On Monday, sweet Monday, with nothin’ to do -- most shows are dark -- I had a stay-at-home night where I'd file programs and clean up. What music to play while working?
Hey, how about choosing one musical for which I have five different single-disc recordings, put them into my multiple-disc player, select “Random/Shuffle” and see how it goes? (As my girlfriend Linda would say, “Another reason why we don’t live together.”)
After taking stock of what I have and what I haven’t, I decide on Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. Into Slot One goes the 1946 original cast album with Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton. Slot Two gets the 1957 Mary Martin-John Raitt studio recording made to complement the TV special they did that year. Slot Three welcomes the 1986 London studio album with Suzi Quatro and Eric Flynn.
(“You BOUGHT that?!” you ask in horror. I can explain! In late ‘86, when I went to London to see Phantom, I was hungry to buy such London cast CDs as Bar Mitzvah Boy, The Card, Passion Flower Hotel, Windy City, and plenty of others. But they weren’t yet on CD. Quatro’s was one of the few discs I didn’t have. And, believe it or not, no other recording of the score had yet been transferred to CD.)
Back to inserting: Slot Four is awarded the 1991 Kim Criswell-Thomas Hampson studio recording, leaving the fifth slot to play host to the 1999 Bernadette Peters-Tom Wopat revival cast album. And why not the 1966 Merman-Bruce Yarnell recording, you demand? Because I loaned it to a “friend” who never gave it back.
I estimate that I’ll have around five hours of listening pleasure and elbow-bending housework. Not surprisingly, the recordings originally made on LP, when vinyl couldn’t accommodate very much music, are the shortest. Martin’s is a mere 38:34, which is still longer than Merman’s 37:38 (when it was originally released; this Merman CD, though, is now 49:56, thanks to four bonus tracks taken from a 1973 recording she made). Still, it’s out-timed by Peters' 52:07, whose revisionist recording is shorter than Quatro’s more faithful 56:08 disc. But Criswell, under the aegis of conductor John McGlinn -- who always wanted as complete a recording as possible -- yields 79:02.
Let’s go on with the show! Don’t worry; I’m not going to comment on each and every track – just the highlights:
7:32 – When Quatro sings “Moonshine Lullaby,” she genuinely bleats on “So count your sheeeeeeeep” – enough so she sounds like a late-first-act Dr. Dillamond.
7:45 – Hampson’s “My Defenses Are Down” proves that these “recitalist-opera singers” primarily want to show off their Beautiful Voices. Tom, Frank Butler’s first job was cleaning stables.
7:54 – John Raitt makes a similar mistake in “I’m a Bad, Bad Man.” Instead of dropping the “g’s” in “combin'" and ‘Wyomin’,” he pronounces them perfectly. Too rarefied.
8:01 -- Of the five ladies, Merman was the most famous for holding a note – so will she be the champ on “Yes, I cannnnnnnnnnn!” in “Anything You Can Do?” I time her: 10 seconds. We’ll see how the other four do.
8:05 – Nice dance music in Criswell’s “I’m an Indian, Too.” It has a Coplandesque sound; you can feel that the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. Thanks, Phil Lang!
8:26 -- Martin was often said to be tied with Merman for the title of First Lady of the American Musical Theater. How fitting, for Martin holds “cannnnnnnnnn” for the same 10 seconds that Merman does. In the song, Martin also finds a place for her trademark giggle, and her “and get even sicker” is sweet and smooth. I see she really had a recording artist’s voice, and knew her way around a mike. Now I’m retroactively surprised in that in that era of true easy-listening, she didn’t have a recording career.
8:32 – In “Doin’ What Comes Natur'lly,” I’ve become so accustomed to the lyric, “Still, she’s learned to sing off-key” with a purposely flattened and sour note on “key,” I’m surprised to learn that Merman doesn’t do it on the original cast album.
8:36 – As fate would have it, Peters’ “Doin’ What Comes Natur'lly” immediately follows. In comparison, she really seems to lay on thick the hick accent. Does she purposely sing the “off-key” lyric off-key? No – for she doesn’t include the lyric at all.
8:47 -- Martin’s “I Got the Sun in the Morning” is awfully refined. On the other hand, it does take place at a point in the show when Annie has learned quite a bit.
8:59 – Here’s “I’ll Share It All with You” from the Criswell. What’s that? A lackluster song for Tommy and Winnie rarely done in any production these days. But Jason Graae and Rebecca Luker make it sound better than it is.
9:13 -- Wow! Martin doesn’t flatten and sour “key” in “Doin’ What Comes Natur'lly.” Who was the first to do this? I put on the DVD of the movie version, and suffer through Betty Hutton’s repulsive performance during the song. She almost flattens and sours, but not quite.
9:17 – The mighty fall. Criswell holds “cannnnnnnnnnnn” for 12 seconds. At least in this contest, anything that Merman and Martin can do, she can do better.
9:24 -- Criswell’s note-hold reign is short-lived. Bernadette Peters holds “cannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn” for an incredible 18 seconds. Why do I feel that Quatro won’t beat her?
9:31 -- Quatro has a different take on “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.” It’s more “Well, this is who I am, and there’s nothin’ I can do about it!” Hence, her joyous “Yee-hah!” at the end.
9:45 -- The democratic “Random/Shuffle” doesn’t care that “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is Musical Theater’s National Anthem. It gets around to it (via Criswell) when it gets around to it.
9:54 -- Quatro’s “cannnnnnnn” brings up the rear with an eight-second hold.
10:07 – The Peters recording of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” offers some fetching extra lines for two B-sections: First, “How you worried using half the night up / waiting till the morning paper came / what a moment when your face would light up / to see the write-up / and find your name.” Second, “Everything inside you starts to shake up / when your picture in the news appears / and the thrill each morning when you wake up / without the make-up / behind your ears.” The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin don’t show these, and the liner notes don’t say where they came from. I e-mail Bert Fink, a veep at Rodgers & Hammerstein, which controls the show; he later e-mails back to say that “these are unpublished lyrics by Mr. Berlin himself; we have typed manuscript copies here on file at the office.”
10:14 – Quatro avoids the “off-key” verse, too. She bleats here, too. Funny; when I first heard this disc two decades ago, I thought, “Hey, Quatro’s not bad!” Ah, but now that I’m hearing her in open competition with Criswell, Martin, Merman, and Peters, she seems quite lackluster.
10:21 – Once again, I scratch my head when I hear the words, “Who Do You Love, I Hope?” Such an awkward phrase! I wonder if Berlin was experimenting with Dadaism.
10:27 – Though I know Martin’s recording has to be abridged, I’m still surprised that her “I Got the Sun in the Morning,” doesn’t include the “Taking stock of what I have and what I haven’t” verse.
10:36 – The history books tell us that when Merman heard “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” she demanded to be a part of it – and was. Nevertheless, she doesn’t appear in the song on the cast album. Even though the LP era had to sacrifice some material, this is not a good excision.
10:44 – Again, I’m no fan of “Who Do You Love, I Hope?” but I like Marin Laird’s ragtime dance music on Peters’ disc.
10:52 – Criswell sings “off-key” in an off-key fashion. She’s terrific on this song, and all her others.
11: 09 -- The Martin-Raitt recording rarely features anyone else, but they needed a chorus for “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Sounds as if they went down the hall to get some office workers to help out.
11:16 – The overture on the Criswell starts off with such a rapid fire “There’s No Business Like Show Business” that I start to think there must be no business like the amphetamine business.
11:24 – By now, I’ve noticed that the sound quality of Merman’s “They Say It’s Wonderful” is so prehistoric that it sound not unlike you’re hearing it through two Dixie cups and a string.
11:32 – Peters’ recording turns out to have a montage of “The European Tour,” which, after all these familiar songs, really seems like a breath of fresh air.
11:53 – Who’s this Frank Butler who recorded “Old-Fashioned Wedding” with Merman in 1973? The CD sleeve says Neilson Taylor. He sounds awfully arch. (My buddy Alan Gomberg later informs me he was a football player turned opera singer who never quite became a star.)
12:03 – Here’s a benefit of early LP truncation: We don’t have to listen to that much of “I’m an Indian, Too” on the Merman. Most people object to this song on sensitive racial grounds; I feel it should be dropped for a different reason: When Frank rebuffs Annie for stealing his thunder, that’s the logical end to the first act.
12:16 – Not until the fifth rendition of “My Defenses Are Down” does a lyric strike me as odd, though this must be my thousandth-something time hearing it: “Like an organ grinder’s bear,” sings Wopat. “Bear?” Weren’t organ grinders famous for having monkeys? I Google-Image, and find that Berlin has a point; some of them did have bears. Who knew?
12:23 a.m. – It all comes to an end, four hours and 51 minutes later with Merman’s “They Say It’s Wonderful” – which once again proves that being tender didn’t come naturally to her.
And how did my housework go? Not very well, for I was so busy taking these notes, Googling, and e-mailing R&H that I didn’t get much done at all.
You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com Check out his Tuesday column at www.MasterworksBroadway.com, too.
