettermen and the Beach Boys used to hang out and sing together in the parking lot behind the Capitol studio.

And when you hear the lovely string-filled productions and luminous vocals on the Lettermen’s LPs, which continued to chart all the way through 1974, it’s easy to see why this group outlasted so many contemporaries. Their prismatic vocal arrangements were simply on a different plane from all those groups who took their cues from barbershop and doo-wop groups.

Some groups take a while to get up and running, but the Lettermen found their sound early on in their recording career, mastering their harmonic approach on their first LP, A Song for Your Love, and running with it on their next three: Once Upon A Time; Jim, Tony and Bob and College Standards, all included here in full Stereo. Slow-dance standards and dreamy-eyed delights abound on these LPs, which all charted and which set their career in motion.

When you’re talking about shimmering strings and heavenly harmonies like these, isn’t sound quality of paramount importance to you? It is to us, which is why we had our top-flight engineers painstakingly remaster all these tracks to bring you crisp, vibrant stereo sound (indeed, every LP track here is in full, glorious stereo). It is a stone-cold fact that these original Lettermen recordings have never sounded better than this!

But what about the “And More” in the title of this collection? That represents the 10 bonus tracks here, including three VERY rare tracks they recorded during their brief pre-Capitol stint on Warner Bros.: “Their Hearts Were Full of Spring,” “When” and “Two Hearts.” Especially for Lettermen collectors, we’ve included a stellar unreleased version of the Perry Como classic “Wanted,” cut during their first Capitol LP session, as well as the original mono hit single version of “When I Fall in Love,” which boasts different vocal takes and a mix that is completely different from the LP version here.

The Disc Two bonus material begins with two never-on-LP folk-oriented single sides: “Allentown Jail” and “Two Brothers,” followed by two equally hard-to-find novelty song parodies they released under the group name Tony, Bob and Jimmy: “(Son of) Old Rivers” and “Dutchman’s Gold.” This is iconic ’60s vocal pop, reissued as it should be: four complete original Capitol stereo LPs, exquisitely remastered and expanded with period bonus tracks that tell the complete early story of the Lettermen! Includes an 8-page booklet with rare photos and a new essay by Greg Adams based on a fresh interview with group members.

– 21 SONGS NEVER BEFORE ON CD! 2 DISCS, 58 TRACKS (50 IN STEREO) –
– UNEQUALED SOUND QUALITY... CREATED BY COLLECTORS FOR COLLECTORS –