British reissue label Castle Pulse is a few months late, but still in the right year, for celebrating Richard Rodgers' centenary with this four-CD box set. Maybe calling it the Broadway composer's half-centenary would be closer to the mark, however, since the label is taking advantage of European copyright law to use recordings over 50 years old and thus in the public domain. The tracks date back to 1926, but three-quarters come from the 1940s and early '50s, stopping strictly in 1951. To be fair, although Rodgers continued to work for another 28 years after that, the only big success he enjoyed in this later period was 1959's The Sound of Music. So, the compilers had at their disposal most of his major work. They have organized the set with a first disc devoted to Rodgers' hits, a second to his work with lyricist Lorenz Hart, a third given over to jazz recordings of his songs, and a fourth to his work with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. The hits disc contains a few songs that were not really hits and leaves out many that were (some of which appear on later discs). The Hart disc has the oldest material and some of the most striking performances. The jazz disc is uneven. The Hammerstein disc borrows from the original Broadway and London cast albums for songs from Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I, along with some pop renditions of other songs. Rodgers himself probably wouldn't have liked most of the recordings, which frequently alter the original melodies for jazz purposes and occasionally the original lyrics for pop purposes. But the collection, while sprawling and lacking annotations, gives a sense of the breadth of the composer's influence on popular music, particularly in the 1940s and early '50s. Available initially at a list price of about 25 dollars, it was also a bargain upon release and, although technically available only in Europe, is in fact easily within the reach of U.S. consumers. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide