Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 13

120793bk Blondes 31/3/06 8:14 PM Page 2 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 13. Mamie is Mimi 3:03 21. On A Sunday By the Sea 2:37 24. Nobody Ever Died for Dear Old Original 1949 Cast Recording Honi Coles, Cholly Atkins & Chorus Phil Silvers & Chorus Rutgers 2:36 Phil Silvers & Male Chorus 1. Overture 3:27 14. Homesick Blues 3:07 22. You’re My Girl 3:20 Orchestra Carol Channing,Yvonne Adair, Alice Pearce, Mark Dawson & Lois Lee Music by Jule Styne • Lyrics by Sammy Cahn Jack McCauley, Eric Brotherson & 23. I Still Get Jealous 3:26 Orchestra conducted by Milton Rosenstock 2. It’s High Time 2:46 George S. Irving RCA Victor 45-0037/40 in album K-10; Yvonne Adair & Chorus Jack McCauley & Nanette Fabray 15. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1:03 mx D7-VB-1710/7 3. Bye Bye Baby 3:16 Carol Channing & Jack McCauley Recorded 12 October 1947, New York Jack McCauley & Carol Channing with Chorus 16. Finale: Keeping Cool with Coolidge Transfers & Production: David Lennick • Digital Restoration: Graham Newton 2:14 Special thanks to Anthony Middleton 4. A Little Girl From Little Rock 3:03 Yvonne Adair & Chorus Cover image from Mary Evans Picture Library Carol Channing Music by Jule Styne • Lyrics by Leo Robin 5. Just A Kiss Apart 2:59 Orchestra conducted by Milton Rosenstock Eric Brotherson with Yvonne Adair Columbia 4598/4604-M in album MM-895 6. I Love What I’m Doing 2:10 mx CO 42536/49, LP album ML 4290 Yvonne Adair Recorded 19-20 December 1949, New York 7. Scherzo 1:08 Orchestra High Button Shoes Original 1947 Cast Recording Also available in the Naxos Broadway Musicals series ... 8. It’s Delightful Down in Chile 3:17 Rex Evans & Carol Channing with Men’s 17. Can’t You Just See Yourself 3:13 Chorus Mark Dawson & Lois Lee 9. You Say You Care 3:25 18. There’s Nothing Like a Model ‘T’ Yvonne Adair & Eric Brotherson 3:06 Phil Silvers, Nanette Fabray, Lois Lee, 10. I’m A’Tingle, I’m A’Glow 2:26 Jack McCauley, Johnny Stewart & Chorus George S. Irving with Yvonne Adair & Carol Channing 19. Get Away For a Day in the Country 2:58 11. Sunshine 3:19 Jack McCauley, Johnny Stewart & Chorus Yvonne Adair, Eric Brotherson & Chorus 20. Papa, Won’t You Dance With Me? 2:54 12. Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend Nanette Fabray, Jack McCauley & Chorus 2:57 8.120786 8.120789 8.120792 Carol Channing These titles are not for retail sale in the USA 5 8.120793 6 8.120793 120793bk Blondes 31/3/06 8:14 PM Page 1 Styne and Cahn headed east in 1944 to write a reserved for something not preserved on this Bye Baby, I Love What I’m Doing and than life. It’s a musical, for crying out loud. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Broadway musical. Called Glad To See You!,it recording. Keeping Cool With Coolidge. This girl will be the blonde to end all blondes.’ Original Cast 1949 • Music by Jule Styne • Lyrics by Leo Robin proved to be a horrible disaster (directed by Choreographer Jerome Robbins put But, even better, Styne and Robin know And she was. Carol Channing was her Busby Berkeley on the way down), closing out together an inspired ‘Mack Sennett Ballet’ that how to spoof the period’s various crazes – name and she helped carry the show to glory High Button Shoes of town in Philadelphia. captured the magic of silent movie comedy to from Latin dancing to Fitness mania – with when it opened to unanimous rave reviews on Original Cast 1947 • Music by Jule Styne • Lyrics by Sammy Cahn The songwriting duo licked their wounds perfection and Styne composed some numbers like It’s Delightful Down in Chile 9 December 1949. for a while, but were lured back a few years magnificently witty music for it. and I’m A’Tingle, I’m A’Glow. Strangely enough, it ran 740 performances, later to write the score for High Button Shoes. All these positive elements together And best of all, they understood how to only thirteen more than High Button Shoes, For nearly fifty years, Jule Styne was the permanently and sent him from the concert Based on a book by Stephen Longstreet combined to make the show that opened on create songs that would perfectly define Loos’ but of the two shows, Gentlemen Prefer composer who best represented ‘the sound of stage to the orchestra pit of the local burlesque called The Sisters Liked Them Handsome, this 9 October 1947 a 727 performance hit. unique creation, Lorelei Lee. Blondes is the one that remains enshrined in Broadway’. He wasn’t