True Love Ways
belongs to a rather long list of albums featuring the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
overdubbed on classic recordings by beloved artists. It's the worst of the batch. Part of the problem with
is that
Buddy Holly
and his band
the Crickets
were idiosyncratic, lively players whose recordings do not lend themselves to the square, sticky sounds of the
Philharmonic
. One of the ways to fix this is to straighten out the quirks in the editing, replacing the raw
Crickets
with studio players, then glop on layer after layer of strings.
Holly
's material has been subjected to such a treatment before, with his last demos overdubbed not long after his death, and his last studio sessions were laced with strings arranged by
Dick Jacobs
, but the existence of those cuts puts the lie to
. In their original versions, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" and "Raining in My Heart" were draped in strings, but they followed the rhythms laid down by
. Here, everything is in service to the melody, which means there is no swing, no rock & roll, not even a trace of sweet pop. It's all middlebrow nonsense, the kind of thing
's music opposed back in the 1950s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine