Our third Off-Broadway doesn't quite come up to the musical heights of the others, as it is a less ambitious undertaking, but it more than earns its place. Composer Jacques Urbont and lyricist-librettist Bruce Geller took Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 comedy The Rivals — Mrs. Malaprop and all — and added songs, calling it All in Love [Mercury OCS 6204]. The result was a bright comedic romp, which opened in November 1961 at the Martinique for a four-month run. Sparkling is a good word to describe this charming score, which is typified by two delectable numbers "What Can It Be?" and "I Found Him." (Both are sung, and delightfully so, by someone named Christina Gillespie, who seems to have disappeared from the New York theatre after this show.)
David Atkinson, as Jack Absolute, takes the singing honors with two nice ballads, "I Love a Fool" and "Don't Ask Me," along with a duet with his father (Lee Cass), "The Lady Was Made to Be Loved." (Atkinson played the romantic lead in The Girl in Pink Tights, and was one of the Don Quixote replacements in Man of La Mancha; Gaylea Byrne, an alternate Aldonza, plays heroine Lydia Languish.) Mimi Randolph sings Mrs. Malaprop, with material that doesn't quite rock the listeners (at least on the cast recording). Far better in the comedy department is the Bob Acres of the affair, a distinctive young comedian named Dom De Luise.
Orchestrations for the show were by newcomer Jonathan Tunick. (Composer Urbont once told me that the expanded orchestrations used on the recording are not by Tunick, apparently because the record label refused to pay him.) As for lyricist-librettist Geller, he was soon off to Hollywood where in 1966 he created the long-running adventure series "Mission: Impossible." Which is why fans of All in Love might have occasionally heard songs from the show used as "Mission: Impossible" underscoring.
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Our Off-Broadway scores are joined by one from the land of television. The team of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, whom you might know from a little item called Funny Girl, followed that musical with a succession of less-distinguished projects (including Prettybelle, Sugar, and The Red Shoes). Along the way they wrote songs for a 50-minute animated special that ran Thanksgiving weekend in 1965 called "The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood" [ABC-Paramount ABCS 536]. This modernized rendition of the old fairy tale, starring 19-year-old Liza Minnelli as Red and Cyril Ritchard as the Wolf, was not a great work of art; the relatively brief score is on the sketchy side. But there are two songs which simply beg to be enjoyed. "My Red Riding Hood" is just joyous; it charms us, first, and then builds into something warmly wonderful. I can, and have, listened to it again and again. Equally delicious is something with the questionable title "Ding-a-ling, Ding-a-ling." Yes, "Ding-a-ling, Ding-a-ling." Don't fret; this is a Christmassy jaunt for Ms. Minnelli and Mr. Ritchard, and it simply takes off and remains happily aloft. Transfer an obscure LP to CD simply because of two songs? Yes, absolutely. Well worth it! (A third and decidedly lesser song, "I'm Naive," might be familiar to some listeners thanks to reuse elsewhere — including post-Broadway revisions of Sugar, the stage musicalization of "Some Like It Hot.")
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And finally, here's one that might well astonish you. The Aloha State joined our Union in 1959, and it wasn't long before some producer decided that an authentic Hawaiian musical would be just the thing for Broadway. Well, why not? 13 Daughters was first produced at the Honolulu Community Theatre in 1956, with score and book by Eaton (Bob) Magoon, a pop songwriter descended from one of Hawaii's wealthiest families. The show was retooled and brought into the 54th Street Theatre, Broadway's least-desirable jinx-house (also known as the Adelphi and the George Abbott) on March 2, 1961; it created not a wisp of a stir, and within three weeks bid a final and permanent aloha. The improved, Broadway version was remounted in Honolulu in 1965, with a local cast, and a cast album [Mahalo 3003] was duly recorded. (The non-Magoon numbers interpolated into the Broadway version in the hopes of boosting the chance of success were excised; one of them came from a pop songwriter named Sherman Edwards, who returned to Broadway in 1969 with 1776.) The performances are questionable, some of the musical playing is notably ragged, and the score itself is not in a league with that other Broadway state-celebration musical, Oklahoma!. Even so, 13 Daughters surprisingly turns out to be pretty charming and pleasantly tuneful. Put it on the shelf next to something like Plain and Fancy, another non-A List musical which I nevertheless happily to listen to from time to time.
13 Daughters is about — well, you guessed it. He is not a poor dairyman on the desolate plains of Russia; he is a rich Chinese merchant living in Hawaii. (For Broadway, they got that prototypical Chinese actor Don Ameche — born Dominic Amici in Kenosha, WI — which did not help in the authenticity department.) The plot is, actually, semi-biographical. A Chinese merchant named Chun Afong came to Hawaii in the 1850s, married a member of the royal family, and proceeded to become the kingdom's first millionaire. Yes, he had 13 daughters; three sons, too, but they don't figure in the musical. The gals are husbandless, due to a curse on their mother for marrying a foreigner. It all works out, of course; author Magoon, in fact, was the grandson of one of the 13 title characters.
So here we have a Hawaiian cast album — talk about Off-Broadway! — of a negligible Broadway flop. Kam Fong Chun sings the leading role, heading a necessarily large cast (all those daughters, you know). The only recognizable name among the bunch, as the eldest daughter, is Tamara Long, the Oklahoma-born actress who created major roles in Dames at Sea and Lorelei. Magoon's tunes are — well, tuneful, with some real charmers among them (including "House on the Hill," "Kuli-Kuli," "Let-A-Go Your Heart," "Calabash Cousins," and especially "Puka-Puka Pants" — which might not sound promising but turns out well). The score is dressed up in professional Broadway orchestrations, from Joe Glover and Robert Russell Bennett. (My research indicates that the show is mostly by Glover, in the same proportions as their collaboration on the 1951 musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.) The charts are clearly above the capabilities of some of the musicians; there are sections in which the strings and reeds seem to be playing underwater. Even so, 13 Daughters is an enjoyable listen that would surely find fans on CD; a few, anyway. Which makes it an extreme long shot for our list.
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So there you have, in three columns, an assortment of 15 favored cast albums — from Broadway, London, Off-Broadway and elsewhere — that have yet to make it to CD. As stated in the first column, the last several years have seen the rescue of many such worthy titles; we can be hopeful of more coming along, one way or the other. I was especially pleased to learn, via e-mailed responses, that two of the most desired items on my list are on the remastering block as we speak. While I have been sworn to secrecy, and while plans of this sort don't always work out, fans of such things can anticipate two treasures coming their way in the next year or so.
To read the On the Record about Broadway cast albums not yet on CD, click here; to read about London shows not yet on CD, click here.
(Steven Suskin is author of "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations" as well as "Second Act Trouble," "Show Tunes" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com.)
