Oscar Hammerstein II - Flower Drum Song (1958 Original Broadway Cast)
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Free Music Notes for Flower Drum Song (1958 Original Broadway Cast)
Free Music Review: Sparkling cast album from Columbia Broadway Masterworks
Hit: 5 Stars
Another example of how record producer Goddard Lieberson could elevate even so-so material and make it sound like a smash hit. The whole disc sparkles!FLOWER DRUM SONG was NOT a smash hit. It got respectful though not terribly enthusiastic reviews and played out a successful run. The weakness was the book which borrowed too little of C.Y Lee's novel and is filled with weak (some say offensive) stereotype jokes. Hammerstein had a gem of a concept that is blown away in a few minor scenes...that the traditional immigrant parents want to hold onto tradition, while their americanized offspring want to follow modern local customs.
(FIDDLER ON THE ROOF would explore this theme much more fully.)
Still, the whole show was helped to no small extent by the songs and since that is all there is on the record, it actually makes for a highly enjoyable listen.
Miyoshi Umeki as the shy Mei Li contrasts nicely with brassy Pat Suzuki as nightclub singer Linda Low. There is less contrast between Ed Kenny as Wang Ta and Larry Blyden as Sammy Fong, possibly because the men get less of the score. The supporting cast, however, get a good share of the music: Juanita Hall leads the ensemble in "Chop Suey" and duets with Keye Luke lamenting the attitudes of "The Other Gereneration." Arabella Hong does a beautiful job with "Love Look Away" the show's standout ballad, though her character barely registers in the script. (In the novel, Ta's rejection leads her to suicide. In the musical she just disappears after her big number!)
There is a detailed synopsis in the CD booklet if you want to know how the plot ties all these songs together, but it is one of those cast albums where a synopsis is hardly necessary.
The book is in need of a re-write perhaps using more of the Lee novel as its source. The recent Broadway revival used a totally new story and re-allocated the songs. While the new version has its admirers, it is no more related to this FLOWER DRUM SONG than CRAZY FOR YOU relates to GIRL CRAZY..which is to say hardly at all.
The London cast (now out-of-print, but formerlly on Angel) is less impressive. However the movie sountrack (Decca Broadway) has some tasty new orchestrations and retains all but one song from the stage show, so that CD is worth getting...but start with this original cast disc first.
Free Music Review: An Under-Rated, Forgotten Gem
Hit: 5 Stars
Though the Movie Soundtrack released years later garnered more interest, the musicality of this stage cast album has been overlooked for years by most theater buffs. This has been partly due to the evolving of the musical theater genre, and due to the period, or dated, quality of the way the subject matter was presented. But to some music, theater, and/or voice afficianados, this melodic presentation reveals surprising musical anecdotes. "I Enjoy Being A Girl" was on the Pop Radio Hit Parade immediately, on stations that, in those days, featured a comparitively (to today) large, but selective, playlist of good musical theater songs. The lyrics "...complimentary whistle that greets my bikini by the sea..." are surprising considering that 1958 was years before the mid-sixties had pushed that form of swimwear into the public eye. Though she is not as prominent in the credits as some of the other names in the cast, Arabella Hong's beautiful rendition of "Love, Look Away" is almost operatic-aria-like in it's gradual building of tension and final soaring climax. (Do we hear a hint of Lucine Amara here, or is it merely our imagination?) Sound Track album songs of that era sometimes had a tendency to have a shallower, washed out sound quality than the cast albums, which were usually released in higher fidelity. Even though the film soundtrack album for this show is better than most in this regard, one still can appreciate this orignal cast album as being the standard that pushed this great music to prominence in its day, set the stage for the film version, and has been waiting forty years to be rediscovered. This rediscovery has occurred recently in Los Angeles, as the first major live revival of the show (in the form of an up-dated story) has been playing to packed houses, and will continue to play through mid-January 2002. All involved hope that a national tour, and a Broadway run, will occur soon after.Free Music Review: A Hundred Million Miracles
Hit: 5 Stars
While this is certainly one of the lesser works in the Rodgers & Hammerstein canon, it is still head-and-shoulders above the work of many other composers of its time. The cast is wonderful and there is hardly a sour note among them (even from the inimitable Juanita Hall who was eight years on from her best voice). This show has the distinction of sharing one of the composing duo's most lovely and one of their most banal songs. "You Are Beautiful" is, in my opinion, one of the finest ballads ever written for the Broadway stage. Its sentiment is beautiful, as are its melody and performance. Unfortunately, most critics agree that "Chop Suey" is arguably the worst song R&H ever wrote. Bad, bad, bad! Otherwise, the songs are pretty much par for the course for the talented men. "A Hundred Million Miracles," "I Am Going to Like it Here," "I Enjoy Being a Girl," "Grant Avenue" and "Sunday" are all songs that are well-written and well-performed, but none of them really seem to stand out. Don't get me wrong, I love them all. But the overall score here seems to be lacking a certain vitality. Some of it is probably due to the material R&H were working with, some of it due to having Gene Kelly as an inexperienced (at least on Broadway) director and some of it due to the fact that Rodgers had just beaten cancer and Hammerstein was fighting the same dreaded disease. Taking all of this into account, the score is lovely to listen to and, as another reviewer pointed out, is period, not dated. Listen to the album and enjoy the experience of being a newly arrived Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, circa 1958.Free Music Review: A very fine score
Hit: 5 Stars
The first instinct is to lump this with flops like "Allegro" thanks to its trouble-plagued casting and staging; but all things told (not least of which R&H's hospital stays during production) it's a very fine and apt score, with one of their best songs, the ethereal "Love, Look Away", the sort of thing with its slow, swingy rhythm that should have spread to the world of close harmony (i.e., the doo-woppers) but never did. Hammerstein did some of his most ingenious lyric writing, searching out new rhythms and templates. He must also take blame for turning "I Enjoy Being a Girl" into too much the cross of "A Wonderful Guy" and "Honey Bun" (and yes, someone should have instructed Pat Suzuki about her bikini), and one wonders what if anything went through Oscar's head as he wrote the dummy-like list for "Chop Suey": "Harry Truman, Truman Ca-POAT and Dewey....Hear that lovely 'La Paloma'/Lullaby by Perry COMA...." (Listen for yourself -- this is precisely how the great Juanita Hall sings it.) With R&H one member of the partnership almost always pulled the other out of the muck, and however dubious the project (the politically-correct revival underlined that) they almost always found it within them to create haunting and invigorating tunes -- as most certainly here.Free Music Review: Sweet ol' R&H classic!
Hit: 5 Stars
I've been listening to the Flower Drum Song LP ever since I was about four years old, some 40 years ago. I recently bought the CD and relived some joyous childhood moments.Flower Drum Song, the musical play by Rodgers and Hammerstein is a sweet, lively story about the romantic complications of two families in San Francisco in the 1950s: the established Wangs, and the newly-arrived Lis. Nightclub owner Sammy Fong and dancer Linda Low round out the relational entanglements. Flower Drum Song in one of R&H's lighter-hearted, comedic works. The songs are enjoyable and well-performed. I recently sang "Sunday" for my Musical Theater Workshop class at Queens College. FDS' script has been revised recently for a supposedly more accurate, less stereotypical portrayal of its Asian characters; its story has been overhauled. I hope this 21st-century production is good. The 1960s movie starring Miyoshi Umeki, Nancy Kwan, Jack Soo, and James Shigeta isn't stellar, but it is good.