Something Is Missing
We’ve covered the dialogue and dance music that you’ve missed on cast recordings. We’ve mentioned the songs that you wanted to hear performed by the original performers even if they subsequently showed up on revival albums. Now, in our final look at what’s missing from cast albums, we’ll get to the very heart of the matter: songs or sequences that have never showed up on any recording.
Bill Ankenbrock gets the prize for mentioning the two greatest obscurities: “A Sense Of Love And Humor” from Anya and “Saturnalia” from Celebration. Of the latter, he wrote, “There’s never too much Jones and Schmidt.” (Indeed, Bill; I feel there hasn’t been nearly enough from a team that wrote for more than 40 years.) Cory Benway wrote, “I miss Kander and Ebb’s ‘Come’ from Kiss of the Spider Woman. I saw the show five times and each time was just blown away by the song. I regret very much that it is not on either recording, but I’m especially disappointed that Chita was not able to preserve it. No offense to Vanessa Williams, but Chita spun webs around her.” (Robert LoBiondo and Adam J. Natale also missed “Come” but didn’t indicate whom they’d prefer to hear sing it).
Ronni Krasnow, the universe’s greatest Ahrens and Flaherty fan, wrote, “It’s odd that ‘A Day for the Cat in the Hat’ has been cut from the revised Seussical but it’s on the album, while ‘Circus McGurkus’ is still in the show but not on the CD. Then there’s a sequence in A Man of No Importance called ‘First Rehearsal’ where Alfie sings a lovely lyric about how ordinary things become magic in a theater, such as ‘a lightbulb becomes a star.’ ” (That does sound nice, Ronnik!)
Some of you pointed out that the earlier a cast album was made, the more it seems to be missing. Rob Morrison noted, “In 1943, One Touch of Venus lost much of its score, including the title song and ‘Very, Very, Very’ (both sung by Paula Laurence), ‘Dr. Crippin,’ and John Boles was robbed of his chance to record ‘Westwind.’ When will the CD of the (not so) recent complete recording be released?” Rick Thompson and Tony Janicki want the rest of High Button Shoes, a 1947 hit. Jason Flum mentioned the excisions from 1954’s The Golden Apple.
But even an album made in 1969 wasn’t as complete as it might have been, as Bill No-Last Name noted:, “We only have about two-thirds of the Promenade. I would love to have the rest of it. And wouldn’t it have been nice if it had been recorded earlier in the run, while Madeline Kahn was still in the cast?” Alfonzo Tyson can go one year better and find a score that’s even more woefully under-represented: “Considering that the recording of The Me Nobody Knows is less than 40 minutes, the deletions are shameful. Where are ‘Take Hold the Crutch,’ ‘Fugue for Four Girls,’ ‘The Numbers Rap,’ ‘I Like Girls,’ ‘What Happens to Life,’ ‘Rejoice,’ ‘Children’ and ‘Flying Milk and Runaway Plates’? Not having that last one is a personal tragedy for me, because I once played Benjamin in a production.” Being in a show also influenced Jason Flum’s want-list: “Because I worked on a production of Pippin in college,” he wrote, “I feel that the whole ‘Welcome Home’ sequence and ‘Prayer for a Duck’ should be on the CD.”
Tony Janicki also demanded “More Gwen Verdon material from Can-Can, more Bert Lahr material from Two on the Aisle, and more Bobby Clark material from Mexican Hayride.” Bill No-Last-Name: “I’d like ‘If You Wind Me Up’ from Minnie’s Boys, even if the visual gag of Shelley Winters in a rabbit suit would be lost on an audio recording.” Robert Burnett groused, “Where is the thrilling center section of the title song from On the Twentieth Century (“all the service you enjoy while stationary”) and the hilarious ‘Indian Maiden’s Lament’? We can only hope that the upcoming Actors’ Fund concert will be recorded and will include these cuts.” (Bob Gutowski yearned for the former’s extra measures, too.)
