by Bruce Eder The 1952 NBC series Victory at Sea was one of the earliest network documentary series to capture the public's imagination in a serious way, and one of the more enduring offshoots was the music by Richard Rodgers, which was recorded by RCA-Victor in what ultimately became a series of four LPs. Rodgers was chosen by series producer Henry Salamon based on his being the "leading American composer of his day," a somewhat exalted (though understandable) judgement for a man who was most closely associated with the Broadway stage and Hollywood. The albums were popular, probably due in part to the fact that the music was accessible and unchallenging, and that it insinuated itself for months into the household of seemingly every American family that had someone fighting in World War II -- and that a lot of veterans owned stereo systems in the late '50s, and these recordings took full advantage of stereo's two-channel sound separation. As to the music itself, one finds on listening to it 40+ years later that a little goes a long way. Rodgers devised a straightforward melodic score whose most inspired moments (such as the main title theme) seem to have been lifted from the early work of Ralph Vaughan Williams . An astonishing amount of what is on this CD (which runs 67 minutes) is banal, predictable musical accompaniment, broken up with a few surprises, such as "Dangers Down Deep," which opens with an understated reprise of the main title theme, and "Theme of the Fast Carriers," which starts out leisurely and ends up fairly exciting. The Dolby Surround remastering preserves the luster of the original LPs, and the stereo separation -- a function of Robert Russell Bennett 's arrangements and orchestrations -- recalls the days when that kind of effect was, in and of itself, a conversation piece. (And it is ironic that a series of LPs spawned by television -- which wouldn't offer stereo audio for another 30+ years -- helped push home stereo in a very serious way in the late '50s.)