State Fair and the 20th Century-Fox Songbook
Original film orchestrations restored by Derek Greten-Harrison (2021)
Performing editions by David Charles Abell and Seann Alderking (2021)
Scarlett Strallen, Clare Teal, James Taylor, Derek Greten-Harrison, Michael Feinstein (vocals)
BBC Singers
David Charles Abell/BBC Concert Orchestra
rec. 2021, Watford Colosseum, London
Dutton Epoch 2CDLX7408 SACD [2 discs: 133]
The opportunities to review new studio recordings of major musicals on MusicWeb are few and far between. Recently the award-juggernaut that is John Wilson produced an “authentic” version of Oklahoma! which has garnered rave reviews including – slightly bizarrely in my opinion – “Best Opera Recording” in the 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards. For sure Oklahoma! is a key work in the history of Musical Theatre and the new recording is a fine one but it ain’t no opera, no siree and the restoration of the original orchestrations/underscores and the like bring marginal gains in terms of the wider understanding and appreciation of the piece as a whole. Compare that to this new two disc set from Dutton which is a veritable treasure-trove of discoveries and reacquaintances with the great and the good from the Golden Age of 20th Century Fox musical films. I suspect Dutton do not quite have the marketing budget of Chandos so there is a risk this pair of discs will slightly slip under the radar. Which would be a great shame because by any measure this is a rather special set.
This appears to be the passion project of Derek Greten-Harrison, a name I must admit to not knowing before encountering here. Greten-Harrison is responsible for the restoration of the original film orchestrations (more on that mammoth task shortly) as well as providing a wonderfully detailed, extensive and enthusiastic liner booklet (English only – no sung lyrics provided)…. oh and he sings the baritone roles really well with a great natural sense of period style andeasy skill. But then so do all the other singers – I find it a genuine joy to hear these songs sung in such an apt and unforced way. All of the singers understand the key technical premise of this type of singing; allow the microphone to do the work. Contemporary pop and theatre singing would have you believe that the more you belt the more emotion you are conveying. Time and again the singing on this set proves that not forcing allows for subtler nuances in both the singing and the word-pointing.
Add to that the accompaniment of the BBC Concert Orchestra who again have this style in their back pockets, the BBC Singers – who a year ago were due to be axed – all under the skilled baton of David Charles Abell. Again, A&R departments might well have folk believe that John Wilson is some kind of “Mr Musicals” but conductor/musical directors/musicologists such as Abell – Martin Yates is another – actually have far wider and greater practical experience in the art of performing this style of music day to day and week to week in live performance than Wilson. This is reflected in the versions here which have a nonchalant ease and stylish swing that in Wilson can tend to become too hard-driven and unsmiling. The icing on the cake is Dutton’s sophisticated SACD engineering in the ideally generous acoustic of the Watford Colosseum. The production has placed the solo voices relatively forward and close in the final mix but I hear this as a recreation of the balances on the original soundtracks.
The ‘fate’ of the music libraries of the big Hollywood studios is well-known but bears brief repetition. Through accident, design and simple short-sighted stupidity many of the original scores and orchestral parts for films – musical or dramatic – were destroyed once it was perceived that such music would never be required again. Many scores that did survive are either incomplete or damaged. Greten-Harrison relates MGM consigning the original scores for The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain literally to landfill. By any measure that is cultural vandalism. Enter the musical restorers who piece together physical materials along with transcribing what can be heard on surviving soundtracks to allow modern audiences to enjoy – as near as can be told – what was originally created. Over the years there have been many fine restorers from the great Christopher Palmer to John Wilson (my personal feeling is that this is the field in which Wilson genuinely excels most of all) and now Greten-Harrison must be added to the list. Alongside the familiar names of the composers featured here the liner lists a further twelve Arranger/Orchestrators. It can be argued that it is these musicians who most clearly shaped the “Hollywood Sound” and aficionados will be delighted to see Pete King, Alfred Newman, David Raksin, Gene Rose and Conrad Salinger included here. Greten-Harrison quotes Harry Warren as saying; “the pictures may be old junk, but, damn it, the songs still go on”. That is exactly what this album triumphantly proves with every single track.
