Posted: 12/19/15 at 11:42am
Watched the Thou Swell, Thou Witty Great Performances 1999 special on Rodgers & Hart and ready for a deep dive on Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart.
28 stage musicals
six films
over 500 songs...
What are YOUR favorites, and especially for you Rodgers & Hart buffs, the lesser known songs?????
it's great when there is a youtube or other link of the song so you can share it!!!
Posted: 12/19/15 at 12:01pm
Here in My Arms - Dearest Enemy
The Blue Room - The Girl Friend
My Heart Stood Still - A Connecticut Yankee
Most Beautiful Girl in the World - Jumbo
My Romance - Jumbo
Little Girl Blue - Jumbo
There's a Small Hotel - On Your Toes
Glad to Be Unhappy - On Your Toes
I Married an Angel - I Married an Angel
Spring is Here - I Married an Angel
I'll Tell the Man in the Street - I Married an Angel
Falling in Love With Love - The Boys from Syracuse
Shortest Day of the Year - The Boys from Syracuse
You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea - The Boys From Syracuse
I Didn't Know What Time it Was - Too Many Girls
Ship Without a Sail - Heads Up
My Funny Valentine - Babes in Arms
All At Once - Babes in Arms
Where or When - Babes in Arms
It Never Entered My Mind - Higher and Higher
Every Sunday Afternoon - Higher and Higher
Basically all of Pal Joey
Nobody's Heart Belongs to Me - By Jupiter
Posted: 12/19/15 at 12:13pm
Blossom Dearie does an incredibly moving rendition of "He Was Too Good to Me" on one of those Ben Bagley tribute albums. Just heartbreaking.
It's also sad that all those CDs are out-of-print.
Posted: 12/19/15 at 12:21pm
I was introduced to the music of Rodgers & Hart by these three ladies!
Posted: 12/19/15 at 3:37pm
"Sing for your Supper" is perhaps the most electric I've seen on stage, but that has a lot to do with the arrangement of the female trio.
I also very much like "The Lady Is a Tramp", "Manhattan", "Mountain Greenery", "Where's That Rainbow", "You Took Advantage of Me", "Little Girl Blue" , "I Wish I Were in Love Again" and even "Johnny One Note".
And "Zip" contains the funniest couplet ever written:
"Zip! I was reading Schopenhauer last night.
Zip! And I think that Schopenhauer was right."
Updated On: 12/19/15 at 03:37 PM
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:23pm
LOVE LOVE LOVE these guys.
All-time favorite is probably "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" from TOO MANY GIRLS.
Runners up:
Sing For Your Supper - BOYS FROM SYRACUSE
Ev'rything I've Got - BY JUPITER
Isn't it Romantic - LOVE ME TONIGHT
This Can't Be Love - BOYS FROM SYRACUSE
There's A Small Hotel - ON YOUR TOES
Title song from ON YOUR TOES
Nothing particularly obscure but they are all excellent.
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:26pm
gaveston
whats your fav recording of sing for your supper? love that song!
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:29pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xCYCj8hf0
Audra and rebecca luker and mary testa doing sing for your supper...wow!
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:32pm
You guys are bringing songs that I am not familiar with. I'm going to seek these out.
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:49pm
hi Theater nerd
thats EXACTLY why ive run these favorite song posts for the great composers!
This is a very savvy group and I've unearthed many musical treasures from the members!!!
thanks for posting and love your name...im a musicals geek and obsessive....
Posted: 12/19/15 at 7:53pm
broadwaysfguy said: "hi Theater nerd
thats EXACTLY why ive run these favorite song posts for the great composers!
This is a very savvy group and I've unearthed many musical treasures from the members!!!
thanks for posting and love your name...im a musicals geek and obsessive....
Thank you so much for doing so! I really appreciate it...and your enthusiasm!
