Kiss Me Kate Original Broadway Cast recording

Today's entry is Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, the original cast recording from 1949. That makes the first "repeat" performer on my entries to be the unlikely Lisa Kirk, who was in Mack & Mabel and originated the role of Lois/Bianca in Kate.

And I get another one of my favorite singers, Alfred Drake. You probably won't have to wait too many more days to hear me wax rhapsodic again about Mr. Drake and the roles he sang--Curly in Oklahoma, Hajj in Kismet, and the "Maurice Chevalier" role in Gigi. Ooh, I just checked out Drake's credits on the Broadway database and he did a bunch of Gilbert & Sullivan and was Macheath in Duke Ellington's musical Beggar's Holiday.

I've never seen Kiss Me Kate on stage, but I have seen the film. I really only remember the weird camera angles to try to make the 3-D affects for the film. And Ann Miller's whirling dervish tap number at the opening of the film. But I'm here to take about this cast album...

The extensive notes to this CD reissue spend a lot of time taking about the dealings between composer Cole Porter and book writer Bella Spewack, which didn't really captivate me (this back story, I mean, not the book of the musical).

Kiss Me Kate
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Book by Bella and Samuel Spewack
Originally released by Columbia Records in 1949
Reissued on CD by Columbia Masterworks in 1998
Cast: Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk, Harold Lang

Mack & Mabel Original Cast Album

It's hard not to like Jerry Herman musicals, the music is generally so sunny with enough soaring ballads to keep the fluff from being too much. With that mindset, I put the original Broadway cast album of Mack & Mabel into the machine. I've never seen this show on stage. The liner notes to the CD reissue give a long explanation as to why it's rarely (never?) staged. Do musicals about movie-making ever work? I can only think of one other at the moment--Sunset Boulevard.

That said, there's a lot to like on this cast album. Robert Preston is so good at making that sprechstimme style work--finding a balance between singing tones and speaking tones. It's so easy to think of him in this type of role (along with The Music Man and Victor/Victoria), I find it incredible that his credits also include originating the role of King Henry in The Lion in Winter on Broadway. I will forever associate that role with Peter O'Toole in the film. Nathan Lane seems to me a modern version of Preston, not a great singer, but a great singing performer.

It's nice to remember that Bernadette Peters was a Broadway star long before her association with Sondheim and Sunday in the Park with George. She, too, has a distinctive style all her own that works for her--a kind of cupie doll voice to go with the cupie doll face and curls. And "Time Heals Everything" is a great song, well sung.

The third singing member of the cast is Lisa Kirk, who was the original Bianca in Kiss Me Kate, more than 25 years before Mack & Mabel. She sings a couple of upbeat, lighter hearted songs--some of which seem to have actual dance breaks--rather old-fashioned for a musical from the 70s. Perhaps one of the reasons the show didn't work was that it was out of its time.

Mack & Mabel Original Cast Album
Music and Lyrics by Jerry Herman
Originally released on ABC Records
MCA Classics reissue on CD
Recorded October, 1974; CD reissued in 1992
Cast: Robert Preston, Bernadette Peters, Lisa Kirk, Stanley Simmonds