- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Boston Pops is one of the most popular and successful symphony orchestras for the rest of us, with Arthur Fiedler serving as its conductor for a half century.
The Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler Conductor – Pops Stoppers (1959): Boston Pops is one of the most popular and successful symphony orchestras for the rest of us, with the flamboyant Arthur Fiedler serving as its conductor for a half century, being finally succeeded in 1980 by longtime movie composer John Williams. As described by Joseph Stevenson for Allmusic: “[Fiedler] devised an innovative format comprising three parts: a popular symphony or concerto flanked by lighter music.” The title Pops Stoppers is a play on “show stoppers” and collects their most popular performances. Forty years later, in 1999, Pops Stoppers was reissued on CD with additional material.
Some of the albums that I picked up in and around our yard after Katrina were actually not mine; I recently cross-checked the cleaned albums with my LP database and found this out. One was a box set by Boston Pops Orchestra called Pops Varieties that has nine albums.