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Founder:
Len Mullenger Editor
in Chief:John Quinn
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BROADWAY THROUGH THE GRAMOPHONE (1844-1930)
Full track details below
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At four double CDs this Pearl set must be one of the largest compilations of Broadway musicals/operettas ever transcribed. The tracks comprise 'Vocal Gems': gramophone transcriptions Broadway productions between 1914 and 1929. The titles are usually confined to one 12" 78 record side resulting in a maximum track length of 4'30". There are occasional tracks of over 8 minutes where the selection covers two 12" sides.
Many of the musicals represented in these volumes have never been given any professional revivals since the decade immediately following the opening run. This neglected music, whatever the source, has been lost from public attention since the 50s when LP players rendered the old 78s unplayable.
We have to be grateful to Victor for the regular issues of New York's popular Twenties musicals. No sooner had a musical made its mark on Broadway than it seems the score was taken into the studio for recording.
No details of singers are given on these discs but a few separate credits show that the Broadway stars did enter the recording studio. Generally the singers we hear are those engaged directly by the record companies. Whoever they are they are good singers and harmonise well. We hear singing with good diction and elegant English phrasing.
In volumes 3 and 4, there is a lot of very interesting native American material, of Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern in particular. Some of the titles are likely to be completely new to us. Thirteen years ago the McGlynn recordings of Showboat and Anything Goes proved very popular and judging by the content of these volumes it appears there is further potential to provide modern recordings of many more of these musicals. After Volumes 1 and 2 one is aware of a more modern approach to composition from 1915 onwards. This can be detected in Volume 3, CD1. Examples the approach can be heard in tk4, Romberg's Maid in America (1915); and tk11, Cuvillier's Florabella (1916); CD2 tk5, Kern & Wodehouse's Oh, Lady! Lady! (1918)
The last tracks here represented were recorded in 1930 and relate to film music The Love Parade and Sunny Side Up (Volume 4 CD2 tks 14 & 15). The musical numbers have more bounce to their rhythm and zip to the vocal lines. The recordings, of course, have a wider frequency spectrum and are (marginally) better than those from the previous two decades (collected in volumes 1 and 2).
The notes tell us little about the original Victor records, their conductors or their singers. The Light Opera Company "Gems" series launched by the American Victor Company began about 1909 and used such prolific Victor artists as Lucy Isabelle Marsh, Olive Kline, Lambert Murphy, Reinald Werrenrath, Harry MacDonough, Elsie Baker, and Royal Dadmun. The Victor investment in recording such a series was more extensive than Columbia's contribution. When electrical recordings were introduced in 1925 the Victor series continued, with re-recordings of some of their early acoustic discs. The original singers continued into the early electrical era and Lambert Murphy used by Victor went on to sing with the Metropolitan Opera.
In the later twenties and early thirties Victor began to issue composer-dedicated albums of Light Opera "Gems". Victor Herbert (two volumes of five twelve inch records, VM-C1 and VM-C2), Rudolf Friml (with the composer playing the piano on some of the sides), Sigmund Romberg and, eventually, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin were featured in this series. A third Victor Herbert set, largely recapitulating the most popular repertoire of the previous two sets, came out in the 1930s. Again major artists participated along with 'company' singers; Rise Stevens sang in the Romberg set (before making her debut at the Met.) and the popular singer Jane Froman prominently featured in the Gershwin set. Nathaniel Shilkret was the music director for most of these electrical sets and he conducts with authority and style deploying orchestrations that are authentic in phrasing. (This important background information comes from research kindly provided by Calvin M Goodwin of America.)
Occasionally some of the HMV series (the two-sided electrical Merry Widow, for example) were issued under a Victor 'Stateside' label and a G&S set originating in England was similarly reissued in the US. These were on their black label as were the previous individual "Gems" records: the American composer-specific sets were Red Seal issues. Some of the electric "Gems" follow the British tradition and are two-sided. We desperately need reissues of the later Victor Red Seal sets. They offer near definitive interpretations by Shilkret which preserve much of Herbert's own characteristic "rubato-style" as well as authentic orchestrations, tempi, and harmonisations.
Since they preserve a now vanished "authentic" style of interpretation there will be many, on both sides of the Atlantic, who hope that supplementary Pearl volumes maybe forthcoming. One can appreciate why Pearl disregarded the Offenbach operettas in these volumes. As for Showboat, Kismet and Anything Goes and all those operettas/musicals imported from Britain, these have modern recordings elsewhere.
In volumes 3 and 4 we find recording techniques have become better adapted to the medium and one becomes slowly aware that the orchestral textures thicken and the choruses sound fuller: evidence of the evolution of the gramophone. Composition wise, the shows (as they were now becoming called) increasingly take on the characteristics of the Busby Berkley films.
