Promises, Promises--Original Broadway Cast Album

More Jerry Orbach, please. Okay, let's listen to Promises, Promises, the Burt Bacharach show based on film The Apartment. Burt Bachrach? Of the 60s pop songs? Didn't he just right for Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick? Well, no, apparently he also wrote this show with lyric-writer Hal David, book-writer Neil Simon, and produced by David Merrick.

This score is more than pop-twinged. It is pure pop, and pop of the 1960s. I don't mean that in a bad way, I merely point it out to put the rest of what I'm about to say into some sort of context. Singing traditional musical theater songs is very different from singing pop songs. Not that I sing much of either, but that is my impression. This was a time of tremendous change in the music industry as a whole and for Broadway too. Other 1968 musicals include Hair, Richard Rodgers' No Strings, and 1776. Include Promises, Promises in the mix and you've got some very different styles of musicals. It must have been a challenge for singers to morph into whatever musical style was being asked of them, or for producers to find singers versed in the musical style called for by each score. It probably still is.

To my ears, not much of the singing in Promises, Promises is successful. Much of it sounds under pitch. Even the wonderful Jerry Orbach, who is the most successful singer on this cast album, is sometimes under pitch. Listen to "A Pretty Young Girl Like You" and you'll hear what I mean. Jill O'Hara is more successful than many of the men in her singing, particularly the best known number from the score "I'll Never Fall in Love Again."

Promises, Promises
Music by Burt Bachrach
Lyrics by Hal David
Book by Neil Simon
Opened in 1968
Cast: Jerry Orbach, Jill O'Hara, Donna McKechnie, Edward Winter, Marian Mercer, A Larry Haines.

Carnival Original Broadway Cast Album on CD

I hear you collectively asking "What happened to listening to cast albums, Michael? All your musical entries since July 12th have been musicals for film or television captured on DVD. Isn't the point of your Year to recapture the magic that listening to cast albums first gave you?"

Well, I have heard your queries and can respond. Getting DVDs through Netflix has been easier than finding recordings. All of the cast albums I've listened to so far have been owned by me. I'm determined to spend my musical money this Year seeing shows live, rather than buying additional cast albums, so I'm meting out the recordings I have left in my meager collection and looking into what the Chicago Public Library may have to offer for my listening pleasure.

In the meantime, I have listened to the cast album of Bob Merrill's Carnival, starring favorite song and dance man Jerry Orbach and crystalline-voice Anna Maria Alberghetti.

Carnival was one of the first musicals I saw live on stage, in a high school production that featured my baby-sitter. My guess is it was 1976 or '77. I remember nothing about it, except that the girl who played Lili (not my baby-sitter) had her arm in a cast, and I was uncertain if that was part of the story or if the girl just had a broken arm and they needed to "go on with the show." In reading through the byzantine description of how the story became the musical, and the plot of the musical, it's no wonder I don't remember much.

I have heard the most famous song from the score "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" too often and find it rather cloying at this point. The treat of discovery, though, is most of the rest of the music, which runs the gamut of styles without ever becoming predictable. The best songs of the score, for me, are "Her Face" and "She's My Love." These are Broadway baritone anthems, and I can't believe they're not sung more often. The Mel Torme version of "Her Face", presented as one of the CD bonus tracks, is over-produced and does no favor to the song. One delight of the bonus tracks is the jazz trombone choir version of "Mira" by J.J. Johnson, which has a slightly N'awlins funeral feel to it.

Bob Merrill appeared previously in my Year as the lyricist for Funny Girl, and I find it interesting that he was also a composer. Are there many Broadway composers who have written lyrics for other composer's music? I can only think of Stephen Sondheim.

Carnival
Music and Lyrics by Bob Merrill
Book by Michael Stewart
Original Broadway Cast Album on CD
Recorded in 1961; reissued with additional bonus tracks in 1989
Cast: Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jerry Orbach, Kaye Ballard, Pierre Olaf, James Mitchell