Silver&

Released: 2007 (originally released 1978)

Production: Tom Bulleit '79

Engineering/Restoration: Phil York, Yorktown Digital Works

Business Management: Devid Lefkowith '78

Design: Yoshiki Waterhouse '95

Abridged from Liner Notes:

"It is a tribute to the bonds of friendship we formed that most of us who made the Silver LP in the Spring of 1978 returned to the Yale campus in the Fall of 2004 for the group’s 50th anniversary. We marveled at how much better the singing and performing had grown in those 25 years, and most of us acknowledged somewhat wistfully that we might never have been invited to join the group had the standards of the 21st century been applied to our auditions. We left with renewed spirit, though, and a determination to do what we could to help preserve the group’s legacy. 

Among other things, that led us to remaster and re-release, in the present CD form, the original 25th anniversary Silver LP, augmented by some songs From the Vault (in tribute to the contributions of the arrangers and performers of the Silver era that initially were recorded on LPs made in the surrounding years), some Buried Treasure (transcriptions of sacred songs popularized by Take Six, Singers Unlimited, and Chanticleer during the group’s second 25 years), and some Unrefined Ore taken from our Sprague Hall studio sessions. 

As a bonus, we’ve even included a live CD of the 50th Anniversary concert itself. At the same time, discovering that none of the LPs made by the Duke’s Men groups of the first 25 years had been converted to CD, and many even from later years were not archived at Sterling Library, we took the lead in a larger project to complete the library’s archive and release a 50th anniversary collection of golden Nuggets from 50 years of recordings on a companion CD collection, called Gold. 

We hope that even listeners with no interest in the history will still be able to appreciate the quirky, diverse talents and styles that produced the music and singing for Silver, and will be enough intrigued to see how the alchemy of the Duke’s Men matured 25 years later into Gold."