Customer Reviews

My Fair Lady (1956 Original Broadway Cast)

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The original Broadway cast album of MY FAIR LADY is a mandatory disc in every self-respecting musical fan's collection. It captures the cast at the top of their game, and Julie Andrews at the peak of her Broadway career. Her voice is sparkling and effervescent, with Rex Harrison as a thrilling Higgins and Stanley Holloway a delight as Eliza's erstwhile father Alfred P. Doolittle. The monaural sound is warm and lush in Columbia's best style. This newest remaster of the album sounds better than ever. By the time the London cast album was recorded 4 years later (to take advantage of the new stereo format), a tired feeling had crept into Julie Andrews' singing (or perhaps boredom), so the Broadway edition is the format of choice, despite the technical limitations of the mono mix.

Earlier, I had written a review of the 1959 London Cast Stereo recording of "MY FAIR LADY." Many amazon.com customers seem to prefer the original Broadway Cast recording to the later London Stereo LP. I'm such a "Fair Lady" fan, I have both discs. The disc I'm reviewing here is a Gold Disc with an extra Bonus Track. Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson conducts post-recording interviews with Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, lyricists Alan Lerner and conducter Franz Allers. Liberson states that "FAIR LADY" is "possibly the most successful musical of this (20th) Century." He got that right! Here, you hear Rex Harrison give a full out performance, when he was still excited by the material and everything was fresh and new. Boredom set in afterwards. Harrison growls and grunts his way through Higgins' songs on the London Cast Album, and in the 1964 film version (for which he received an Academy Award), Harrison couldn't be more listless, static, and boring; giving a one-note "phoned in" performance. Much better than Harrison, in any case, is Julie Andrews; then on the brink of her brilliant career. She is best at full fire and music, exploding with fury and rage in "Just You Wait! " and "Show Me." Simply put, Julie Andrews is the best Eliza Doolittle of all time. Added to all this is a delightful dash of Stanley Holloway. For pure freshness and vitality, you can't beat this original recording of MY FAIR LADY. And the Post-Recording interviews make this an irresistable treat, not that everything else wasn't enough!

I have to agree with Mr. McCatain and others in saying that the ORIGINAL Broadway cast album of "My Fair Lady" is much better than the London cast album, and that it must be one of the best original cast albums ever made. The sound is so clear you can't tell for a minute that it's in mono. (What mono?) But the main difference is that, because the orchestrations are much faster, the performers have to be much more "structured" than they were in the stereo London recording. As a result, their performances are much better. Rex Harrison talks his lyrics more here than in London, and his performance is that much sharper as a result. As wonderful as she always sounds, Julie Andrews never has sounded quite like this again; her voice is so much brighter, fresher, and all-around better than in London. Stanley Holloway is, quite simply, wonderful. John Michael King, while obviously American and not British, is a much better singer than the London Freddy, Leonard Weir. Because the performers were so much more laid-back in London, (Perhaps they were a little too used to their roles by that time) the wonderful Loewe score really took center stage on that recording, which certainly isn't a bad thing. But the performers (and Lerner's great lyrics) are the show here, and they really do have, in the words of another reviewer, a "zip and zing of discovery" that you just won't find in London or probably any other recording of this show. Must certainly be one of the, if not THE, must-have in any music, musical, or theatre lover's collection.

Always been a fan of musicals, I find the orchestration, arrangement and most of all, the performances of Harrison - Andrews stellar and wonderful. Here is a CD where we can hear the silkful coloratura soprano voice of Julie Andrews as she shows the singers of today what it means to sing, flit and touch high notes without shrieking or shouting their vocal chords off ! I have also listened to Kiri Te Kanawa's lyrical soprano performances of the same songs and Julie can stand side by side with this opera singer. Julie is effervescent in this material. Rex Harrison is also the best Dr. Higgins there is. His recitative performance of the role is memorable and will withstand the test of time.

One listen to the original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady and you know why this CD still sells. Despite the decades, the recording sounds fresh, clear and crisp. There is no background noise on this CD! Moreover, the songs by Lerner and Loewe are brilliantly composed and the lyric are clever, witty and poignant. This CD proves it.

The CD opens with the overture to the musical stage play and then goes right into the first song entitled "Why Can't The English?" More spoken than sung by Rex Harrison, "Why Can't The English" fleshes out his character's lament that too many British people don't speak English well. The melody is catchy and the lyrics are funny at times even if some of the humor is dated.

