Body Talk 01: The 1993-1994 Prototypes

We've discovered a few posts initially planned for previous themed series here on The Hideaway in our Drafts folder. We've freshened them up and are proud to present them.

We begin with the early roots of the Time-Life series Body Talk, examining several prototype releases before the series formally launched in the United States in 1996. The Body Talk series of compact discs was originally planned to be part of our Summer Slow Jams posts from 2015.

One of the earliest compilations of love songs on compact disc from Time Life is Eternal Flame, consisting of two double-disc sets compiled by George Kwiatkiewicz and released in 1993. Each disc has fifteen tracks and was released for the European market by Direct Sounds, a British subsidiary of Time-Life.

The Eternal Flame tracklistings have songs from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Maybe even a few from the Nineties. Warner Music Manufacturing is credited for producing all four discs in Germany.

Eternal Flame is an interesting concept - love songs from pop, rock, soul, and country spanning more than thirty years rather than Time-Life's usual year-by-year or decade recap of a specific genre. 

Body Talk is the title of a 1993 release manufactured in Germany for the European Market. Comprised of two double-disc sets with each of the four discs having fifteen tracks. Like Eternal Flame above, the Body Talk collection was compiled by George Kwiatkiewicz and released by Direct Sounds. While we could find no info about Eternal Flame being released on cassette, Body Talk was released in that format with an identical tracklisting to their compact disc counterparts. All sixty songs were soft R&B tracks with notable exceptions like the squiggly pop of Captain & Tennille and the extended funk workout of James Brown.

Also released in 1994, the US edition of Body Talk is a double-disc collection with the same cover art but a different tracklist than its European counterpart. Another difference between the US and EU versions of the album Body Talk is the number of tracks per disc; the four-disc EU edition features 15 tracks per disc while the two-disc US edition has 18 songs on each disc. Longtime Time-Life music contributor Joe Sasfy is credited as both the album's recording producer and consultant.

These three collections provided the template, including love song selections from across four decades and the perceived value of the double-disc format for the US release of the Body Talk series when it launched in 1996.