Sings Shel Silverstein ... Plus

Among Silverstein's wry sagas about winners, losers, and lonely all-night cafés, you'll discover charming children's songs and touching, affectionate love ballads. A complicated man, that Silverstein. 8-CD box set (LP-size) with 128-page hardcover book , 137 tracks. Total playing time approx. 8 hours 8 CDs with 137 tracks including 25 previously unreleased recordings.

Bobby Bare's interpretations of more than a hundred Shel Silverstein songs. Classic sides from 1972 - 1983 incl. six complete albums. Shel Silverstein wrote hits like Sylvia's Mother and A Boy Named Sue (made famous by Johnny Cash). The live album Great American Saturday Night (unreleased at the time) is expanded here with 3 tracks. 128-page, LP-sized hardcover book with a 2020 Hank Davis interview with Bobby Bare about his friendship with Shel Silverstein, complete lyrics transcriptions, and detailed sessions discography. Includes a new essay by Dave Samuelson about Shel Silverstein and his multi-faceted work.

No artist recorded more Silverstein songs than veteran country singer Bobby Bare. His 1972 cover of Silverstein's bittersweet Sylvia's Mother launched a professional relationship that led to an enduring friendship. At Bare's request, Silverstein conceived and composed entire concept albums, starting with 'Lullabys, Legends And Lies,' an exercise in pure imagination from 1974. This two-LP set established Bare as a major album artist and yielded Marie Laveau, the first chart-topping single of the singer's long recording career. A follow-up album, 'Hard Time Hungrys,' captured the downbeat mood of American workers during the mid- '70s recession. A perceptive 'Billboard' reviewer hailed 'Hard Time Hungrys' as "something historians will look back upon." Bare's family participated in the whimsical 'Singin' In The Kitchen,' which included the tender Daddy What If. During the late '70s, Silverstein shifted his creative focus to playwriting and children's books, but he continued crafting clever songs specifically for Bare. When Bare wound down his major-label recording career in the mid-'80s, the singer had recorded more than 100 Silverstein originals, fifteen of them on the notorious 'Great American Saturday Night.' Recorded in 1977, that album was shelved when Bare left RCA for a more lucrative contract with Columbia.

Despite their lyrical and historical importance, the Bare/Silverstein collaborations have been sporadically and haphazardly reissued during the compact disc era. In response, Bear Family produced 'Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein, Plus,' the first comprehensive collection of this material. Six albums appear complete, including integral songs by other writers. The long-unheard 'Great American Saturday Night' includes three songs missing from a recent independent label release. The box set contains an LP-sized, lavishly illustrated 128-page hardcover book that contains song lyrics and a discography. In a conversation with Hank Davis, Bare recalls his years working with Silverstein, and Dave Samuelson documents the songwriter's multiple creative pursuits.