Pipe Dream (1955 Original Broadway Cast) [Cast Recording]

Mike Kellin, William Johnson, Judy Tyler, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Helen Traubel | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording
• Label: RCA Victor Broadway
• ASIN: B000003FDU
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,740 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ADVENTUROUS AND BEAUTIFUL, May 1, 2001

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pipe Dream (1955 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

I'm willing to overlook lyrics like"...the girls have never looked so come-and-getty" or "I suffer somethin' awful when I think 'cause thinkin' puts my brain on the blink" in order to just bask in the gorgeous music of PIPE DREAM----certainly one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most adventurous and beautiful scores.

I'm sure that there must be problems gettings the rights from the John Steinbeck Estate to re-write the musical's book which is based on two of Steinbeck's novels: "Cannery Row" and "Sweet Thursday." Otherwise, I've no doubt that this musical would be overhauled and revived on Broadway immediately. Just listen to the Overture and I promise you're bound to be hooked.

Some of the numbers in the score took Rodgers and Hammerstein closer to opera than they'd ever been except, perhaps, in "Carousel:" One is a rousing, male chorus filled with twists and turns which is called "The Bum's Opera;" another is a splendid duet for soprano and mezzo called "Suzy Is A Good Thing." The two romantic songs, filled with the yearning that R&H are famous for ("All At Once You Love Her" and "Everybody's Got A Home But Me") are as beautiful and simple as anything the team wrote. And the duet for leading man and lady "Will You Marry Me?" is simplicity itself. Helen Traubel, William Johnson and Judy Tyler are the 3 stars who lead the completely captivating cast.

There are, granted, two comic numbers that, for me, totally misfire: "Thinkin'" and "The Party That We're Gonna Have Tomorrow Night" but they are a small price to pay to hear this almost unknown, magnificent theatre music.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an average offering from Rodgers and Hammerstein, March 3, 2004

By 

Byron Kolln (the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pipe Dream (1955 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

Only Rodgers and Hammerstein would have written a musical where the distinguished opera singer Helen Traubel played the owner of a whorehouse. PIPE DREAM opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre in 1955 and shuttered after 246 performances, the shortest run for a Rodgers and Hammerstein show.

PIPE DREAM was based on a story by John Steinbeck and dealt with serious issues. In previous collaborations, Rodgers and Hammerstein had also dealt with such issues as racial intolerance (SOUTH PACIFIC), the clash of East and West (THE KING AND I), domestic violence (CAROUSEL) and sexual longing (OKLAHOMA!). In PIPE DREAM, the young heroine is a prostitute.

PIPE DREAM featured a strong cast headed by legendary Wagnerian opera singer Helen Traubel with William Johnson, as well as Judy Tyler, considered one of the great Broadway ingenues of her era.

The score is filled with delights like "Everybody's Got a Home But Me", "Suzy is a Good Thing", "Sweet Thursday" and "All At Once You Love Her" as well as "The Next Time It Happens", which would be recycled for the 1996 Broadway incarnation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's STATE FAIR.

All-in-all, this cast album is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this score, June 13, 2004

By 

Alan (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pipe Dream (1955 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

Even Richard Rodgers, in an interview late in his life, said that this show was a failure and that his score was a failure. So maybe I'm crazy or maybe I'm just drawn to the underappreciated, but this is one of my favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein scores. (Or maybe Rodgers was influenced in his opinion by the excruciating physical pain he endured during the show's production period, as a result of jaw cancer, and by the fact that the show had the shortest run of any of Rodgers and Hammerstein show. And that it was the only one they put up all the money for.)

Having read the script for this show, I can see why it wasn't a hit. It's mostly very low-key, and Hammerstein doesn't always know how to write believably for the characters who populate the show, particularly in his dialogue .

But the score is an almost complete success. Apart from some wonderfully charming, light, catchy numbers (such as "Sweet Thursday" and "The Man I Used to Be"), we have "All Kinds of People," Hammerstein's most straightforward statement of his personal philosophy; several superb numbers ("The Tide Pool," "On a Lopsided Bus," and "The Bum's Opera") that completely dispense with traditional song forms; the remarkably bittersweet and touching "The Next Time It Happens"; one of the most nakedly vulnerable and moving songs ever written, "Everybody's Got a Home But Me"; and an extraordinary duet for two women, "Suzy Is a Good Thing," which starts with a long recitativelike section and then switches to a meltingly beautiful melody. With Suzy, one of the major characters, Hammerstein was writing about someone with very low self-esteem, and much of the material involving her is extremely moving.

Apart from those, there are several other fine numbers. This is one of Rodgers's most daring, unpredictable, and inventive scores. In the more straightforward songs, the melodic and harmonic contours sound very much like Kern at his richest, but some of the numbers are more complex structurally than anything Kern ever did. Hammerstein's best lyrics here are perhaps the most heartfelt and moving he ever wrote.

With all of this, I find it easy to forgive a couple of numbers that aren't on the highest level, and even one that's a complete dud ("Thinking").

The cast is very good, particularly Judy Tyler, who has a haunting contralto that doesn't sound much like anyone else I can name who ever sang a lead in a Broadway musical. William Johnson is just bit stiff occasionally, but he's extremely musical and he does beautifully in the ballads. And Helen Traubel, who apparently had terrible vocal trouble in the show, sounds very good on the recording as a bordello madam. She doesn't sound like your typical madam, but why should she? Especially in the more tender moments, such as "Suzy Is a Good Thing" and the reprise of "All at Once You Love Her," she's pretty wonderful.

It would be great to have a new recording of this score, one that would be more complete and in modern sound, though I'm not sure we have anyone today who could quite match Judy Tyler and William Johnson (both of whom died tragically within a year of the show's closing). If we do, I don't know who they are.

Anyway, it doesn't seem likely that we'll get a new recording any time soon, so if you love Rodgers and Hammerstein but don't know this score, I highly recommend this recording.