So to the programme. Disc 1 opens with the complete score for the 1945 musical film State Fair. This is notable in that it is the only musical Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein wrote explicitly for film. As with many musical films (as opposed to Film Musicals) the score in totality is quite short – here nine cues totalling just around 26:30. Given the massive success of the 1943 Oklahoma! and roughly similar Mid-Western locations its no surprise that both scores share a similar good-natured spirit. The score contains two enduring/familiar hits; It might as well be Spring and It’s a Grand Night for Singing with the former being the Oscar winning song of 1945. There is so much to delight in with these performances. Take It might as well be Spring as an exemplar of just about any song across the pair of discs; not only does Scarlett Strallen sing it with real style and vocal beauty but its a pleasure to hear the proper full orchestral introductions, the verses (not just the familiar chorus) as well as the so effective instrumental underscores and reprises as they occur in the film. I do not think I have ever watched State Fair in full so there are several songs new to me. Clare Teal – with her jazz background – is able to give That’s for Me an easy laid-back sexy swing that is just perfect.
This is also where David Charles Abell hits exactly the right tempo and feel and I just love the orchestration – most of this score is the work of Edward Morton so the bank of saxophones and descanting strings register perfectly. Quite possibly the cheesiest song is the hilariously rhymed All I owe Iowa which includes the immortal lyric; “I owe Ioway for her ham, and her beef and her lamb, and her strawberry jam, and her pie. I owe Ioway more than I can ever pay so I think I’ll move to Californ-i-ay!” In fairness this is clearly intended to be rather naff with the point rammed home with an orchestration that includes 4 ocarinas, 3 harmonicas, a mouth harp and an accordion. A nice touch in the booklet is that the entire BBC Concert Orchestra is listed – including all the instruments above. As an aside – some of these orchestrations are profligate in the extreme – there is a contra-alto clarinet which I have no idea what it is or how it sounds! Six saxophones, keyboard, celeste and Compton organ, banjo, guitar and mandolin, 2 harps and oboe d’amore also add their distinctive timbres amongst much else.
The remainder of disc 1 contains selections from films whose titles might be unfamiliar but whose composers most certainly are not. The five selections from Centennial Summer are all by one of the greatest of all composers in this genre – Jerome Kern. The best known single song from this film is the Hammerstein collaboration All through the day which appeared as part of the great Bruce Hubbard’s debut solo disc on EMI titled For You, For Me. Sadly that debut disc was also Hubbard’s memorial as he died unexpectedly just a year after recording this disc. Hubbard was one of the great musical theatre singers of the last fifty years so no shame if here James Taylor is not quite in that league. But of course the benefit is to hear the song in its original key for a tenor and the original arrangement. Hubbard’s album featured new/less authentic arrangements by Arthur Harris. Likewise, Hubbard included For You, For Me, For Evermore from The Shocking Miss Pilgrim which is a stunningly beautiful song by George and Ira Gershwin that is all but unknown. I am so imprinted with the Hubbard version that objectivity is impossible but again the new version here scores by being in its original version as a duet.
The final featured film of this first disc is Three Little Girls in Blue with a score by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon. Again if the names are not familiar at least one of the songs, You Make Me Feel So Young, will be. In this instance the song became famous a decade after its film debut when taken up by Sinatra in an arrangement by Nelson Riddle on the classic Songs for Swinging Lovers album. So quite an ear-opener and fascinating revelation to hear it as originally conceived as a peppy cut-time duet complete with interlude from shimmering heavenly chorus leading into an extended dance break and up-tempo chorus ending before fading into the sunset. All five of the selections from Three Little Girls in Blue are rather wonderful with the ear-tickling waltz melody of On the Boardwalk becoming a beautiful gentle introduction to Somewhere in the Night. It is the sophistication of this reprising of material and the skill with which the orchestrators transform the music that registers again and again across the whole set. Interesting to see that often a single song is the work of two or three arrangers. In part this can be a simple necessity of limited time but also it reflects the fact that there would be arrangers who specialised in vocal arranging or the dance breaks.
Disc two consists of twenty titles with exactly half written by Harry Warren. But before that the BBC Concert Orchestra get a chance to show off with the great Main Title from Love is a Many-Splendored Thing in a rousing arrangement of that well-known Sammy Fain tune. Warren belongs to that select(?) group of composers whose songs are universally known but the writers are not. Of course his most famous musical film score – Singin’ in the Rain was an MGM production so not represented here but all of his included songs are genuinely fine. I really enjoyed Scarlett Strallen’s singing of My Heart tells Me from Sweet Rosie O’Grady which epitomises the high production values of both the original song and its recreation here. But much the same can be said of all the song choices. In the Middle of Nowhere – a Jimmy McHugh song from Something for the Boys shows the Fox Music Department deploying its full resources from another ‘heavenly chorus’ introduction leading into a sax and trombone led verse for the male lead before a gear change modulation into the female verse replete with swooning strings. For sure this has become a cliché sound but important to remember these are the writers and arrangers who created this style and it only became clichéd through decades of emulation.
