By Steven Suskin
24 Jul 2011

The Music Man [Sepia 1173]
Sepia has brought us the 1961 original London cast recording of Meredith Willson's The Music Man. This is, for all practical purposes, a musical duplicate of the Broadway album, with a somewhat less intriguing pair of principals countered by a clearer and crisper sound from the orchestra pit. Listeners like myself who enjoy hearing something that is the same, but different, will want to get this second go round of the original New York version. What's more, Sepia gives us bonus tracks that open a whole new window on Meredith Willson's homespun classic.

The cast differences we can address quickly. Van Johnson, for sure, ain't Bob Preston; Johnson is capable, and I suppose was fine on stage. But after hearing Preston so many times, you can't help but notice that Johnson is nowhere near as spellbinding. The West End Marian, Patricia Lambert, has a different problem; she seems to be pretty good, but she of course isn't Barbara Cook — and that's an impossible obstacle to combat. (I've never come across a Cunegonde that I'd rather listen to than Barbara, or an Amalia or even a Liesl. And if you don't know her Liesl, get ye to The Gay Life.) But Ms. Lambert is perfectly fine.

The others have, not surprisingly, British accents; a little odd, especially when the quartet (here billed as "The Iowa Four") starts singing. Bernard Spear, who played the father of Jule Styne's Bar Mitzvah Boy and was Sancho opposite Joan Diener and Keith Michell in the West End Man of La Mancha, is Marcellus; Little Winthrop is Denis Waterman, who as an adult played Hildy in the 1982 "Front Page" musical, Windy City.

The band, led by Gareth Davies, does an especially fine job; the whole thing crackles, even if Van is something of a letdown. Johnson also demonstrates that you can sing Mairrian the Librairrian or Maaaahrian the Libraahrian, but it don't work if you sing Maaaahrian the Librairrian.

The highlights of this CD, oddly enough, are the nine bonus tracks. The first is unlike the others, but illustrative; here is Johnson singing "Trouble" six months before the London opening, presumably as an audition. And he is wonderful, with all the life and charisma that doesn't come across on the cast recording tracks. That is presumably Willson on the piano, tickling the keys, humming in diverse octaves, clacking, singing the chorus part, and tooting away like a toy trumpet with a built-in trombone slide.

Then come a selection of demo recordings, with Willson singing and playing. As we all know — or most of us, anyway, know — The Music Man went through five years of development, with its neophyte author learning as he went along. One of these songs, "You Don't Have to Kiss Me Goodnight" — for the two teenaged lovers — made it to the 1957 tryout; the rest, though, were long gone by the time the show reached the stage.

The cuts are understandable, given our understanding of the finished Music Man, and these songs are not memorable. But unlike obscure cut songs from other musicals, these are all enlightening. For example, a lengthy number about Kentucky's "Blue Ridge Mountains," using the tune we know as "The Wells Fargo Wagon" set to the "Marian the Librarian" vamp; or the small-town paean to the big city, not "Gary, Indiana" but "I Want to Go to Chicago."

(Steven Suskin is author of the recently released updated and expanded Fourth Edition of "Show Tunes" as well as "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations," "Second Act Trouble" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He also pens Playbill.com's Book Shelf and DVD Shelf columns. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com.)

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