Similar Albums:
- Artist:
Various Artists - Release Date: May 21, 2002
- Total Time: 76:53
- Type: Collection (various artists), Cast (Broadway, television or movie)
- Genre: Soundtrack
Review
British reissue label Pearl's Ultimate series of albums on great Broadway songwriters is devoted to digging up contemporaneous recordings of songs from Broadway and West End productions, usually performed by the people who sang them on-stage. "Ultimate" may not be the right word for the result, if only because there is a catch-as-catch-can quality to the available material; until the 1940s there were no comprehensive recordings made of Broadway shows by the original casts. But the material is nevertheless of interest to show music fans. The first volume of the Irving Berlin series traced Berlin's theater career from 1910 to 1915. This second volume picks up in 1917 with the title song from a nightclub show called Dance and Grow Thin performed by the popular team of Van & Schenck, who appeared in it. Then it skips forward to the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 for several well-known songs, notably "You'd Be Surprised," sung by Eddie Cantor, and "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," sung by Ziegfeld mainstay John Steel, the first of his eight selections on the disc. Most of the rest of the album is taken up with songs first heard in either the Ziegfeld Follies or Berlin's own Music Box Revue shows of the 1920s. There are standards, such as "Say It With Music" and the concluding song, "Blue Skies," from the 1926 musical Betsy, but most of the songs are little known three-quarters of a century later. The performers include such stars of the day as the Brox Sisters, Beatrice Lillie, and Whispering Jack Smith. Largely drawn from the acoustic era of recording, the tracks are sometimes primitive sounding, but the exuberance of the performances belies that. Still, this is as much a historical document as a disc to be listened to for pleasure. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music GuideTracks
| Track Title | Composers | Performers | Time |
| Dance and Grow Thin (for the revue Dance and Grow Thin) | Irving Berlin, George W. Meyer | (2:31) | |
| You'd Be Surprised, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1919") | Irving Berlin | Eddie Cantor | (3:26) |
| A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1919") | Irving Berlin | John Steel | (2:40) |
| I've Got My Captain Working for Me Now, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of | Irving Berlin | Eddie Cantor | (2:50) |
| Mandy (The Sterling Silver Moon), song (from "Yip-Yip-Yaphank") | Irving Berlin | (2:57) | |
| Someone Else May Be There When I'm Gone, song | Irving Berlin | (3:30) | |
| You'd Be Surprised, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1919") | Irving Berlin | (3:28) | |
| The Girls of My Heart, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1920") | Irving Berlin | John Steel | (2:53) |
| Tell Me, Little Gypsy, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1920")~Excerpt | Irving Berlin | (2:48) | |
| Bells, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1920")~Excerpt | Irving Berlin | John Steel | (3:32) |
| Tell Me, Little Gypsy, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1920") | Irving Berlin | (3:17) | |
| Tell Me, Little Gypsy, song (from "Ziegfeld Follies of 1920") | Irving Berlin | John Steel, |
(2:59) |
| The Schoolhouse Blues, song (from "Music Box Revue of 1921-1922") | Irving Berlin | John Steel, |
(3:18) |
| Say it with Music, song (from "Music Box Revue 1921-1922") | Irving Berlin | John Steel, |
(3:16) |
| Will She Come from the East?, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1922-1 | Irving Berlin | (3:13) | |
| Lady of the Evening, song (from "Music Box Revue 1922 -1923") | Irving Berlin | John Steel, |
(2:54) |
| Lady of the Evening, song (from "Music Box Revue 1922 -1923") | Irving Berlin | (2:58) | |
| Bring on the Pepper, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1922-1923") | Irving Berlin | John Steel, |
(2:40) |
| Bring on the Pepper, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1922-1923") | Irving Berlin | Grace Moore, |
(3:13) |
| Little Butterfly, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1923-1924") | Irving Berlin | Grace Moore, |
(3:20) |
| Learn to Do the Strut, song (from "Music Box Revue 1922 -1923") | Irving Berlin | Grace Moore, |
(3:27) |
| An Orange Grove in California, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1923-192 | Irving Berlin | (3:11) | |
| Listening, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1924-1925") | Irving Berlin | (2:57) | |
| Listening, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1924-1925") | Irving Berlin | (2:19) | |
| Tell Her in the Spring Time, song (from "The Music Box Revue of 1924-19 | Irving Berlin | (3:16) |
