CDs: Harper Remembered

Barbara Cook's longtime accompanist, arranger, and close friend Wally Harper died about a year ago. Tribute is the first Cook album in decades for which the singer was alone responsible for the song selections, as Harper had long helped her with such decisions.

As a tribute to Harper, Cook sings four songs he composed, all of which she has previously recorded. There's "The World Must Be Bigger Than An Avenue," which Harper wrote for Debbie Reynolds to sing in the 1973 Broadway revival of Irene, along with "I Never Knew That Men Cried," "Another Mr. Right Left," and "Sing a Song With Me," which, combined with Irving Berlin's "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," makes for a touching finale to the new CD.

Since 2005 is the centennial year of Harold Arlen's birth, Cook is also paying tribute to that great composer by including "I've Got the World on a String," "Last Night When We Were Young," and "Out of This World." Cook hadn't sung the latter song since performing it at New York's Blue Angel nightclub in 1950.

Cook is also paying tribute to friend and fellow cabaret great Bobby Short, who died in March of this year. She sings "Bojangles of Harlem" and "Nashville Nightingale," two songs Short sang on Ben Bagley Revisited albums Kern and Gershwin respectively on which Cook also appeared.

In addition to Harper to whom the album is dedicated, Arlen, and Short, Cook also salutes her Gay Life composer Arthur Schwartz with three songs from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, "I'm Like a New Broom," "I'll Buy You a Star," and "Make the Man Love Me," the latter Cook's old audition song.

Harper's arrangements are heard on the latter song and on the Harper material. Otherwise, Michael Kosarin is the arranger and accompanist, and the attractive orchestrations are by Danny Troob.

Cook opens with a relaxed, euphoric "I've Got the World on a String" and a sunny "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here," the latter from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Then comes a dreamy "Out of This World" and a wistful "Last Night When We Were Young." Those are followed by the satisfying Harper trio, the jaunty Short pair, and the lovely Brooklyn trio. After the finale combo of the two "Sing"s, Cook offers as an encore an exquisite "Smile."

Throughout, Cook demonstrates the mastery of song delivery that we have come to associate with her. She remains the consummate vocalist, and the new CD is yet another superb accomplishment.

FOREVER PLAID DRG

A high-concept novelty revue and jukebox musical, Forever Plaid offers a fictional quartet of young men inspired by their '50s idols, the vocal groups the Four Aces, the Four Lads, the Four Freshmen, and the Hi-Lo's. In 1964, the Four Plaids land their first major gig, the chance to perform at the Airport Hilton cocktail bar. En route to this engagement, their car is broadsided by a bus filled with teens on their way to witness the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The teens emerge unscathed, but the Plaids are killed instantly. But they're allowed to come back to earth to perform the show they never got to do in life.

Written, directed, and choreographed by Stuart Ross Starmites, Radiant Baby, Forever Plaid opened in 1990 at Steve McGraw's cabaret space on West 72nd Street, and played there for almost 2,000 performances. Forever Plaid was seen all over the U.S. and Canada, with runs of several years in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Diego, and Minneapolis. And the show was also done in London, Japan, and Germany.

In 1995, Forever Plaid opened at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas, eventually moving across the Strip to the Gold Coast Hotel and Casino's show room. Plaid has played 4,000 performances in Vegas, and DRG's new, fifteenth-anniversary recording was recorded in Vegas in June 2005.

RCA made the 1990 off-Broadway cast recording, with the quartet of Stan Chandler, David Engel, Jason Graae, and Guy Stroman. The new recording features five singers, one of whom apparently alternates with three of the other vocalists. J. Gregory Davis, Bruce Ewing, Douglas Frank, Mark Perkins, and Dale Sandish are just as vocally assured as the New York cast. But because the individual members of the Vegas company are less distinctive singers than the originals, the Vegas group may actually sound more like the real thing than did the originals.

The two Forever Plaid cast recordings are more or less the same length, with the new set including one sequence "Catering Medley" not on the first recording. Neither recording features much of the between-song patter.

Because both versions employ the same arrangements, by the late James Raitt, the new version doesn't sound radically different from the original. Nor does this score, which consists entirely of pre-existing compositions, allow for much dramatic interpretation. So if one possesses the 1990 RCA recording, the new set isn't required, even if it offers a respectable performance.

THE MUSICALITY OF STROUSE JAY

In the last two or three years, JAY has issued ten Musicality CDs, each devoted to the work of a musical-theatre songwriter or team. The artists saluted thus far are Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, Lerner and Loewe, Porter, Berlin, Kern, Lloyd Webber, Sondheim, and Novello. Each CD consists of a combination of pre-existing tracks from JAY recitals and cast recordings plus newly recorded performances.

The latest release in the series is devoted to the work of Charles Strouse. There are old tracks from the cast albums of Nick and Nora, Nightingale, and I and Albert, and also from solo discs by Susan Egan "How Lovely to Be a Woman", Liz Robertson "Dance a Little Closer", and Sally Ann Triplett "Blame It on the Summer Night".

But there are a number of new tracks, three of which are of particular interest. Ron Raines offers an operatic rendition of the soaring "My Star" from Marty, the film adaptation that seems to have stalled since its premiere production in Boston a couple of seasons ago, with John C. Reilly in the title role. Karen Ziemba does well with the jaunty "Home" from the still-unproduced stage musical version of the film The Night They Raided Minsky's. Then there's "Winners," a new song written for a 2003 Greenwich, England revival of Golden Boy, performed by Alana Maria, who introduced it in that production.

All three of these selections indicate that Strouse has not lost his pronounced gift for theatrical melody. And there are other new tracks as well. Husband and wife David Green and Judy Kaye offer a touching rendition of that All American beauty, "Once Upon a Time." Matt Bogart takes the title role in ...It's Superman's "Strongest Man in the World." And from the still-unreleased, complete JAY recording of Annie, there's the film number "Let's Go to the Movies," led by the recording's Grace and Warbucks, Ruthie Henshall and Ron Raines.