No comments about Who Are These Strangers?.

5 comments about Croon & Swoon: The Classic Christmas.

1. This is one of my all-time favorite Christmas CD's that I own. If you love the Christmas classics sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, etc.....then this is the CD for you!!! I kept this one on repeat on my CD player and never tired of listening to it. It's a GREAT buy!



2. It's amazes me to read people in this (and other reviews) lament Judy Garland's "version" of 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." Her version is the definitive and original version from the classic film "Meet Me in St. Louis." The POINT of the song is sad and is about being separated from loved ones during the Christmas season. It is yes, about trying to "muddle through somehow." If that offends your sunny sensibilities, then you might not like this version. But sometimes Christmas is merry, sometimes not. Just like life. Other artists wanting to put a more positive spin on the song- changed the lyrics. I love her "version." I think it is poignant and moving. Great album overall.



3. I really enjoy this album, except for Judy Garland's insufferable vibrato on the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (did people back then really think that this sounded good?). Her "singing" is more of a warble. My next major objections are the different lyrics she sings from any version I have ever heard of this song, and I have heard many (instead of "from now on our troubles will be out of sight," she sings "next year all our troubles will be out of sight." Then, at the end, instead of "hang a shining star upon the highest bough," she sings "until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow." I am usually very much of an anti-revisionist, but if these are the original lyrics, now I now why everyone else has changed them. They are awful. (Sorry, I'm not interested in waiting until next year for my troubles to be out of sight, I want to start right now, and I'm certainly not interested in "muddling through somehow.") "A" for the concept of this album and the many great tracks. "D minus" for including this version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, when there are so many other great ones they could have chosen from.



4. this is such a great cd! personal favorites: peggy lee's "christmas waltz," andy williams' "it's the most wonderful time of the year," leroy anderson's "sleigh ride," and angela lansbury et. al.'s "we need a little christmas," but they're all good. you won't regret buying this at all.



5. When I began looking for Christmas CDs, I wanted a collection of the "classics." This CD, as well as Croon & Swoon 2, fits the bill pretty well. This particular collection contains, among other things, such standards as Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," Andy Williams "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," Perry Como's "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays," Gene Autry's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and Judy Garland's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The music is soothing and nostalgic--perfect background music for a Christmas gathering or as you run around the house organizing things. The linear notes contain some fun nuggets of information about some of the best-loved holiday songs. I think this CD is definitely worth checking out. The songs and singers are familiar, but there are a few less familiar pairings, so it'll keep your Christmas music selection interesting.

1 comments about Unmistakable.

1. Tammy Grimes made a memorable Broadway musical debut in The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1960, and appeared in several other shows, including Forty-Second Street. Her 1963 album was called "The Unmistakable Tammy Grimes," and her voice certainly is unlike anyone else's--somewhere between a purr and a foghorn--and I happen to love it. Collectables Records has released on CD both of Grimes' Columbia albums, whose 24 tracks are predominantly show tunes, including "I'm Just Wild About Harry," "I'll Be Seeing You," "Anything Goes," "How Long Has This Been Going On?", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie," "Miss Otis Regrets," "Gonna Build a Mountain," and a delightful rendition of "I'll Do Anything" from Oliver!

5 comments about Take Flight (2007 London Cast Recording).

1. Actually enjoyable, the previous reviewers had some valid points about this, It does sound a second cousin of "Assassins", and at times Malby's words land with a thud..really over-declamatory lyrics..Too often the characters sing exactly what they feel, with no room then for any subtext (unlike Sondheim..)
   The music has the construction of a film score - motifs, and does have plenty of soaring moments..appropriate to the stratospheric content. They manage to express the joy and exhilaration of flight, the majesty of earth meeting sky, and infinite horizons. I was reminded of Jerry Goldsmith's gorgeous flight-music for the movie -The Blue Max, not in tone but mood. And there is a lovely tint of Americana in the songs.
   Amelia Earhart has one truly gorgeous extract to sing-
   
   "One dream
   Of my own heart's design.
   Something truly mine
   My own invention
   I must ride this to the sun,
   Do what no one's ever done
   Before,
   Take heart,
   Take wing,
   Take flight.."
   
   Considering the levels the musical has sunk to lately, Mamma Mia, Hairspray et al.. this is superior stuff.



2. I have listened to it while walking the last three days, and it is a lovely, moving score, beautifully performed. It has the Broadway sound I adore; the performers are wonderful, and the listener is powerfully reminded of how much the early pioneers had to accomplish to get to what we take for granted today.
   I find the songs memorable and delightful.



