Pal Joey (1950 Studio Cast)

List Price: $8.99
Our Price: $5.77
You Save: $3.22 (36%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.99 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases

Music CD Cover

Free Music Notes for Pal Joey (1950 Studio Cast)

Free Music Review: A definitive Rodgers-and-Hart album
Hit: 5 Stars

The casting here is perfect. It's hard to believe Gene Kelly originated the role of the cad Joey Evans, and even if he'd been available (I'd doubt it) he might not have been the best singing choice. Happily we have the accomplished stage dancer Harold Lang, a star in the original production of "Kiss Me, Kate," who looked more than a little like John Travolta and makes one pine for what he would have been like if he could have sung. A veteran of several Rodgers-and-Hart shows, the beautiful Vivienne Segal, reprises her role of 1940 and I've no doubt she was a stronger presence in person than even on this recording. Lehman Engel conducts with unusual eloquence and brio (not unusual for him, I should say) and calls to mind a show that opened soon after the sessions: "Guys and Dolls," a kind of "Pal Joey" with sunshine. (They also shared an excellent orchestrator, Ted Royal.) This new remastering concludes with two bonus tracks: Miss Segal singing a bowdlerized "Bewitched" for a Mike Wallace radio show, and Lang doing a thoroughly preposterous "I Could Write a Book" for a CBS color "spectacular." It's nice to have them, but really, this album is so overwhelming you should push the stop button after the finale. (Don't bother with Capitol's '52 "cast" recording with Jane Froman, currently on DRG; it's a mediocre studio album with different arrangements.)

Excellent transfers (except for the bonus tracks), although some may find the sound a little bright. Note: the disc and booklet give an incorrect timing on the last track: it should be 4'52, not 2'00.

*Some examples include lopping off the opening verse of "I Could Write a Book," but one must keep in mind Lieberson was recording for three formats -- LPs, 78s and 45s -- and thus had to work with time constraints; as it happens, this song is quite effective without it. Also he replaced "Bolero" with "Tchaikovsky's '1812'" in "In Our Little Den of Iniquity," but that's just as well; "Bolero"'s not sexy anyway. I should like to have heard the "clark-jark" lyric in "Zip," but that surely appears elsewhere.

Broadway & Vocalists Music CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Soundtracks