Search - Various Artists :: It's Always Fair Weather

If You Love Musicals, You Should Have This!

Sandy McLendon | Atlanta, GA USA | 06/22/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This amazing Rhino CD is not only a rare soundtrack for your collection, it's head and shoulders above most soundtrack releases. Although much of this CD's material has been released before on LP, Rhino went back to the original 1954-1955 stereo magnetic masters for this version (except for three tracks taken from the three-track composite master of the film itself, due to deterioration of the mag masters for those songs). There are outtakes galore, and even Betty Comden's and Adolph Green's demo tracks, with Andre Previn on piano, recorded to "sell" the movie's songs to M-G-M brass when the film was being planned. There's one track that is an amazing rarity- a temporary piano track for a number performed by Michael Kidd, "Jack and the Space Giants". This song was filmed to the track heard on the CD, but a final orchestration was never done, because the number was cut before the movie was even previewed, and therefore never needed to be dubbed. For those who have been curious about this number for so many years, the track answers a big question- "Should this have been cut?" On hearing it, you'll understand why the sequence wasn't used.Sound is clean and lush- surprisingly fresh-sounding for analog stereo magnetic recordings of the early 1950s- but those who are accustomed to the way this material sounds on film should understand that these are the original session recordings, with some artifacts of performance that were "cleaned up" in the dubbing process. There's the occasional chair scraping, and page turning, and throat being cleared- just as it happened all those years ago.I do want to point out one glitch in the liner notes, which are, for the most part, excellent. For some reason, Dolores Gray's name is misspelled throughout, as "Grey". Since the liner notes also reproduce four original 1955 movie posters and ads with the correct spelling, I can only suggest that Rhino might want to rely on a different proofreader next go-round. Fans of Dolores Gray will be pleased to find that there's a song she recorded that was cut from the movie included on this release; it's titled "I Thought They'd Never Leave". This one's well worth tracking down, even though it goes in and out of print."