A Warren song I did not know was Run Little Raindrop Run from the 1942 Springtime in the Rockies. This is one of two tracks where the ‘resident’ four vocal soloists are joined by Michael Feinstein. The majority of songs on this second disc tend towards being swinging ballads with or without dance breaks but this is a fun ‘novelty’ number aided by a witty orchestration and lyrics by Mack Gordon; “Don’t be afraid of showers. Feel like the flowers do. Cares will be new, if you will trill a silly refrain” just one example of his cleverly twisting rhyme schemes. Feinstein is of course a master of the genre but he does not seek to dominate the song or the performance here. Across this second disc Derek Greten-Harrison has the bulk of the singing duties appearing on nine tracks all of which he sings with an easy and natural sense of phrase and warm vocal tone. Another unfamiliar highlight for me was How Blue the Night from Four Jills in a Jeep. This starts off as a fairly formulaic ballad but then morphs into an extended dance break with a beguine treatment, string waltz – more heavenly singing in tow, a soft-shoe and an up-tempo ‘big finish’ before Greten-Harrison returns with cherubic contributions from swooning BBC Singers. In a single number is encapsulated everything I love about this style of song treatment and its recreation here. Again worth repeating just how ‘right’ David Charles Abell’s handling of all these scores is. The sheer lavishness of the production underlines the resources available to the studios at the time but also why it is so hard/expensive to recreate them again today. A contemporary review in the New York Times of the film also underlines Warren’s earlier quoted comment on junk films/enduring songs; “It gives the painful impression of having been tossed together in a couple of hours. All that happens, really, is a lot of dizzying about the dames and some singing and dancing by them in an undistinguished style.”
Greater aficionados than I in the field of 40’s and 50’s musicals will know many more of these films. Apart from An Affair to Remember and Three Coins in the Fountain I have to say they are all new to me – and by title alone Doll Face or Mother wore tights hardly set the pulse racing but most of these films can be found on YouTube in various degrees of completeness. Dipping into Doll Face revealed a spectacularly dubious lyric about dropping bombs on Tokyo – perhaps not a complete surprise given its 1945 release. But that is not ultimately the point of this release. What is achieves with great success is to celebrate the breadth of creative and performing talent at work across an enormous range of films in Hollywood in the 1940’s and 50’s. Interestingly the album ends with the poignant and moving You’ll Never Know [one final Harry Warren gem] from Hello, Frisco, Hello which Clare Teal sings with exactly the right warmth and sentiment even if she cannot quite match Alice Faye’s absurdly charismatic singing in the original film. But it makes musical sense to round off the set with another Oscar-winning “best song” presented in a Conrad Salinger arrangement.
As should be clear by now, I consider this set a considerable triumph in every respect. As well as the extended, informative liner note, the booklet includes several session photographs as well as the usual artist biographies. A notable feature is the extended list of credits which underline just how much time (10 years in the making), care and effort has gone into this project. Musicological rigour and historically informed performing practices are things usually associated with earlier genres of music and composers. But all the same skills and attention to detail are required – and delivered – here. I can understand that this style of music will not appeal to all listeners, but what cannot be denied is the exceptionally high level of insight and understanding brought to this project. Dutton have a catalogue rich in re-releases of classic original cast recordings of shows and films but I am not sure that they have been responsible for a new studio recording of this style of music before so that is to be applauded and celebrated too. Given the wit and sophistication of many of the lyrics, their absence in the printed booklet to be relished and enjoyed away from the listening experience is a shame. I suspect their inclusion would have required a much thicker booklet and therefore more expensive packaging. Fortunately the diction of all the singers is so clear that the words are clearly audible throughout.
When first listening to this disc I did not realise that Derek Greten-Harrison had also recreated some of the orchestrations used on another Abell/BBC CO collaboration – Simon Keenlyside’s Something’s Gotta Give collection of show standards on Chandos which I reviewed here. Interesting to return to that review to see that my praise for Abell, the orchestra and indeed Scarlett Strallen is on the same level as here. The main difference is that Keenlyside chose a programme mainly consisting of ‘standards’ albeit very well sung ones.
The great delight of this new set is to hear mainly unfamiliar songs sung so idiomatically in their original glorious arrangements. Now if only the RKO Songbook or MGM Songbook could follow as well………?!
