Steven Suskin
ON THE RECORD: Swing!, Styne, and Russell Bennett
February 20, 2000
Playbill Online
SWING!
(Sony Classical SK 89122)
"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing," goes the familiar refrain.
Yes, you've heard that song before, and not infrequently if you attend musical revues on
Broadway. But you get a joyfully swinging version of it in Swing!, which sets the
tone for the bouncingly jubilant musical now at the St. James. A first rate music
department and distinctive performances from the four featured vocalists make this CD a
highly-satisfying delight.
Ann Hampton Callaway,
making her Broadway debut, is well known in the cabaret world. She has a coolly,
authoritative way about her; there isn't a syllable she sings that isn't precisely placed
in her rich, hearty voice. "Bounce Me Brother (with a Solid Four)" serves as a
jiving showcase, with Callaway trading licks with the trumpeter. She also provides one of
the finest renditions of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's "Blues in the Night (My
Momma Done Tol' Me)" that you're likely to hear. (Callaway plays piano on this track;
she also wrote some of the evening's songs.) Everett Bradley -- another Broadway newcomer
-- is an unusual talent, kind of a combination of Gregory Hines and Ray Bolger. He is a
whirlwind of energy; singing, dancing, playing the drums, and - like Ms. Callaway -
providing some of his own material. "Bli-Blip" makes a good courtship duet for
the pair, and Bradley does especially well with the exuberant but unfortunately-titled
"Throw That Girl Around." (This makes more sense in context, as the number
builds into a grand challenge dance with the girls virtually flying through the air.)
Callaway and Bradley are
joined by Laura Benanti, who played Maria opposite Richard Chamberlain last season in The
Sound of Music. Benanti is quite a musical theatre find. She sings, she dances, and --
having seen her in a reading last year, I can tell you that she can also act. She shines
in "Cry Me a River" - with a fine trombone solo by Steve Armour - and "Hit
Me with a Hot Note and Watch Me Bounce." Billed somewhat lower than the others but no
less important to the proceedings is Casey MacGill, who serves more or less as a
bandleader (although he is not in fact the conductor). MacGill sings the fine rendition of
"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing)" which opens the show, and
gives a distinctive spin to everything he touches.
Absent from the CD, for
obvious reasons, are the many expert dancers in the company. Some of their exuberance
spills over to the instrumentals. While this seventy-six minute album can't include all
the non-vocals, I'm especially glad they included the smokey "Harlem Nocturne" -
which is an unforgettable number as performed in the theatre by Caitlin Carter and bassist
Conrad Korsch - and an infectious Duke Ellington delight called "Dancers in
Love," marked by finger snaps.
More than in most musicals,
Swing! is a close collaboration between the director/choreographer (the
impressively inventive Lynne Taylor Corbett) and the music department. I would normally
look askance at a show crediting nine musical arrangers (including Callaway, Bradley and
MacGill), but the results here speak for themselves. The eight-piece band, The Gotham City
Gates, is wonderful; most of them are drafted into solo action in one number or another.
Music Director Jonathan Smith, at the piano, keeps the joint jumping, and orchestrator
Harold Wheeler has done an expert job making these mostly old songs sound fresh and new.
Michael Rafter is called the Music Supervisor, so I suppose he deserves credit, too. The Swing!
music is wonderfully realized, making this a truly swinging CD.
I'M THE GREATEST STAR!
(Jay CDJAY 1335)
There is little more exciting to musical comedy fans than the sound of a bright, new
overture. Composer Jule Styne instinctively knew this, so he made sure that his shows had
rousing overtures -- even when the scores, themselves, were not all that good. While he
worked with many different orchestrators, one-time bandleader Styne knew what he wanted,
and insisted on getting it.
Back in 1992 conductor Jack
Everly recorded all sixteen of Styne's Broadway overtures for the London-based label TER.
(Not included were overtures to three Styne musicals that closed out of town, one that was
written for London, or Styne's final show, which opened in 1993). These were released in
the U.K. on two separate discs, Everything's Coming up Roses and I'm the
Greatest Star. RCA released an expanded version of Volume One in 1994; Jay Records has
now finally released Volume Two here.