3. I really enjoyed this soundtrack, it's not what I expected but it has some very funny songs, although each track is very long with dialouge, it still is very good, and if your looking for something new to listen too this would be a great show to get.



4. 
   Take Flight may have been an ambitious project, but it is clearly a dissappointing one from a musical point of view. The performers work hard with very little musical material. There isn't a song that leaves you humming or a melody to haunt the listener. The show simply doesn't have wings.



5. Maltby and Shire were wise to pick John Weidman as the bookwriter for this musical about the early days of aviation. While not reaching the heights of Sondheim (and Weidman's) Assassins, this is a very nice and varied score dealing with a historical subject. While none of the British actors/singers stand out on this recording, all do a fine job.

1 comments about Vol. 65, Four & More: Play Along With B3 Organ (Book & CD Set).

1. If you know where to obtain this box set and music, please let me know. I'm desperate to obtain this fine collection, with the cool organ background.

   Thanks.

3 comments about A Chorus Line (1975 Original Broadway Cast).

1. The original ACL was astonishing in every way. The OBC recording does justice to this masterpiece, capturing all the flavor of the production. Alas, the amazing dancing (especially by Donna McKechnie) can't be seen, but you get the majority of the score and it's wonderful. This is a MUST HAVE for every theater fan/collector/performer. Though the revival tries valiantly to capture the essence of the original, it all seems forced..yet any stage production of ACL is always welcome! Forget about the abomination of a movie..totally and completely misses the point, it's just awful!



2. I am your typical teenage dancer but the show A Chorus Line changed that. when I decided to buy the cd for my dance studio I wasnt sure whether to buy the original or the movie version.I bought the both, and thats when I realized,vintage is in! Go with the original for sure!



3. A CHORUS LINE is a classic staple of musical theater, having won tons of Tony Awards and was the longest running musical on Broadway of all time until CATS put an end to their record. The story takes place in a theater... simple enough, and it all takes place in one day in which a director named Zack must choose four men and four women to be in the chorus of a musical he's going to direct on Broadway. In the end, the eight are chosen and the rest are heart broken.

   There are so many legendary songs in this show, I'd have to list the entire soundrack to name them all. Everyone has their personal favorites. WHAT I DID FOR LOVE, ONE (singular sensation) and NOTHING are probably the most popular.

   If you ever want to be able to talk inteligably about musical theater, this soundtrack is a must have classic.

5 comments about This Is the Moment.

1. I had this album with me for years and I still absolutely love this album - really!
   
   "This Is the Moment" is an album of Broadway songs and it is beautifully crafted with lush, contemporary musical productions.
   
   Donny defines these Broadway songs his own way. The songs are creatively, passionately, enthusiastically, and if the song calls for it, sometimes, humorously translated, making it a an interesting and delightful adventure for the listener.
   
   Get this album because you love Broadway songs!
   Get this album because you are a Donny Osmond fan!
   Get this album because you love great music!
   Get this album because there is something here for everyone!



2. I was a fan as a teenager, but hadn't really listened to any of Donny's work since then but I was looking for a rendition of "This is the Moment" and his was just fantastic. I'm so glad I picked up this CD!



3. It has been a long, long while since I've heard Donny Osmond sing. His voice just got even better with age.



4. This album uncovers the many venues that Donny can perform. Someday when everyone stops thinking we're still in the 70's, they will know him again and stop with the "Donny" jokes. His singing is no joke; he's a serious artist.



5. Wonderful!!! Donny Osmond is still the greatest!! His music is wonderful and he sounds great!!!

5 comments about West Side Story (1997 Studio Cast) (First Complete Recording).

1. West Side Story, the original broadway cast belongs in every collection. The cast was superb, and because it was brand new the energy sizzled. Chita Rivera, in the part of a lifetime (ok she has had several such as Velma Kelly, and The Spider Woman) will never be beat. However.............there is a great deal of music missing, and West Side Story needs to be heard in its entirety.
   
   Of all the post OBC recordings, this one simply is by far the best of the lot. It comes from an English production, which appears to have been quite good. Therefore there are no major mistakes in casting, unlike the Bernstein conducted recording which was abominably cast (Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras, what were they thinking?)
   
   This recording is the only one that gives you the overture. I saw a touring revival about 1995 or so that chose to use the overture. The show plays much better when it starts with the high tension overture (it starts off with the opening chords of the Mambo and the cast behind a scrim shout "Mambo." It sets the show up much better than having the curtain rise and jumping into the finger snapping jazzy dance riffs of the opening Jets/Sharks confrontation. I know Bernstein scuttled the overture, but he was WRONG, very wrong.
   