the most successful, houses. (When he wrote the score for Gypsy was the kind of nostalgic musical looking back Cahn longed to return to his family in Los A Little Girl From Little Rock and memory as a classic. although he had his share of hits, and he wasn’t forty years later, he didn’t have to do any to a simpler time which was so popular in the Angeles, but Styne loved having a Broadway hit Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend are still There are several reasons for this. One is the most consistent, because he switched research.) years following the Second World War. Nearly and wanted another. two of the great musical comedy songs. Not the subsequent 1953 film version starring collaborators the way some guys change their He went on to become a popular player thirty such shows, in fact, opened over a period So he was in a receptive mood when they only are they infectiously melodic numbers Marilyn Monroe, which firmly planted the role, socks. But there was something in the and conductor for dance bands in the Windy of five years. asked him to join the creative team for filled with sure-fire comedy lines, but they also the title and the songs in the public’s mind. distinctive, brassy bleat of his tunes that City, but after he penned a popular hit called This one was set in New Brunswick, New Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. give us a perfect portrait of that blonde bundle The other is the fact that Channing kept eventually made him the go-to guy for that “Sunday” in 1926, he started to dream of bigger Jersey in 1913, the home of Rutgers University. Anita Loos had written the original novel in of avarice called Lorelei. Lorelei front and centre for many years, even special New York sound. things. Its patched-together plot mainly deals with the 1925 at the height of the Jazz Age that it Styne even found the ideal person to play bringing her back to Broadway in a rewritten ‘Whenever I think of a Broadway musical’, Early in the 1930s he moved to New York to antics of con-man Harrison Floy and how they mocked with a jaundiced but affectionate eye. the role for them. ‘I told them about a girl I version called Lorelei in 1974. said Michael Feinstein,‘I hear a Jule Styne find he could only get work as a vocal coach. impact on the happy Longstreet family. In it, she created one of the great comedic had seen in a revue called Lend An Ear and Perhaps best of all, these back-to-back hits overture in my mind’. But he did so well that in 1938, he was sent to The show’s book by Longstreet is flimsy figures of the 20th century, Lorelei Lee, the said they had to see her.’ launched the career of Jule Styne on Broadway And the two shows featured on this Hollywood to instruct and provide special even by the standards of the period and it was original gold-digger. Loos at first was reluctant, because Styne’s and the next time you remember Bells Are recording – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and material for child star Shirley Temple. doctored heavily by director George Abbott. It’s Loos was joining up with playwright Joseph candidate was on the tall side and she had Ringing, Gypsy, Funny Girl or any of his other High Button Shoes – are the ones that made his He was slaving away at Republic Studios, probably the main reason it has never had a Fields to write the book and they wanted Styne always seen Lorelei as diminutive, casting it great scores, think back on the pair of reputation on the Great White Way in the late home of the B-Movies, when he got paired up major revival, despite a genuinely tuneful score to provide the music. that way in fact in a previous non-musical stage nostalgia-based musicals on this recording that 1940s. with Frank Loesser. In 1941, they wrote the by Styne and Cahn, that features such gems as ‘I said yes instantly’, he recalled years later. version. made it all possible. He was born Jules Stein to a poor family in smash hit “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You,” Papa, Won’t you Dance With Me? and I Still ‘I had been playing piano in the clubs and ‘Look,’said Styne,‘you don’t want to do it London, England on 31 December 1905. In and continued to turn out winners, until Styne Get Jealous. dance bands back then. I knew that period. I the way you did before. You got to do it bigger Richard Ouzounian 1912, they relocated to Chicago, where young switched over to Sammy Cahn as his lyricist.

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