Scott Cain wrote, “In Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, there’s a wonderful song called ‘The Apartment (Sunday Noon)’ that’s musically interesting and sets up the motivation for Queenie’s actions. Those people who have not seen the show really miss out on the emotional context of what caused this night to be the one to end Queenie and Burrs’ relationship. As much as I like ‘Jackie’s Last Dance,’ it doesn’t have any lyrics or dialogue, so if space limitation was a problem, the dance should have been exchanged for ‘The Apartment.'”
Jason Flum wrote, “I’m sure you’ll get tons of e-mails about this one, but I wish that they had put on disc Boq’s transformation scene from Wicked. I understand that this would have been a huge spoiler, but it could have been done as a bonus track that could be skipped.” (Robert LoBiondo also suggested it as “a secret track” and took a moment to sympathize with “Poor Michele Federer.”)
Some of you want songs that had been dropped before opening night. Mameleh wrote, “Illya, Darling lost a sprightly song that was no classic, but I do remember it fondly: ‘Take A Little Drink of Ouzo.’ Or was it ‘Have a Little Drink of Ouzo?’ ” (In fact, Mameleh, it was the former.) Grahamandme wrote, “I’d like ‘It’ to be on the next reissue of Chicago. Cut numbers are best when they’re sung by performers, not by songwriters on those dreary demo tapes that are hard to listen to more than once. And how about ‘Jump In’ from Bravo, Giovanni? The LP listed it as being on the record, which it wasn’t, but the album had a picture of the song being performed. When the CD came out, the song was no longer listed, but the booklet still features that photo.”
Robert LoBiondo requested “Come And Be My Butterfly” from Hello, Dolly! “Yes, the song was cut after opening night, but wouldn’t you like to hear this ditty?” Of course, Robert! Andrew Milner noted, “In Anyone Can Whistle, Nurse Apple gets a brief musical intro when she appears as Ze Lady From Lourdes. It’s on neither the 1964 album nor the 1995 Carnegie Hall album.”
Paul Mendenhall wrote, “No one has recorded ‘The Persuasion’ — and Camelot needs all the comedy it can get.” Steve Rosenthal wrote, “I’d like ‘A Rested Body Is a Rested Mind,’ which Dee Dee Bridgewater sang in The Wiz. What we have now on the cast album makes her performance seem shorter than it actually was.” Peter Saxe mentioned that song as well as “Promenade” from La Cage aux Folles (“It’s so joyous and sets up the local community”) and “The Story of Erik” from the Yeston-Kopit Phantom (“And there was room for it.”) Theatrebop wrote, “From Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I’d like Joanna Gleason’s short reprise of ‘What Was a Woman to Do,’ with the hilarious ‘Xanax-and-a-half’ line.” And “The Fox Hunt” from Mame was missed by Scott Linn, Peter Saxe, and Richard Skipper.
I loved Larry Blank’s suggestion that we have the title song of Applause with the section that spoofs other hit Broadway musicals. For those who missed the show on stage and TV, it contained little parodies of such numbers as “Wilkommen” and “The Bottle Dance,” leading up to a conclusion where one chorus boy sang “Oklahoma!” while the others yelled “Oh! Calcutta!”, began stripping, and showed some dorsal nudity — fittingly enough, right before the lyric “Why do we work our asses off?” (“And it was arranged by Marvin Hamlisch,” Larry pointed out.)
But the most tantalizing tidbit came from Jon Maas. “Somewhere in the vaults of RCA is Tammy Grimes’ recording of ‘I Know Now’ from 42nd Street. I was there when it was the last song recorded at 3am. It was only recorded to soothe Tammy’s ego, as we knew that the LP was running long and would never have room for it. If you ever ask Tom Shepard what was the stormiest recording session he ever endured, I bet he’ll tell you 42nd Street. He and Merrick were at each other’s throats, so much that David’s toupee was definitely standing on end.”
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