Nick Barnard
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free
Contents
State Fair (1945) (Rodgers; Hammerstein)
Main Title/Our State Fair (arr Powell) DGH, JT, CT
It Might as Well Be Spring (arr Powell) SS
That’s for Me (arr Powell) CT (RODERICK ELMS Compton organ)
It’s a Grand Night for Singing (arr De Packh; Powell [intro]) DGH, SS, CHORUS
That’s for Me (reprise) (arr Powell) SS, DGH
Isn’t It Kinda Fun (arr Powell) DGH, CT, CHORUS
It Might as Well Be Spring (instrumental) (arr Newman; Powell)
All I Owe Iowa (arr Morton) DGH, CT, JT, QUARTET, CHORUS
ANDY FINDON, DAVE CUTHBERT, ELIZA MARSHALL, NINA ROBERTSON ocarinas
PHILIP ACHILLE, ADAM GLASSER, PHIL HOPKINS harmonicas | JAMES TAYLOR mouth harp
NEIL VARLEY accordion
Finale/It’s a Grand Night for Singing (reprise) (arr Powell) DGH, CHORUS
Centennial Summer (1946)
Up With the Lark (Kern; Robin arr Salinger; Powell [intro]) CT, SS, JT, DGH
All Through the Day (Kern; Hammerstein arr De Packh) JT, CHORUS
Two Hearts Are Better Than One (Kern; Mercer arr Salinger; Morton) DGH
The Right Romance (Kern; Robin arr Salinger) SS
Cinderella Sue (Kern; Harburg arr Morton) JT PHILIP ACHILLE, ADAM GLASSER harmonicas
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)
Changing My Tune (G Gershwin; I Gershwin arr Spencer) SS
For You, For Me, For Evermore (G Gershwin; I Gershwin arr Spencer) DGH, CT
Three Little Girls in Blue (1946)
On the Boardwalk (in Atlantic City) (Myrow; Gordon arr De Packh; reconstructed by Greten-Harrison) CT, SS
Somewhere in the Night (Myrow; Gordon arr De Packh) CT, CHORUS
Always the Lady (Myrow; Gordon arr De Packh) SS
This Is Always (Warren; Gordon arr De Packh) DGH, CT
You Make Me Feel So Young (Myrow; Gordon arr De Packh; Rose; Powell) SS, JT, CHORUS RODERICK ELMS Compton organ
CD 2
Main Title: Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (instrumental) (Fain; Webster arr Powell) from Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)
April Love (Fain; Webster arr King) DGH from April Love (1957)
My Heart Tells Me (Warren; Gordon arr Salinger [intro]; Spencer) SS from Sweet Rosie O’Grady (1943)
In the Middle of Nowhere (McHugh; Adamson arr Spencer; Powell) DGH, CT, CHORUS from Something for the Boys (1944)
Run, Little Raindrop, Run (Warren; Gordon arr Raksin; Rose) MF, SS, DGH, JT from Springtime in the Rockies (1942)
As if I Didn’t Have Enough on My Mind (James; Newman; Henderson arr Spencer) DGH from Do You Love Me (1946)
There Will Never Be Another You (Warren; Gordon arr De Packh) CT from I’ll Get By (1950)
Main Title: An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair) (Warren; Adamson; McCarey arr Powell; Friedhofer [intro]; King) DGH, CHORUS from An Affair to Remember (1957)
Tomorrowland (Warren; Adamson; McCarey arr Mayers) SS from An Affair to Remember (1957)
How Blue the Night (McHugh; Adamson arr Spencer; Morton; Raksin) DGH, CHORUS from Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)
No Love, No Nothin’ (Warren; Robin arr Carter) CT from The Gang’s All Here (1943)
I Wish I Knew (Warren; Gordon arr Spencer) DGH from Diamond Horseshoe (1945)
Crazy Me (McHugh; Adamson arr Weston) CT from Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)
You Do (Myrow; Gordon arr Spencer) SS, CHORUS from Mother Wore Tights (1947)
Here Comes Heaven Again (McHugh; Adamson arr De Packh) DGH, CT from Doll Face (1945)
Three Coins in the Fountain (Styne; Cahn arr Mayers) MF from Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
A Journey to a Star (Warren; Robin arr Powell; Spencer) CT, CHORUS from The Gang’s All Here (1943)
The More I See You (Warren; Gordon arr Spencer) DGH from Diamond Horseshoe (1945)
Wedding Music/Vera-Ellen’s Dance (instrumental) (Lecuona arr De Packh ; Spencer) from Carnival in Costa Rica (1947)
You’ll Never Know (Warren; Gordon arr Salinger; Spencer) CT from Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943)
Arrangers/orchestrators:
Benny Carter
Pete King
Bernard Mayers
Arthur Morton
Alfred Newman
Maurice De Packh
Edward Powell
David Raksin
Gene Rose
Conrad Salinger
Herbert Spencer
Paul Weston