   Everything about this recording is top knotch. Johnathan Owen Edwards know how to pace musicals, and this is especially true of Bernstein. The orchestra is brilliant, the recording balances wonderful and the characters just leap out of the speakers.
   
   This is absolutely the recording to suppliment the OBC, a West Side Story for the ages. Thank you John Yap.



2. This record is perfect beyond compare, which justifies its price.
   Caroline O'Connor as Anita is wonderful ("a voice like a Porsche", as sb said).
   If you have survived the London cast, you will happily recognize the caracters in this recording.

   However, I do not share the opinion that
   Riff's 'COOL' be lacking of vocal style
   and Maria be even "ridiculous" in 'SOMEWHERE'.

   The symphonic dances have their own unique style
   different from the Bernstein recording with Los Angeles Philharmonic.




3. I don't know what took me so long to order this terrific recording. This is the best recording of West Side Story to date. The casting is perfect, unlike Jose Carreras's and Kiri Tekanawa's version. I also enjoyed the bonus tracks, which are ideal versions for a Broadway anthology compilation. Grab this while you still can, you won't regr this great experience of one of the best-loved musicals of all time.



4. This is a good version of West Side Story. The quality is excellent, and has wonderful orchestration. Caroline O'Conner makes a great Anita. Her version of "A Boy Like That" is fantastic. I was dissapointed, however, with Paul Manuel's version of Riff. His voice seemed to crack and "Cool" was lacking in vocal style. Tinuke Olafimihan is a wonderful vocalist, but her operatic style didn't seem to fit with the rest of the ensemble. It was still worth hearing her version of "I Feel Pretty" which was delightful on it's own. Overall a worthy purchase.



5. I am a huge West Side Story fan and I just love this recording. This is definitely the one to buy, because even if you like some of the movie versions of the songs, hey, they're right here too! I don't know what they're talking about when they say Paul Manuel has a "smallish" voice. He blew me away throughout this whole recording, especially that inconceivable high note during "Maria." Anyone who's heard this recording knows what I'm talking about. Caroline O'Conner was great, the orchestra was great, the cast in general was great. I only have one minor quibble and that is, while Tinuke Olafimihan is a fantastic singer, she does sound a little ridiculous in some of the acting scenes, particularly at the beginning of the "Somewhere" ballet. But other than that, this is darn near perfect and should be the only recording anyone ever really needs of this incredible play.

5 comments about Capitol Sings Cole Porter: Anything Goes.

1. Capitol Sings Cole Porter: Anything Goes is a fine compilation album of some of the great singers at Capitol Records who sang these Cole Porter tunes like the fine artists they always were! The sound quality is wonderful; and I really like that artwork as well. This is an excellent album.
   
   "All Of You" gives us Annie Ross singing her heart out on this fine tune; and the musical accompaniment makes this ballad shine even brighter! Peggy Lee signs on with her splendid rendition of "Always True To You In My Fashion;" this is a great recording by Peggy and she never misses a beat! Peggy always sang so well; she could sing the phonebook and when she was finished you'd be applauding and begging for more!
   
   "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" gets the royal treatment from one of my very favorite songbirds, the great Martha Tilton. Martha isn't remembered as well as she should be but just one listen proves that she could sing alongside the best of them. In addition, Judy Garland sings "I Happen To Like New York." Actually, this is one of my least favorite songs on this CD even though I am a huge Judy Garland fan; the best and the melody just doesn't "do it" for me. Oh, well.
   
   Louis Prima & Keely Smith do a wonderful, awesome rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin;" together Louis and Keely were an unstoppable pair and this song tells you why. Nat King Cole also outdoes even himself as he sings so sweetly that it was "Just One Of Those Things." Nat never sounded better; his voice is rich and very full of masculine warmth. The music is also very pretty and it makes the perfect accompaniment for Nat King Cole's vocals.
   
   Margaret Whiting does a wonderful job of singing "Why Shouldn't I;" this is a fine ballad and I always liked Margaret Whiting. She's another underrated singer who deserves more recognition then she receives! Listen also for Nancy Wilson to do a smash-up job on "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To;" Nancy never sounded so good ands she never sings a superfluous note; this impresses me greatly.
   
   The CD closes with the wonderful Andrews Sisters performing their very best on "You Do Something To Me." I think you'll enjoy this ballad very much; and The Andrews Sisters really do this one up right!
   
   Overall, what an incredibly fine compilation CD this is! You get some great Cole Porter tunes and the talented artists on this disc make them shine brighter than the sun. People who enjoy the music of Cole Porter will want this one for sure--and if you like classic pop vocals you will want this CD in your collection, too.



