42nd Street - new recording
Broadway - more Hip Hooray and Ballyhoo than lullaby. The new release by JAY of 42nd Street is a delight from beginning to final track (actually one of two bonus songs). From the overture on, that indefinable feeling of live theatre comes at you, lifting the spirits and placing your imaginary bum on that imaginary seat in the stalls. The show is by legendary Broadway writers Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics). Not as famous as the Gershwins or Cole Porter, in their day they were just as celebrated – top notch songsmiths combining sunny lyrics with the catchiest of catches.
The recording is the first full version of the show which was re-created for the stage in the early 1980s. The genesis of 42nd Street was actually as a movie made in 1933. Older readers will pick up their ears at names like Busby Berkely, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers. The stage version adds more great songs by Warren and Dubin not least that stirring anthem to the theatrical form: Lullaby of Broadway.
Recorded at Abbey Road studios by JAY in the 1990s, the full version has taken this long to come to fruition and has just been released. It is a Music Theatre anorak’s dream with spoken dialogue, dance routines lavishly orchestrated and a of course a clutch of toe-tapping numbers such as Shuffle off to Buffalo You’re Getting to be a Habit with Me, the gorgeous, I Only Have Eyes for You, the title song 42nd Street and We’re in the Money (I bet you’re already humming at least one of those great standards).
Producer John Yap is something of a perfectionist re musical theatre recordings. He told me in an interview (to be published soon) that it was important to include dance numbers which more often than not get cut from an original cast album. So, we get a good sprinkling of orchestra with the percussive tap tap of metallic shoes. It’s like having a chorus of castanets as part of the band. It does make me wish I could include tap in my narrow range of skills.
The National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Craig Barna provides a full and sweet-centred gloss to this evergreen confection. The stars including Michael Gruber, the veteran performer Marti Stevens and the late Cathy Wydner add just the right balance of perfectly tuned singing with that elusive theatre quality that marks out this genre from others such as opera. When belt is needed, belt is provided. A bonus track introduces us to a song cut from the original movie and heard here for the first time: I Know Now is a striking ballad in its bluesy torch-song way.
The plot is archetypal 30s – backstage drama as leading lady in a major new musical breaks an ankle and has to be replaced by wannabe ingenue. Romantic and sublime nonsense follows. Yes, it’s thin but there is that undertow of Depression era America behind every joyous routine. You will love this energetic, well sung and acted full-length version and you will want to dance around the living room as you listen to that lullaby of old Broadway.
https://www.jayrecords.com/recording/42nd-street-complete-recording/