Styne fans will want the
new disc for three items previously unavailable on CD: the full overture to Darling of
the Day, which was cut from the original production and thus differs from what is
heard on that show's cast album; the jazzy opening of Tony Richardson's 1963 production of
Brecht's Arturo Ui, set in 1920s Chicago; and the previously-unrecorded Look to
the Lilies. This last belies the truth that all Jule Styne overtures sound great. Lilies
seemed to me, when I saw it on a high school field trip in 1970, to be Styne's worst
score. Now that I've had the chance to hear it again, my opinion holds -- unless it gets
beat out by The Red Shoes (1993). Which, as it happens, recycled some music from Lilies.
This is made up for by One Night Stand, which closed during previews in 1980 but
has a couple of jaunty songs and lifts the spirits like all Jule Styne overtures. Except Look
to the Lilies.
And OFF THE RECORD. . . . Show Boat. Girl Crazy. Of Thee I Sing. Anything Goes. Oklahoma! Annie Get Your Gun.
Finian's Rainbow. Kiss Me, Kate. South Pacific. The King and I. My Fair Lady. What did
all of these shows have in common, besides some nifty tunes? Orchestrations by Robert
Russell Bennett, that's what. It seems remarkable that Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers,
Berlin, Loewe and other top composers insistently turned to one man, again and again, to
translate their music. If only we had a Bennett's-eye view of what went on.
Well, we do. Bennett
(1894-1981) left behind an unpublished autobiography, which has now made it into print as The
Broadway Sound; The Autobiography and Selected Essays of Robert Russell Bennett,
Edited by George J. Ferencz (University of Rochester Press). It is not easy reading, as
Bennett wasn't much of a writer and seems to devote a couple of lines to every trumpet
player he ever met on the street. And he spends far more time on his years studying in
Paris with Nadia Boulanger than on any of his shows. But you also have a whole slew of new
first-hand anecdotes about Broadway's great composers, from someone who appreciated their
talent but was not in awe of them. All of them seem to have been more in awe of Bennett,
in fact, with his intensive training, Guggenheim Fellowship, and modern music awards.
(When Kern's publisher told him that Show Boat was the finest thing he'd ever
written, Kern replied "Well, I just wish Russell Bennett thought so.")
While most of Bennett's
famous "clients" have been written about extensively, he discusses them simply
as guys he was working with -- and the personalities show through. Kern, who appears to
have been Bennett's favorite, when angry looked like "a tough little bulldog."
Gershwin came by his famously egocentric personality naturally: "he was so amazed by
the music that came out of his piano, that the little social graces seemed unimportant. He
was his own great problem and his own great fulfillment." And while we know that
Gershwin occasionally liked to conduct performances, Bennett adds that the shows
invariably suffered due to the composer's unfamiliarity with the non-musical segments. But
there was no stopping George. Porter was the sort of person who, when faced with a
problem, would hire somebody to solve it. Bennett tells of a conductor threatening Porter
in the heat of an argument; Porter returned to the theatre with a bodyguard. He compares
Porter's well-publicized struggle to save his legs (which were crushed in a riding
accident in 1937) with Rodgers' silent, twenty-five year battle with cancer. Rodgers was a
charmless man, even to Bennett: he "took great satisfaction in hiding all the warmth
and tenderness he ever had, in order to come out with it in song and surprise us
all." The only one among them deserving the genius label, in Bennett's view, was
Oscar Hammerstein.
Bennett's first Broadway
job was doing an arrangement of Porter's "Old Fashioned Garden" in 1919; his
last was the infamous Mata Hari in 1967, with a great amount of musical theatre
history in between. (And yes, he gives us a Mata Hari story.) Also included are
eight of Bennett's magazine essays on orchestration. While The Broadway Sound is
highly uneven in its writing, it will no doubt be of great interest readers interested in
the musical side of musicals.