The lesser educated British have their say in the next number, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly." In this song, sung by Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle with male backup singers and a chorus of whistlers, demonstrates how these persons really do want to lead a much more sophisticated life with more luxuries.

Other great songs on this CD include the rousing "Get Me To The Church On Time" sung by the memorable Stanley Holloway with Gordon Dilworth, Rod McLennan and a chorus; the beautiful love ballad "On The Street Where You Live" performed by John Michael King; "I Could Have Danced All Night" which is performed flawlessly by Julie Andrews who belts out those incredibly high notes; and "The Rain In Spain" delivered by Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison and Robert Coote. Excellent!

One especially amusing song is entitled "A Hymn To Him" performed mostly by Rex Harrison with some assistance from Robert Coote. The violins at the beginning of this number are beautiful in the musical arrangement.

The CD concludes with the beautiful and poignant "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" performed by Rex Harrison. The violins play so sweetly and then the orchestra fleshes out the ending music flawlessly--so don't be surprised if you get the urge to play the CD all over again from the very beginning and enjoy it once more.

The musical arrangements are carefully planned and executed throughout; only Lerner and Loewe were capable of producing such a fine score to go with this stage play.

I cannot resist drawing comparisons and contrasts between the original Broadway cast recording and the original London cast recording. There were few cast changes. The only major cast change was that Freddy, a socialite who displays feelings for Eliza, was played by John Michael King in the New York production while Leonard Weir played Freddy in the London production. In addition, the tempo of the Broadway score is slower than it was for the original London production. The actors' British and Cockney accents are much less pronounced in the New York production than they were for the London production. Nevertheless, it all works brilliantly.

The liner notes boast terrific black and white photos of the actors in the stage play. The liner notes also provide the complete cast credits. Didier C. Deutsch contributes a lengthy essay about the history and production of My Fair Lady as well.

The music and lyrics to the original London cast recording of My Fair Lady are timeless. Even today, more than four decades later, the soundtrack still sells well. The musical is one with which many people can identify as it illustrates through words and music the blossoming love affair between Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Indeed, the story and the music add to the enchantment as we realize that even Higgins and Doolittle themselves are unaware of the full power of their mutual attraction until the very end of the stage play. My Fair Lady will remain a classic musical; and the score to the stage play on this album is priceless. May you enjoy this soundtrack as much as I did!

I was fortunate enough to see Rex Harrison in 1981 during his revival of "My Fair Lady," and even though Rex was way past his prime, the evening was magical. This original cast album from 1956 preserves forever this wondrous musical, where every single song is superb. There isn't a clinker in the bunch and that's saying something considering the record contains 16 songs, most of them standards. Julie Andrews soars, which is to be expected and it makes you tear your hair out that she wasn't cast as Eliza in the 1964 movie version.

"The Rain in Spain" is infectious and fun, you almost want to get up and dance as its sung. Even though Rex talk-sings his way through the album, he brings a charisma and charm that was his alone. Listen to the sly irony he brings to "I'm Just an Ordinary Man," and pay close attention to his show-stopping finale, "I've Grown Accustoned to her Face." The way Harrison places a poignant stress on the word "face" will stay in your memory forever.

This is a much superior version to the movie soundtrack and it should be required to round out any serious record collection, no matter what the genre. This is the soundtrack by which all others should be judged, it's magnificent!

We are fortunate to have this solid-platinum masterpiece back. We are doubly fortunate given the great Goddard Lieberson's rare lack of foresight to record it right away in stereo. Perhaps he did consider it and figured it was too much trouble, but it would have been eminently worth it. Then again, among this album's manifold virtues is excellent mono sound.

It was possible -- RCA and British Decca recorded commercially in stereo from 1954; but Columbia seems not to have started in stereo at all until November, 1956, and then haltingly, in binaural, on Lieberson's "Li'l Abner" cast album (and only on two orchestral tracks, until recently unreleased). In December he produced Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" in separate mono and two-track stereo takes,* followed by "Bells Are Ringing" in two-track. In 1959 he did record "My Fair Lady" in stereo -- an "identical" London cast album. Happily both recordings coexisted peacefully on record-store racks until the end of the dual-format era in the late sixties, when CBS decided London was better. Sony showed its love for the Broadway cast album by issuing a slapdash hard-to-find CD sometime around 1988, followed by one of those absurdly expensive gold-plated Mastersound discs which the company used to avoid fixing its back catalog, and whose cost it justified by adding the first of the two current bonus tracks. A preposterous internecine fight over control of the company's cast albums further delayed a good reasonably-priced reissue.