2. The 25 tracks on this CD have exactly one thing that binds them together: all the songs were written (both words and music) by Cole Porter. Some of the singers doing the songs were very well-known artists, others were obscure ones I never heard of. Most of the songs have become standards, but a couple are quite obscure. Most of the recordings were made in the 1950s, but not quite all of them. Most are taken from albums, but at least one is shown as "previously unreleased" on the liner notes. And the styles range from quite jazzy to almost operatic. So this is a very mixed bag.
   
   It should be noted that some of the artists (such as Tony Bennett and Dinah Shore) are represented with recordings made after their primes, as they are best known in work for other record companies, and only recordings for Capitol (or other companies that Capitol took over) are included.
   
   But although there is a variation in all these factors, most, perhaps all, sounded decent to me. Not great, but certainly good.



3. After seeing the motion picture "De-Lovely" and reading several Cole Porter bio's, I eagerly anticipated listening to "Capitol Sings Cole Porter: Anything Goes". Although the Capitol CD contains many more selections by competent, well known artists, I much prefer listening to the CD from the soundtrack of the movie. The "Capitol Sings..." arrangements are slick, but to my ear the De-Lovely arrangements are more wonderfully crafted and have a much more sensuous, emotional quality, even when sung by non-singers Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd. Diana Krall's interpretation of "Begin the Beguine", along with the gorgeous minor key accompaniment, is worth the ownership of the CD alone. I find it to be nothing less than thrilling, no matter how often one listens. I gave my "Capitol Sings..." CD away.



4. This sterling line-up of songs by the witty tunesmith Cole Porter, as interpreted by some of the 20th-century's greatest singer/performers - Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, etc. - is surprisingly dull. Very little information accompanies the CD, and I suspect many of the numbers were recorded in mono, which might account for the weak stereo sound "enhanced" by digital technology.
   
   Or maybe Capital was forcing the singers to complete contracts. I found the recently released soundtrack for Delovely, a bad bio-pic about Porter, far more enjoyable and it features a cast of some of the best singers of the early 21st century.



5. THIS CD IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED, COLE PORTER SUPERBLY TREATED BY VARIOUS ARTISTS.

2 comments about High Society.

1. At least three clones of Capitol's soundtrack album are floating through the marketplace, with three suitably chintzy covers, this one boldly pirating its art from the LP. We can guess how we got here: the album's entered the public domain in Europe, allowing unprincipled replicators to rip and sell at full line. It isn't worth it. To be sure this second-string Cole Porter gets a first-string rendition by an amazing cast, but its "engineering" was as crippled as Porter; though MGM recorded the music in multitrack the folks at Hollywood and Vine reduced it to a "stereophonic" wheeze in 1961, everything in a sonic fog, which migrated without change to the CD format three decades later, on an album that went quickly and justifiably out of print (Capitol CDP 0777 7 93787 2 2), no doubt migrating still further to these PD robberies. How good it could be was tantalizingly suggested in 1997 on Rhino's Satch soundtrack anthology "Now You Has Jazz", whose five tracks from the movie are fresh and clear, albeit marred by a few inept edits (strange for a TCM album). And even here the buyer faces a quandary because where "I Love You, Samantha" opens on the Capitol album with that creamy trombone choir redolent of chrome and tail fins (no arranger credited), on the Rhino album it's Satch tootling a few notes before Der Bingle and the MGM orchestra join in. While we can dream of a better treatment this appears to be another case of "Billy Rose's Jumbo", where the rights owners are two or more different entities, thus preventing the kind of first-rate issue it deserves. So we're stuck with PD, and ripping, and stealing.
   
   A POSTSCRIPT: Information on this release is hard to find, but here's what I've gathered: Blue Moon is issued by one Absolute Distribution, a Barcelona firm that has released other PD soundtracks, including a few of MGM musicals already on Rhino/TCM, like "Singing in the Rain" [SIC]. This "High Society" has a supposed running time of 50'41 (per one French Web retailer, which also claims this as "ADD mono") with some "interviews" (promos?) and several song variants, compared to 32'19 on Capitol's CD. Lacking sound clips from any source I'd bet this is a hodgepodge combining the Capitol LP and a video or film copy, and maybe some stuff from private collectors. Because this is clearly PD in Europe I feel no compulsion to change what I've said, other than through this description.



2. I have been waiting for this great movie music to come out on cd. Classic songs from Cole Porter with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. For sure a keeper you could never go wrong with this combination. I have this playing in my car everyday and it gets me in a great mood. A++++++. Be ware though that this hasn't been digitally remasterd which could've been nicer but love this just the same.