Obscure Recordings: Music for Pleasure
In the field of musical theatre, Music for Pleasure's releases were studio casts of musicals, both classic and recent, mostly American but a few English. The performers were taken from the stable of regular British musical theatre performers, with an occasional American thrown in. The recordings did not necessarily feature the original show orchestrations or show order, and were often missing a song or two. Sometimes a principal singer performs the songs of more than one character in a single show. But if there were some notably weak supporting performances, the leads on these recordings were generally solid.
Selecting the most notorious Music for Pleasure show disc is easy: Kay Medford in Gypsy. Recorded when Medford was enjoying a modicum of fame from her appearance in the film version of another Jule Styne backstage musical, Funny Girl, the Music for Pleasure Gypsy offers a star who is simply overparted. While Medford's dramatic instincts are sure, she's simply not up to the vocal demands of the score. And some of her singing is downright unpleasant, most notably a distressing final note in "Rose's Turn." Medford's Gypsy is perhaps the only Music for Pleasure show release that American fans tended to collect.
Speaking of Funny Girl, that's the most disappointing of all the show titles in the Music for Pleasure catalogue. MFP's Funny Girl is the only full-length recording of the show score aside from the Barbra Streisand/Broadway recording. So it would have been a great opportunity to record one of the other major Fannys, like Mimi Hines, Marilyn Michaels, or Lainie Kazan. Instead, the Music for Pleasure Funny Girl went to Julie Dawn, a frequent studio singer with few stage credits. Dawn offers an unidiomatic, weakly sung performance of those great Funny Girl songs, so the LP ranks as a sadly missed opportunity.
Also disappointing is Music for Pleasure's Hello, Dolly! This one stars in the title role a wonderful actress, Beryl Reid, who was, at the time of the recording, triumphing in London and New York in the play The Killing of Sister George and winning a Tony for the latter engagement. But Reid, a beloved English actress, wasn't much of a musical performer, and while her Dolly isn't a total washout, it's not well sung. For another bargain label, Reid recorded a studio Mame, a score she's even less suited to. Music for Pleasure's Dolly! does boast one distinguished musical theatre performer, however, and that's Patricia Routledge Darling of the Day, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, "Keeping Up Appearances".
Routledge offers an operatic account of Mrs. Molloy, including an elegant "Ribbons Down My Back." And Routledge is to be found on two other Music for Pleasure discs, as the Mother Abbess on The Sound of Music and on one of the best MFPs, Kiss Me, Kate, where she's paired with another MFP mainstay, David Holliday. Holliday is too little known in both England and the U.S. You may have heard him on the London cast recordings of Sail Away and No Strings or the Broadway album of Coco. Although his Broadway work was limited in addition to Coco, he was a matinee Quixote in Man of La Mancha and appeared in Music Is, Holliday possessed one of the finest male show voices of the '60s and '70s, and the combination of the superbly cast Holliday and Routledge makes MFP's Kiss Me, Kate disc worth owning, even with all of the other Kate discs available.
Holliday played Tony during the run of the first London West Side Story, and Music for Pleasure preserved Holliday's Tony on two separate MFP West Side Story LPs, one featuring the vibrant Dianne Todd a U.S. national tour Eliza Doolittle, the other pairing Holliday with West End regular Jill Martin the replacement Eliza in the first London My Fair Lady revival. Holliday also delivers a fine "Soliloquy" on Music for Pleasure's Carousel, one of five Rodgers and Hammerstein shows that got the MFP treatment.
Holliday sings the male lead on one of Music for Pleasure's few made-for-LP musicals, Cinderella, with original music by Cyril Ornadel Pickwick. In the title role is another Music for Pleasure regular, the delightful Cheryl Kennedy. Kennedy's West End credits include 1776 and the 1968 revival of The Boy Friend. In this country, she's probably best known for being forced to withdraw from the 1981 Rex Harrison revival of My Fair Lady when her voice gave out during Broadway previews. Kennedy's other Music for Pleasure discs include Carousel as Carrie, Oklahoma! as Ado Annie, Mary Poppins like Cinderella, The Boy Friend, and Fair Lady, another Julie Andrews role, and Charlie Girl.
The latter is a studio cast recording of a then-current London hit, one that was famous for its long run despite negative reviews. The MFP Charlie Girl is headlined by England's beloved star of '30s movie musicals, Jessie Matthews, in the role created on stage by another popular English star, Anna Neagle. But the most interesting performer on MFP's Charlie Girl is Anne Hart, an exciting belter whose only other known recording is the London cast recording of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where she sings the role of Dorothy.
Other British musicals that got Music for Pleasure LPs are The Arcadians a turn-of-the-century comic operetta fantasy with a wonderful score, Bless the Bride a '40s West End smash, the late-'60s Drury Lane show The Four Musketeers, Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet, and the World War I London smash Chu Chin Chow. Three other British musicals included in the series may rank as international hits: Half a Sixpence, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and, of course, Oliver! The Joseph CD is excellent, featuring in the title role Paul Jones, who played the show extensively, and none other than lyricist Tim Rice singing the role of the Narrator, in the days before it became a role for women.
In addition to Mary Poppins, such films as Doctor Doolittle, High Society, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers got MFP studio sets. And On the Town also qualifies for inclusion here, for Music for Pleasure chose to record the movie score, including such songs as "Prehistoric Man," "Main Street," "You're Awful," and "Count on Me."
In addition to David Holliday in West Side Story, we should note a few other Music for Pleasure studio discs that preserve stage performances. The label's Camelot stars Paul Daneman, who followed Laurence Harvey in the London production of that show. One of the best Music for Pleasure show LPs is My Fair Lady, and that's because it stars Anne Rogers, who replaced Julie Andrews in the original London version, and Tony Britton, who starred as Higgins in the 1980 London revival. And MFP's Oliver! features long-time West End Nancy Nicolette Roeg, who is grand.
One of the finest performances captured on any of these MFP LPs is the King and I Anna of June Bronhill Robert and Elizabeth, the glorious Australian soprano who died in January of this year. Just to hear the spin Bronhill puts on a phrase like "suddenly I'm bright and breezy" is to know you're in the presence of a special singer. Bronhill's King is Inia Te Wiata, the Maori vocalist who starred in London's The Most Happy Fella. And let's not forget to mention that Music for Pleasure issued not one but two King and I LPs, the other starring Jessie Matthews.
If you have other recordings of these titles, are these Music for Pleasure versions a must? Some of them are fairly negligible, but most of them offer at least one worthwhile principal singer. And no study of musical-theatre recordings is complete without mentioning these MFPs.
Among the other Music for Pleasure titles not already mentioned: Fiddler on the Roof Bernard Spear; a combination on a single LP of Adler and Ross's The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees; and a pair of Ivor Novello double features.