Finally, in 2002, it arrived -- a beautiful, sensitive remastering. Probably most of us last heard this album as I did, in a kitchen on a portable tube-type manual phono. To behold this on a good stereo wipes away whatever idea you had that you'd heard it too often. No, this remains as utterly right as a musical ever got. These folk being human, we do get small flaws -- like the very fastidious Henry Higgins (and the not so fastidious Alan Jay Lerner) insisting Eliza Doolittle be "hung," and several Lieberson edits that jar after the film version and its soundtrack album have lodged in your head. (Indeed even the most addicted cast-album nuts must concede the Alexander Courage-Andre Previn reworking of the Overture -- yes, that Alexander Courage -- is far better; but then Bill Paley and Goddard Lieberson didn't have the Warner Bros. Orchestra either.) Only now can we truly realize just how extraordinary everything is, how note-perfect the casting, and the performance -- and here digital recording excels, because it clearly wouldn't not be quite the same magnificent album without the superb work of its session engineers, Fred Plaut and Edward T. "Bud" Graham, cleaned and polished to a bright warm glow by the reissue's co-producer and remasterer Darcy Proper. (Given past Sony practice I would not be surprised to learn this is the Mastersound remaster, reissued; we'll take it.) No mistake: this is one of the greatest recordings of any kind ever.

Often bonus tracks are irrelevant, but not so on Sony's recent cast album reissues, and definitely not here. The previously-issued first is an attempt by Lieberson (patrician accent and all -- but with what he did for the record biz we'll forgive it) at an interview at session's end that promptly got out of his control, but it gives us an inkling these folks were every bit as exciting to know offstage as on. The second is off a promotional disc for "Camelot" (so I gather; the liner booklet doesn't specify, and Masterworks issued many such discs) starring Lieberson and the songwriters, and despite its brevity we get an idea of the guesswork involved in writing musicals -- no more so than here. It helps, though, when your names are Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner, and all your guesses are right.

P. S. Tim, or Tom, or Joe Scanlon's silly booklet notes repeat an error that appears in "Dazzler," Steven Bach's biography of Moss Hart: that "My Fair Lady" earned back "2,000 percent" of its production costs. But Bach himself states that the show earned an estimated $800 million to $1 billion -- a return at minimum of 200,000 percent. (He may have meant 2,000 TIMES, which is correct.) Do you suppose the LEGENDARY Clive Davis and the equally LEGENDARY Walter Yetnikoff ever did anything so profitable?

*To be sure stereo was still somewhat experimental, and the stereo "Candide"'s sound is not that good; on the other hand, the "Li'l Abner" binaural tracks are.

My father was lucky enough to see Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in the original production of My Fair Lady. While I'm not as fortunate, this disc preserves what are two of the most classic of all musical theatre performances. Rex Harrison, while hardly a notable singer, brings so much energy and bite to the role of Henry Higgins, one hardly notices his lack of vocal prowess. Julie Andrews wields her lithe and unsurpassed soprano wonderfully here, singing some of musical theatre's finest songs. The other performers are great too, but it's for Julie and Rex that no musical theatre lover should be without this cast recording.

If only Julie Andrews had been chosen for the movie version of My Fair Lady, this film would've swept the Oscars...not that Audrey Hepburn didn't do an amazing job, but the singing is just not the same. While Julie picked up the Best Actress Oscar, Audrey didn't even get nominated. Of course, Audrey had her voice dubbed by Marni Nixon.

But enough of my fuming, the songs:

Rex Harrison is a delight, though his singing abilities are limited, his enunciation and clear, British english makes all of his numbers absolutely delightful.

Julie is, of course, the highlight of this album. I am an avid fan and positively adore her voice. This recording was made in her younger years, therefore you can really hear the clarity and crystalline quality of her voice. My personal favorites are "I Could've Danced All Night" and "Just You Wait".

The supporting cast is also very strong. Stanley Holloway's "Get Me To The Church On Time" shows off his deep baritone. The man who plays Freddy (I forget his name) is also very good. "On the Street Where You Live" is also one of my favorites.

To those who enjoy this album, I recommend "The Music Man", "Sound of Music", "Cinderella", and "Mary Poppins".

Great performance by Rex, absolutely unreproducible!
L&L's impeccable collaboration is one great pre-Soundheim
work.