Customer Reviews

Fine and Dandy (2004 Studio Cast) (World Premiere Recording)

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I am very selective in writing reviews for Amazon - so if you're reading this, then please know that I must really, really love this c.d. And I hope my "review" helps in your decision whether or not to buy it!
Having said that...this recording is tremendous. Kay Swift's music comes to life through the talented and spectacular voices, most notebly of Gavin Creel and Carolee Carmello. I think I listen to their duet (Track 10), at least once a day. The whole thing is just pure broadway fun, the way it used to be! The only bad thing about this c.d. is that you wished they had staged this musical, so that you could go see it live!

Kay Swift, best-known for her close association with George Gershwin, was one of the few female composers to write for Broadway. Fine and Dandy was her first book musical, featuring lyrics by husband Paul James, and became one of the biggest hits of Broadway's 1930-31 season. However, like many musicals of the era, most of the original performance materials were lost over the years. In the mid-`80s, Swift began to reconstruct the score, assisted by orchestrator Russell Warner, who continued the work following her death in 1993. The new recording is a revelation, for the songs are, as the title says, fine and dandy--clever and romantic by turns, and always tuneful. Those who love Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" and "Of Thee I Sing" will find a similar feel here, helped by strong performances from Carolee Carmello, Gavin Creel, Mario Cantone, Mark Linn-Baker and Jennifer Laura Thompson, bolstered by a full orchestra. The CD also includes several other songs by Swift, including the classic "Can't We Be Friends?"

Fine and Dandy is simply the best 30s musical to be reconstructed for CD yet, and it was a complete surprise because who knew any of the songs from this show? Well, we know them now and they are teriffic, and performed by an equally teriffic cast, especially Carolee Carmello, Gavin Cleel and Jennifer Laura Thompson. Would it be fair to say that Ms. Carmello is wildly underappreciated? I have adored her ever since seeing her as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors many years ago in Boston. Here she is wonderful especially in Lets Go Eat Worms in the Garden and Nobody Breaks My Heart. It was so unexpected to find such a treasure trove of foot tapping songs, but here they are. BUY THIS CD if you like musicals at all, you won't be sorry.

This is an amazing score: witty, clever, fantastically inventive music -- fans of Gershwin et al will be delighted to discover this delightful show. What a great contribution to the American songbook. And hats off to PS Classics for this debut nonprofit historical recording, which has impeccable production quality. Can't wait for the next one they release.

No one will easily mistake Kay Swift for Gershwin, but it is great that she is finally getting some recognition beyond "Can't We Be Friends?" (included here on this LP as a sort of bonus) which isn't itself all that familiar except to cabaret aficionados. Writing true show music is a different kettle of fish, an art form with different skills, and listening to this LP one begins to construct a live production of FINE AND DANDY in one's head. The voices of the individual performers are immensely helpful in this journey, and some of the tracks you could listen to day and night. I understand that Donald Ogden Stewart wrote the book for this show and I would love to get my hands on it, having enjoyed some of the films he worked on so much, Dinner at Eight, Holiday, Kitty Foyle, The Philadelphia Story and Europa 51 among them. His Socialist bent had an appealing, whimsical side to it and I can see the factory for which Kay Swift wrote her enchanting opening number as the perfect laboratory for Ogden Stewart's brand of inspired nuttiness. Gavin Creel and Carolee Carmello are vivacious and even infectious on their tracks, and it sounds as though they love the songs as much as we love them. "Can This Be Love?" already sounds like a standard, and I predict many renditions of the comical complaint number "Let's Go Eat Worms."

Don't know if a revival of the show would be successful, but it sounds as though it needs one bravura comedian to put it over big. Back in the 1930s they had Joe Cook. Who is Joe Cook's equivalent today? Someone like Will Ferrell I guess--gulp.

What a delicious discovery this score is -- even if you thihk you've never heard it before, you'll be surprised how familiar many of the tunes actually are! Although the brief "acting" sequences leave something to be desired (more "line readings" than actual acting...) the singing voices do not. You won't be disappointed!