They're the Top

For those of us of a certain age, the Columbia Masterworks brand name will always hold a certain fascination. Back when recorded music was available only on black plastic with a hole in the middle, the Columbia Masterworks label was the sign of quality for the collector of theatre music. The label offered original cast albums not only of current shows but also, as the label matured, Broadway classics like Porgy and Bess and The Merry Widow recorded in the studio with all-star casts.

The many upheavals in the music business put some strains on the Masterworks line. In the conversion from analog to digital, many great recording winked out of existence, maintaining a precarious existence only on tapes dubbed from the original LPs. Some of us wondered whether or not the vast memory banks of the Masterworks collection might suffer a permanent lobotomy and be lost forever.

Ironically, the same digital revolution that doomed so many of those great recordings has, in its latest turning, led to their revival. The popularity of digital downloads – a format that the big music corporations fought tooth and nail before finally succumbing to the inevitable and embracing it – has made it possible for material with slim profit margins to emerge (blinking, metaphorically, at the light) from the No Commercial Potential dungeon.

I’ve finally found a few moments to take a dip in the torrent of reissues that Sony (the current owner of the old Columbia catalog, among others) is now releasing under the Masterworks Broadway label, and I’m happy to say the results are largely delightful. I’ll be commenting on them in a series of posts here. I’m going to start, appropriately, with the release that takes us back to the earliest days of recorded sound: Originals - Musical Comedy 1909-1935.

I’m not sure what the target demographic might be for this collection, but whatever it is, I’m right in the middle of it. My vaudeville cabaret show, Just a Song at Twilight, includes some of the tunes featured in this collection and these gems from early years of the last century have been an integral part of my musical DNA since childhood. Hearing them now is rather like encountering and old friend after a long absence.

Originally released in 1968 on RCA, Originals offers a Who’s Who of the vaudeville and early Broadway era: Blanche Ring (“Rings on My Fingers”, introduced in 1909 in The Yankee Girl), Al Jolson (“That Haunting Melody” a little oddity from Vera Violetta), Fanny Brice (her hit “Second Hand Rose” from 1921), Eddie Cantor (“Hungry Women” from Whoopee) and the redoubtable Sophie Tucker (her signature tune “Some of These Days”), among others. The great torch singer Helen Morgan is represented by that weepy classic “Why Was I Born? (from Sweet Adeline) and Eleanor Powell by the cheerful “What a Wonderful World” (not to be confused with the much later Sam Cooke hit) from At Home Abroad.

Nora Bayes is here as well, but for a change she’s playing second banana to co-star Jack Norworth (the second of her five husbands) in “Turn Off Your Light, Mr. Moon-Man” (1911, from Little Miss Fix-It), a kind of response to their first hit “Shine On Harvest Moon” from 1908.

It’s all wonderful, but for me the greatest discoveries were American and British vaudeville star Elsie Janis’s “Fo' De Lawd's Sake, Play a Waltz” (from The Slim Princess) and an odd medley of the title number and “The Rangers' Song” from Rio Rita sung in florid period style by J. Harold Murray.

The Janis number is an amusing catalog song in which she rattles off all the contemporary hits that compel her to get up and dance and from which she needs a waltz for a bit of relief. If you can correctly identify all of them, you are a fellow dyed-in-the-wool vintage Broadway fan – which means you’re likely to be equally pleased by the glimpse at a bygone era offered by the Rio Rita medley. Like most of the shows represented in this collection, Rio Rita (which made stars of the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey) has vanished from the stage (although the 1929 film version might still be available out there somewhere). For the fan of musical theatre archeology, hearing selections from them in loving digital restorations is the closest you can get to time travel.

Originals - Musical Comedy 1909-1935 was released in January 2011 as a digital download from iTunes and other major music providers and as an Arkivmusic.com disc-on-demand with cover art. Here’s a complete track list, along with links to more information about each one. Jump into the Wayback Machine and check it out.

I've Got Rings On My Fingers (from 'The Midnight Sons')	Blanche Ring
Turn Off Your Light, Mr. Moon-Man (from 'Little Miss Fix-It')	Jack Norworth, Nora Bayes
That Haunting Melody (from 'Vera Violetta')	Al Jolson
Fo' De Lawd's Sake, Play a Waltz (from 'The Slim Princess')	Elsie Janis
Alice Blue Gown (from 'Irene')	Edith Day
Second Hand Rose (from Ziegfeld Follies of 1921')	Fanny Brice
Mr. Gallagher And Mr. Shean (from Ziegfeld Follies of 1922')	Al Shean, Ed Gallagher
Manda (from 'Chocolate Dandies')	Noble Sissle
Like He Loves Me (from 'Oh, Please!')	Beatrice Lillie
Rio Rita and The Rangers' Song (from 'Rio Rita')	J. Harold Murray
Sometimes I'm Happy (from 'Hit the Deck')	Louise Groody, Charles King
Hungry Women (from 'Whoopee')	Eddie Cantor
Why Was I Born? (from 'Sweet Adeline')	Helen Morgan
You're The Top (from 'Anything Goes')	Cole Porter
You And The Night And The Music (from 'Revenge With Music')	Libby Holman
What A Wonderful World (from 'At Home Abroad')	Eleanor Powell