Motown Greats
After visitng the Motown Museum, this complilation of hits was just what we needed for great memories. Takes one back to their dancing days!

Nice collection
I was a little torn about whether to purchase this box set. I already own many of the cuts. But there are so many great songs from the time when I was a huge Motown fan that I decided to get it. Putting all the hits (and not just the most familiar) together makes for a fun collection. It is great to listen to while at work or on the road.

Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971
The Motown Hits Collection is absolutely marvelous! It is a varied collection of memories and history of music in the 60's and 70's from the African-American perspective. It is music for those who enjoy excellent musical arrangements,clear and wholesome lyrics, and music that is filled with love and inspiration from the Motown writers, arrangers, and singers. Above all, it is tribute to Barry Gordy who founded Motown when our world was in racial and political turmoil. He reached in and made some sense of it all. Thanks to him, Smoky Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Ashford and Simpson, The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terell, Kim Weston, Mary Wells, Brenda Holloway, The Marvelettes, Martha and The Vanellas, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations, Gladys Knight and The Pips, Diana Ross, and many others for making this magnificant music that we have today. This music is timeless and universal. It's guaranteed to please, to soothe, to stimulate, to conjure up memories, and to entertain your deepest sense of pleasure. Sit back, quiet your mind, listen, snap your fingers, stomp your feet as you journey into a galaxy of historical and musical delight.

The REAL Story: This set is PURPOSELY in Mono, for those of you who are wrongly complaining!
This set was PURPOSELY mastered in all mono, for the uninformed complainers among you! These are the tracks THE WAY THEY WERE ORIGINALLY RELEASED AND THE WAY YOU STILL HEAR THEM ON THE RADIO TODAY!

Motown had been releasing stereo versions of these songs on CD for YEARS starting in about 1985-86. Many customers complained that those were NOT the versions they had remembered hearing, in the 1960s OR the 1980s (on oldies radio). The artists' voices sounded wrong, for one thing. That's because the stereo versions were usually NEW recordings made with the artist RE-SINGING the song--and they sounded different--not the way we remembered. So, Motown in 1992 brought in top remastering engineers to go through the original tapes and re-master the original hits, the way they were originally cut, as SUNG originally.

This set represents the fruit of those efforts, and it is SUPERB. The mono recordings at all times have more punch than the stereo verions, since the stereo cuts were made for albums compiled LATER. The stereo effect itself was often a phony "stereo-like" dilution only, not true stereo. The true hit versions are what you hear on this unrivaled set.

The complaining reviewers here simply have no idea about the history of this set, which was a MAJOR project undertaken to bring back the best and ACTUAL sound, period.

My only concern . . . "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye was, as I recall, the name of a song and its album. It was released on the album first, hence the mono version on this boxed set (which isn't as smooth and is more "funky" to me), was the afterthought version. While mono, it's NOT the original, so I don't see why it's here.

Otherwise, the only omission of real substance on this set appears to be some of the early Supremes hits . . . though, to me, if anything has been overplayed for years, those were the songs, and hence were the best choice to be omitted.

This set is the definitive Motown box set, ESPECIALLY CONCERNING AUDIO QUALITY. Those who desire stereo are just asking for the inferior versions. And those versions were available for years, because the Motown executives interviewed in the early 1990s indicated that they thought (wrongly) that stereo would be preferred on CD, even at the expense of having the true hit versions. They admitted their error, sought to correct it, and this project is the end result.

MONO-TOWN
HITSVILLE USA is a box set that's clearly marked as a SINGLES COLLECTION-- that means these 104 tracks are in the original monaural sound. If you're looking for stereo mixes, this isn't the collection for you. That issue aside, the only real criticism of the album is one of programming-- songs tend to be clustered by artist or group. Perhaps a more thorough shuffle was in order.

Each CD jewel case is fronted with a repro of a Gordy Co. label, including one of the very first MOTOWNs, which was pale pink in color. The accompanying 68-page long box book is quite comprehensive. Recording dates for all songs and chart positions are given. There's lots of great photos; artists and groups are given a few pages of bio each. This HITSVILLE USA four-CD box set is fairly extensive, and about all you'd ever need in a compilation of MOTOWN 45s.

TOTAL RUNNING TIMES --
DISC ONE -- 76:10
DISC TWO -- 75:21
DISC THREE -- 77:09
DISC FOUR -- 74:10