ON THE RECORD: LaChiusa, Hammerstein and Sondheim
By Steven Suskin
CARMEN JONES [Decca Broadway 440 066 780]
The writer in question was Oscar Hammerstein 2d, who — flops or no — knew a thing or two about music drama and Broadway entertainment. When his latest show opened and turned out to be the biggest hit of the century — Oklahoma! , it was called — Hammerstein's adaptation of Carmen was suddenly producible. Billy Rose grabbed Carmen Jones and proceeded to build it into the biggest thing Broadway had seen since — well, since Jumbo , the Rodgers & Hart, Hecht & MacArthur circus extravaganza that Rose produced at the Hippodrome in 1935.
Rose scaled Carmen Jones at "popular prices," and popular it was. The show opened at the Broadway on December 2, 1943, and pleased wartime audiences for 502 performances. Hammerstein transported Carmen 's tobacco factory in Seville to a parachute factory in the Deep South, the soldiers became G.I.s, toreador Escamillo became heavyweight Husky Miller. A natural it all must have seemed, mixing Bizet's knockout of a score with Oscar's accessible book and lyrics. Nobody would have touched it without the success of Oklahoma! , though. (Oscar had also tried to adapt Gilbert and Sullivan for Broadway; Knights of Song , which he staged at the 51st Street Theatre [Hellinger] in 1938, shuttered after 16 performances.)
Carmen Jones has had a difficult afterlife, though. Otto Preminger made a film version in 1954, and the show was revived at City Center two years later for 22 performances. But times change, attitudes change; by the 1960’s, there were those who found this sort of thing — an established classic rewritten for an 'all-Negro cast' — uncomfortable. To Hammerstein, mind you, it must have seemed like a swell way to provide jobs for the more than 100 singers, dancers and children with whom Rose stocked the original Broadway cast, at a time when Broadway jobs for minority members were even scarcer than they are today.
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Carmen Jones was revived, seemingly out of the blue, by London's Old Vic in 1991. Under the direction of Simon Callow, it was a grand show and a surprise hit. EMI issued a CD of highlights [CDC 7 54351], with the two sets of stage leads alternating in their roles (as on the recent recording of Baz Luhrmann's
La Boheme ). This production restored a degree of dignity to
Carmen Jones 's reputation, although it seemed too chancy to bring to America. A concert version, starring Vanessa Williams, was presented last November at the Kennedy Center.
The original 1943 cast album has always provided fun listening, despite the primitive sound quality of the time. (Another notable recording of the score, a 1967 Heliodor LP starring Grace Bumbry, has yet to be transferred to CD.) Decca Broadway, which has been combing through its archives for items to reissue, has seen fit to spruce Carmen Jones up, with happy results. It doesn't sound as clean as the now out-of-print EMI disc; but that's the point. The original cast was not made up of professional singers, simply because there were no professional opportunities for an “all-Negro cast” at the time. Leading lady Muriel Smith was working in a photo-processing store; Luther (Joe) Sexton was an elevator operator; Glenn Bryant, the toreador-turned-boxer, was a New York Cop.
Carmen Jones , the original lacquered glass discs dusted off and digitized, now has fresh vitality. Smith comes out with her "Habanera" and simply seduces you. "Dat's Love," Hammerstein called it: "You go for me an' I'm taboo/ But if yore hard to get I go for you/ An' if I do, den you are through boy/ My baby, dat's de end of you!" I've always been partial to the 1943 rendition of "Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum" — the Gypsy Song — as sung by June Hawkins with drummer Cozy Cole beating out the rhythm. (Hawkins is the singer who does such a mesmerizing job with "I Had Myself a True Love" and Sleep Peaceful, Mr. Used-to-Be" on the original cast album of St. Louis Woman .) For comparison's sake, Decca has added a track of Kitty Carlisle singing "Beat Out Dat Rhythm," which — with Kitty's crystal-clear enunciation — you might call a real novelty. "My Joe," Cindy Lou's song of unrequited love, retains the power and beauty of "Je dis qui rien ne m'épouvante" ("Micaela's Air"). Hammerstein did not write the music for Carousel , of course, but I have to believe that he used this song and this song spot as inspiration for that musical's stunning "What's the Use of Wondrin'."
Russell Bennett undertook the task of reducing Bizet's orchestration to a Broadway-sized 33 pieces. Bennett was a self-confessed musical snob; Carmen Jones seems to be one of the few shows he did with music that he himself liked. He even decided to conduct it, although he quickly withdrew during the Philadelphia tryout. ("I can't say I was especially good," said Bennett. "I was not prepared for things like groups of singers upstage whose voices I couldn't even hear and who had no experience at following a conductor no matter how far or near they were.") Bennett was replaced by Joseph Littau, who did such a masterful job that he was rewarded with the baton for Carousel .
How nice to hear Carmen Jones once more, clearer and cleaner than before by far. What a fine job Hammerstein did on the piece, which from all reports was quite a stupendous entertainment. Vibrant music, yes; but vibrant spirit as well.
AND YET TO COME: Anyone Can Whistle [Sony Classical SK 86860], one of five upcoming releases in the Columbia Broadway Masterworks series. The sound, as is to be expected, is an improvement over the 1989 CD version.
What piqued my interest, though, was the presence of Sondheim at the piano for five bonus tracks. These include "I'm Like the Bluebird," the introductory song for the asylum inmates that was omitted from the original cast album (but is included on the 1995 Carnegie Hall concert recording); three long-familiar titles, the title song, "Come Play Wiz Me," and "With So Little to Be Sure Of"; and the previously unheard "The Lame, The Halt and the Blind." This last, which invites the cash-paying faithful — "only one blessing per pilgrim per ticket" — to partake of the phony miracle, is quite wonderful. "The deaf shall hear and the dumb shall speak/ The sick shall find all the succor they seek." One can understand why it was replaced by the more specific "Miracle Song"; it demonstrates how Sondheim threw out something deliciously good in favor of an extended number that enhanced the plot points.
The surprise of this CD, though, is "With So Little to Be Sure Of." No, not the one that we are familiar with; a totally different song, other than the first 12 words of the lyric and the coda. The final version is perhaps more satisfying, but this first version points us forward to the rhapsodically impassioned music Sondheim would write for the Benjamin Stone character in Follies . "The more the minutes tick away. . ." fits right into "Too Many Mornings," not melodically but emotionally; the composer seems to be breaking away from those age-old standard-form ballads of the time. The promotional material promises new liner notes from Arthur Laurents and Angela Lansbury plus "many unseen photos," which we will have to wait to see; but these added songs make this Whistle reissue even more welcome than it would otherwise be.
—Steven Suskin, author of "Broadway Yearbook 2000-2001," "Broadway Yearbook 1999-2000," "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached by e-mail at Ssuskin@aol.com.
