Chipmunks Liberty albums now on CD

This is only vaguely top-forty related, but I thought I'd let any Chipmunks fans know that many of their original late '50s and 1960s Liberty albums were recently released on CD by Capitol/EMI.

They seem hard to find online, but I saw them at Walmart today, only $6.99 apiece, cheaper than their download counterparts. They have nice foil cover inserts printed on hard card stock, matching the foil covers of their 1960s issues, with a reproduction of the back album cover on the flip side of the insert.

Titles are:

Let's All Sing with the Chipmunks (1959)
Sing Again with the Chipmunks (1960)
Around the World with the Chipmunks (1960)
The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles' Hits (1964)
The Chipmunks Go to the Movies (1969)

I saw all but "Around the World" at Walmart today, and bought "Sing Again" and "Beatles." Strangely, "Sing Again" is not showing on the Walmart website at all.

Even stranger, "Let's All Sing" is available to order from Walmart online, but says "not available in stores," which is completely untrue -- I saw three copies there today. They're all in the soundtrack section.

(And I was surprised to find that "Christmas with the Chipmunks" was NOT their first album... "Let's All Sing" was. Their Christmas album was not released until 1962. Apparently the common version of "Chipmunk Song" with the re-recorded parts first surfaced on "Let's All Sing" in 1959.)

Edited by Brian W.

Todd Ireland wrote: Can all of the Chipmunks CDs be found in the soundtrack section at Wal-Mart, or only the Let's All Sing disc? In other words, can I expect to find all of the Chipmunks discs stocked together?

They were all in the soundtrack section. They had each disc for sale individually, except for "Around the World with the Chipmunks." I didn't see the box set.

But I passed a second Walmart on the way back home yesterday and stopped there, and the only one they had was the Beatles disc. That seems to be the most common one for some reason (also priced about $2 higher than the others).

Edited by Brian W.

Personally, I've never cared for the original late '50s/early '60s incarnation of The Chipmunks under Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., and thus have never owned any of that music in any format. But am I the only one here of a slightly younger generation who jumped on the bandwagon when Ross, Jr. resurrected the group in 1980, and they made a huge comeback w/ their classic "hip"/"street" covers album, "Chipmunk Punk"??? :-) (It would become their first gold album, and the lead single, their version of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right", actually "Bubbled Under" in "Billboard", hitting #101 that summer. A second single, a cover of Blondie's "Call Me", was released as a follow-up, but failed to chart...)

Several years before I obtained my first stereo system (cassette deck, but no turntable), I had to settle for buying my first few albums on vinyl, since all my parents had was a very old turntable for listening to music on. Well, "Chipmunk Punk" was one of those records that I had to have back in 1980 - I still remember listening to that one endlessly w/ headphones on as a kid, lol. Loved their take on most of the songs, since I already knew the vast majority of them from listening to top 40 radio at the time (also includes their covers of other 1979-80 hits, such as Tom Petty's "Refugee", Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and The Knack's "My Sharona", among others)...

By the mid '80s, I'd added an original cassette of "Chipmunk Punk" to my collection (as well as the follow-ups, "Urban Chipmunk" and "Chipmunk Rock"), and I remember a couple of times in the late '90s/early '00s I did searches to see if the album had ever been re-issued on CD anywhere in the world. At that time, I came up empty-handed, and was somewhat surprised...

Then late last year, it suddenly hit me to try looking again. Lo & behold, I discovered that "Chipmunk Punk" HAD finally come out on CD in 2005, and right here in the U.S., no less! The main reason I hadn't learned about it sooner: It turns out it's only available via mail order through The Chipmunks' official web site, www.chipmunks.com. (Go to the "Store" page; it's a very reasonable $9.99 + shipping.) Needless to say, I ordered my copy about six months ago - it arrived quickly, and it was pretty cool to finally have on CD. :-) Just wanted to make others aware...

Wow, Greg, your post just took me on a big trip down Memory Lane! I'm a member of the relatively younger generation who grew up with the '80s incarnation of the Chipmunks. And though I never owned a copy of Chipmunk Punk as a kid, I very much remember the info-mercials for the album which aired during Saturday morning cartoons and on our local TV affiliates that aired cartoons weekdays after school. That said, it's nostalgic to visit the Chipmunks website and see the original album cover! (Though I must say, I'm struck by the website's claim that this is "the Platinum selling album that swept across college campuses...". Wasn't this supposed to be a kids album? LOL)

For what it's worth, my three personal favorite albums as a child in no particular order were: Buckner & Garcia's Pac-Man Fever, Disney's Mickey Mouse Disco, and the Christian-themed Music Machine: Fruit of the Spirit produced by Candle. Fortunately, the latter two titles have been reissued on CD. Amazingly, the original Buckner & Garcia album still has yet to see the light of day in digital. All CD releases of the Pac-Man Fever album to date consist of gallantly attempted, yet inferior, re-recordings. Back in the early '80s, I also remember constantly seeing mail order info-mercials for the Smurfs All-Star Show album, which I really wanted to buy at the time but never had the money. (Again, I was just a kid, so cut me some slack! :-)

I am 23 years old. I first aquired a copy of Chipmunk Punk last summer before i moved to New York, from my old neighbor, in a box of lp's he gave me. It was my first time coming across the album, and I liked You May Be Right best from the lp. The first Chipmunks LP i owned was a Christmas lp reissue on Mistletoe, which was given to my by an ex-boyfriend of my oldest sister several years earlier. However I still prefer their older recordings best.