By Steven Suskin
06 Oct 2002

ROADSIDE [Jay CDJAY 1366]
Roadside, which reached New York last November under the auspices of the York Theatre Company, was a new musical that was old. Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones began work on an adaptation of Lynn Riggs's 1930 play 40-odd years earlier, back when they were young Texan songwriters looking for a break. Which is to say, before they moved on to The Fantasticks. The rights proved to be unavailable; Riggs was presumably still raking in big bucks from Oklahoma!, based on his 1931 play. Why give away Roadside to a couple of unknowns?

According to the liner notes for this new CD, the authors came across their abandoned Roadside worksheets a few years ago. Harvey and Tom liked what they read and the few songs they had completed, so they set to work anew after four decades. Thus, a 2001 musical that harks back, somewhat uncomfortably, to the mid-50's.

Yes, the results are somewhat mild; I suppose that if Schmidt and Jones wrote The Fantasticks today, people would call that mild, too. But I make it a rule never to overlook a Harvey Schmidt musical. Just about every score of his contains one or two special songs — evocative, moody and melodic — that make me look forward to hearing everything he comes up with. "Try to Remember" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain" are the obvious examples; other not-as-familiar songs include "Sweet River," "Thousands of Flowers," "I'm Glad to See You've Got What You Want," "The Room Is Filled with You," "I Miss You," "Time Goes By" and "Sometimes You Just Need Someone." "Roadside," the title song of Roadside, is another. The score also features a second melody that lingers in the mind, "Another Drunken Cowboy."

So I'm glad to have Roadside, even though it was — shall we say — excessively modest at the York.

THE MUSICALITY OF RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN [Jay CDJAZ 9008]
I generally avoid albums with titles like The Musicality of so and so or such and such, figuring that ten or twelve songs recycled from existing albums do not musicality make. Being of open mind, I slipped The Musicality of Rodgers & Hammerstein (one of ten announced entries in this series) into my CD player — and found several tracks of great interest.

Yes, we have heard it all before. But mixed in with yet more recordings of "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "If I Loved You" are some relatively rare items given superb treatment. Like "Ev'rybody's Got a Home but Me," that stunning lament from Pipe Dream. We have always had to make do with the interesting but unusual interpretation by Judy Tyler on the original cast album. But the 1955 recording is primitive, sonically. Now we have Judy Blazer singing it, and she does a wonderful job (as Blazer typically does). And here are Russell Bennett's original, wonderfully understated orchestrations, which — now that we can hear them clearly — make for pristine Rodgers.

The same can be said for "The Gentleman Is a Dope," from Allegro. Here we have Debbie Gravitte — again, the perfect singer to handle it — with some unexpectedly crisp orchestrations, no longer muddied by 1947 technology. While this disc doesn't tell us much about the musicality of R & H, it gives us performances that musical theatre fans will want to hear.

There is also a selection from their other forgotten musical, Me and Juliet. "No Other Love" benefits from the performance of Brent Barrett, who does full justice to it. (His partner doesn't, being way wrong for the song.) The liner notes credit this orchestration to Russell Bennett, which as far as I know was by Don Walker. But maybe the folks at Jay know something I don't. Walker occasionally ghosted for Bennett — he did "Carefully Taught" and "Shall We Dance," among others — so it is not impossible that Bennett did some work on Me and Juliet.

"Waltz for a Ball," an instrumental from Cinderella, is interesting to hear; it incorporates "Ten Minutes Ago" with two original musical themes. "Love Look Away," from Flower Drum Song, is given a fine performance by Sally Burgess (despite a bit too much at the end). Most surprising of all, perhaps, is Susan Egan's performance of "The Sound of Music." I've always found the original cast performance of this song a bit coy, what with a 46-year-old legend pretending to be 19. (Go ahead and sue me, shoot bullets through me.) Here we have Ms. Egan sounding considerably younger, with Bennett's charts (highlighted by that flute echoing the sound of the hills). A lovely performance.

The songs I cite above come from conductors (and singers) who clearly understand the songs and the orchestrations, which is not necessarily the case on studio recordings. There's nothing worse than finally finding a song you want to hear, only to have it interpreted at an inappropriate tempo. Checking the fine print, I discover that "Ev'rybody's Got a Home but Me" and "The Gentlemen Is a Dope" were both conducted by Craig Barna, with "No Other Love" and "The Sound of Music" by Martin Yates.

So The Musicality of Rodgers & Hammerstein brings us some performances that I, for one, want to listen to. Especially those tracks of "The Gentlemen Is a Dope" and "Ev'rybody's Got a Home but Me."

— Steven Suskin, author of "Broadway Yearbook 2000-2001," "Broadway Yearbook 1999-2000," "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books.