Most-Wanted Bowie Album Altered, Expanded by Rykodisc

The wait is over for “Changesonebowie,” the David Bowie greatest-hits collection that was the catalogue album the public most wanted transferred to compact disc, according to a 1988 Billboard magazine survey of retailers.

Part of the ambitious Rykodisc Bowie reissue program that began last year with the Grammy-winning “Sound + Vision” box set, the new package--which has been renamed simply “Changesbowie”--adds seven songs and 27 minutes to the original, 11-song, 47-minute “Changesonebowie” album that was released in vinyl and cassette by RCA Records in 1976.

The new material includes three songs from Bowie’s years on RCA--”Heroes,” “Ashes to Ashes” and “Fashion”--as well as four numbers from his post-RCA days on EMI Records. The latter: “Let’s Dance,” “China Girl,” “Modern Love” and “Blue Jean.”

Instead of the original version of “Fame” that was a No. 1 single in 1975, the new album contains “Fame ‘90,” a remix that is in the new film “Pretty Woman.”

Though these Bowie songs form an essential chapter in the pop-rock story of the ‘70s and ‘80s, it’s interesting to note that fewer than half of them were actual Top 40 hits.

That’s because Bowie, for most of his career, was considered too radical for mass tastes by conservative radio programmers. However, the songs seem like familiar “hits” because they were key parts of his albums and live shows.

Next from Rykodisc in the Bowie reissue series: “Ziggy Stardust” in late May.

COUNTRY GEMS: The late Lefty Frizzell, one of the half-dozen most influential singers ever in country music, is finally available on CD, though the album--an entry in Columbia Records’ “American Originals” budget series--is little more than a third as long as “Changesbowie.”

Listen to Frizzell’s slightly slurred, bent-note vocal style on some of the older tunes on the album--especially “Always Late” and “Mom and Dad’s Waltz,” both from 1951--and it’s easy to see how Frizzell was a model for such acclaimed country singers as Merle Haggard, George Jones, John Anderson and Randy Travis.

The disappointment with the new CD is that Columbia didn’t salute Frizzell with a more comprehensive package--something along the lines of the 26-song, 65-minute Don Gibson CD that has been released in Europe by Bear Family Records and is available here in stores that carry import CDs.

Though known outside the country field primarily as the man who wrote such pop-country classics as “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Oh Lonesome Me,” Gibson demonstrated in these RCA recordings from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s that he was also a gifted singer whose teardrop style was closer to a blues-country merger than the honky-tonk approach of most postwar country singers.

IN THE STORES: Blue Oyster Cult’s “Career of Evil” (a greatest-hits collection from Columbia Records) . . . John Hiatt’s “Slug Line” and “Two Bit Monsters” (budget entries from MCA, recorded in 1979 and 1980, respectively) . . . Aaron Neville’s “Orchid in the Storm” (a highly recommended mini-album re-release from Rhino) . . . Donna Summer’s “Live and More” (the Casablanca album from 1978 features “Love to Love You, Baby,” “I Feel Love” and “Last Dance”).