The notes give a four-page description of the progression of the musical scene on Broadway from 1914 to 1929 but with so much content on the discs they are barely adequate.
That aside these two sets represent that powerful combination
of historical significance and pleasurable listening enhanced by beneficial
developments in recording techniques so evident when you compare the
sound on the first two volumes with that on the present two. Full track Listing 2. THE ONLY GIRL Herbert Music,
Blossom Words 3. WATCH YOUR STEP Berlin
Music & Words 4. MAID IN AMERICA Romberg
& Carroll Music, Atteridge Words 5. NOBODY HOME Kern Music.
Greene Words 6. THE PRINCESS PAT Herbert
Music, Blossom Words 7. ALONE AT LAST Lehár
Music, Woodward Words 8. VERY GOOD EDDIE Kern Music,
Greene and others Words 9. STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! Berlin
Music & Words 10. SYBIL Jacobi Music,
Graham & Smith Words 11. FLORA BELLA Schwarzwald & Cuvillier
Music, Various writers Words 12. HAVE A HEART Kern
Music, Wodehouse Words 13. LOVE O'MIKE Kern Music,
Smith Words 14. OH, BOY! Kern Music,
Wodehouse & Bolton Words, 15. EILEEN Herbert Music,
Blossom Words 1. ZIEGFELD FOLLIES OF 1917 Hubbell &
Stamper Music, Buck Words. 2. LEAVE IT TO JANE Kern Music,
Wodehouse Words 3. JACK O' LANTERN Caryll
Music, Caldwell Words 4. GOING UP Hirsch Music,
Harbach Words 5. OH, LADY! LADY! Kern Music,
Wodehouse Words 6. THE RAINBOW GIRL Hirsch
Music, Wolf Words 7. ROCK A BYE BABY Kern Music,
Reynolds Words 8. SOMETIME Friml Music,
Young Words 9. LISTEN LESTER Orlob
Music, Cort & Stoddard Words. 10. SOMEBODY'S SWEETHEART Bafunno
& Stothart Music, Price & Hammerstein
Words 11. SHE'S A GOOD FELLOW Kern
Music, Caldwell Words 12. THE LADY IN RED Winterberg
Music, Caldwell Words 13. APPLE BLOSSOMS Jacobi & Kreisler
Music, Le Baron Words 14. BUDDIES Hilliam Music
& Words 15. IRENE Tierney Music,
McCarthy Words 16. THE NIGHT BOAT Kern Music,
Caldwell Words 17. HONEY GIRL Von Tilzer
Music, Fleeson Words 1. MARY Hirsch Music,
Harbach Words 2. JIMMIE Stothart Music,
Harbach & Hammerstein II Words. 3. THE LAST WALTZ Straus & Goodman
Music, Various writers Words 4. BLOSSOM TIME Schubert, arr. by Romberg
& Berte Music, Donnelly Words 5. ROSE-MARIE Friml Music,
Harbach & Hammerstein II Words 6. THE STUDENT PRINCE IN HEIDELBERG Romberg
Music, Donnelly Words 7. THE LOVE SONG Kunneke
Music, Smith Words 8. NO, NO, NANETTE Youmans
Music, Caesar & Harbach Words 9. DEAREST ENEMY Rodgers Music,
Hart Words 10. THE VAGABOND KING Friml
Music, Hooker Words 11. SUNNY Kern Music, Hammerstein
II & Harbach Words 13. PRINCESS FLAVIA Romberg
Music, Smith Words 14, THE COCOANUTS Berlin
Music & Words 15. THE GIRL FRIEND Rodgers
Music, Hart Words 16. QUEEN HIGH Gensler
Music, De Sylva Words 17. HONEYMOON LANE Hanley
Music, Dowling Words 1. OH, KAY! G. Gershwin Music,
I. Gershwin Words 2. THE DESERT SONG Romberg
Music, Hammerstein II & Harbach Words 3. PEGGY-ANN Rodgers Music,
Hart Words 4. RIO RITA Tierney Music,
McCarthy Words 5. LUCKY Ruby, Kalmar, Kern & Harbach
Music & Words 6. MY MARYLAND Romberg
Music, Donnelly Words 7. THE THREE MUSKETEERS Friml
Music, Wodehouse & Grey Words 8. THE NEW MOON Romberg Music,
Hammerstein II Words 9. HOLD EVERYTHING! Henderson
Music, De Sylva Words 10. WHOOPEE Donaldson
Music, Kahn Words 11. FOLLOW THRU Henderson
Music, DeSylva & Brown Words 12. BITTER SWEET Coward
Music & Words 13. WAKE UP AND DREAM Porter
Music & Words 14. THE LOVE PARADE (1929 Paramount Film) Schertzinger
Music, Grey Words 15. SUNNY SIDE UP (1929 William Fox Film) Henderson
Music, DeSylva & Brown Words
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