Customer Reviews

Noel Coward at Las Vegas

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This is a live recording of a Noel Coward performance in the 1950's at the Desert Inn. The songs are quite a bit racier than his usual studio recordings from the 1920's and 30's; all very witty and very fun. A stand out performance of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" features references to everyone from Somerset Maugham to Senator Joe McCarthy. Unique.

My old LP was lost in a recent move! I have loved this album along with "Noel and Gertie" since I first heard it at the age of twelve. Sir Noel Coward is not to be missed.

Very few of us lesser mortals can compete with the genius of Noel Coward, however we certainly can enjoy it! A master of lyric, pun, innendo, and rhyme, Noel will keep all laughing throughout this collection.

Noel Coward is one of the great original and deftly humorous, suave, witty British songwriters who can sing as readily at breakneck speed as more slowly on poignant love songs. His singing is excellent, as is the superb accompaniment - all a great pleasure.

Here are twenty-nine songs written and sung by Noel Coward--the sophisticated, urbane, brittle, witty, and arch performer who charmed his listeners with his great sense of humor, his upper-crust vowels, his frequently trilled r's, and his perfect enunciation. Partly a product of the British music hall tradition, he became a darling of the West End theater with his plays in the twenties, thirties, and early forties.
This CD captures his cabaret act in Las Vegas in 1955 with a live audience, and the second half was recorded in a New York studio in 1956. Mainly we are entertained by his hilarious, campy numbers like "Let's Do It" or "A Bar on the Piccola Marina", but there are tender ballads like "Sail Away" and "Time and Again." Some of his songs resemble patter songs.
This recording originally on LP was a rite of passage performance for some gays. Underneath his ironic and witty lyrics we can find a certain amount of social commentary. We haven't had as brilliant or as original a performer as Sir Noel Coward since his passing. His influence on a whole generation of movie actors was enormous. Cary Grant, James Mason, Laurence Olivier, Rex Harrison, and Anthony Hopkins owe some of their actorly personas to him.