I got my 5 CD set from the N&W Historical Society today.

What interested me was whether they set out to do what the original albums had and that was it. Volume 2 (The Fading Giant) was re-released several years ago and several of the segments were added bouncing the CD up to 78 minutes instead of the original 55 or so. No big deal to me although anyone who bought this re-release will want to hold onto it now as the current Volume 2 is missing the new tracks.

Sadly, the master tapes used to create the original LP's are gone (more victims of Conchita??). Hence, either good copies of the LP's or the original tapes had to be used. Will be honest and tell you that some of the source material is not in good shape and this was obvious yesterday when playing parts of Volume 3 (Thunder on Blue Ridge) as you could hear pops and cracks that they were not entirely able to remove.

All in all, though, my hat is off to the new Link Museum and members of the NWHS for making this material available again after so many years. One would hope over time better source material could be obtained and another remastering done.

Let's hope that even though this 5 CD set is a limited edition, that efforts will be made to keep this valuable historical record available for purchase for future generations.

And while we are it, what about releasing some of the 16mm movies that Link took during this same time of the N&W?

jimhollis612@charter.net

Credit should also be given to Ken Miller, NRHS-Roanoke for his part in this project. He did most of the graphics in the booklets in each CD.

The intent of the set, as I understand it, was to preserve the original Link recordings to the extent possible. That's why the Fading Giant in the box set is similar to the original recording, and not a duplicate of the considerably expanded re-release several years ago. The only change in that particular album was the inclusion of the extended Christmas Eve in Rural Retreat from the separately-released CD. It's about 11 minutes long compared to the original 8 minutes, a little more on the approach, most of it going away.

I would advise those who are interested to buy it now. Don't depend on additional releases. They may happen, then again, they may not. I would guess that producing CD's is expensive, and the resources of money/time/ambition are not always available from people who care about this sort of thing. Looks like it all worked together for us right now. We're lucky!