Posted: 12/20/15 at 2:29am
Zip- Elaine Stritch (Pal Joey)
Posted: 12/20/15 at 2:34am
broadwaysfguy said: "Watched the Thou Swell, Thou Witty Great Performances 1999 special on Rodgers & Hart and ready for a deep dive on Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart.
Where did you find that Great Performances? Now I've got to see it.
How can you pick a favorite? "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" is very poignant. "With a Song in My Heart" sounds too grandly and sincerely romantic to have been written by Hart. "Little Girl Blue" in the hands of a vocalist like Judy Garland is heartbreaking. Mama Cass Elliot recorded "Sing for Your Supper" on the last Mamas and Papas album when I think it was not that well known. The Encores' recording I think really put that song on the map again.
Featured song: Rodgers wrote a bunch of world class waltzes during his Hammerstein years, starting with the "Carousel Waltz." Like Kelli O'Hara, I could listen to it over and over at one sitting. Also "Wonderful Guy," "Out of My Dreams," "Clambake," "Grand Night for Singing," "Hello, Young Lovers."
But with Hart not so much. I guess their best known waltz is "Falling in Love With Love" and it's a grand one. I think that Rebecca Luker borrowed that song and made it her own in the Encores' Boys from Syracuse. She repeated her signature performance in one of those My Favorite Broadway PBS revues hosted by Julie Andrews.
Posted: 12/20/15 at 2:36am
My two favorite version of "Sing For Your Supper" is the one from the early '60s revival recording. Karen Morrow is divine as usual.
The version from the encores cast album is also excellent and features the extended dance break.
Any version with the superb original three-part vocal arrangement is great pretty much.
Updated On: 12/20/15 at 02:36 AM
Posted: 12/20/15 at 3:15am
these encores cast recordings are terrific!
thanks for highlighting this one!
Posted: 12/20/15 at 1:50pm
It was a glorious time, not only when Encores featured more pre-cast album era musicals but also when many if not most were being recorded.
Posted: 12/20/15 at 7:35pm
mr nowack what are you other favorite encores cast recordings?
Posted: 12/20/15 at 10:30pm
Hmmm, top of my list is probably ST. LOUIS WOMAN which they did 1998. And BOYS FROM SYRACUSE of course, though its always a debate if I prefer the Encores or the '60s revival.
Also really love the recent discs of PIPE DREAM and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. Stunning casts with the full original scores.
ZIEGFELD FOLLIES OF 1936 is a great previously unheard score by Vernon Duke who I love.
Posted: 12/20/15 at 11:35pm
My all time favorite is Ella doing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.
I Could Write a Book is another favorite.
Posted: 12/21/15 at 1:19pm
Two from BY JUPITER do it for me: "Falling in Love with Love" and its antithesis, "Ev'rything I've Got."
My all-time favorite instrumental: From ON YOUR TOES, 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue"
Posted: 12/21/15 at 3:04pm
"Falling in Love with Love" is from BOYS FROM SYRACUSE I believe.
Posted: 12/21/15 at 4:15pm
"Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" is still part of the repertoire of many orchestras and ballet companies, including the New York City Ballet.
I wanted to see Encores' Pipe Dream, but couldn't make it. Had to settle for the recording, which was a recording of one of the live performances. Very curious to see if it was possible that an R&H flop had no songs worth remembering, while almost every song in the big hits were well known. "Sweet Thursday" as sung by Leslie Uggams was hummable after two listens. Should have been a hit, I thought. But I listened to the original on the cast album and "Sweet Thursday" as sung by the opera singer was slower, more dignified and totally uninteresting.
I wonder if songs from that show that quickly grew on me - "The Man I Used to Be" - "The Next Time It Happens" - would have been as highly regarded as songs from South Pacific if the show had been a hit.
I still have Ella's double vinyl disc Rodgers and Hart Songbook, That version of "Bewitched" was not only pretty remarkable because it was Ella, but also because it was about seven and a half minutes long and contained verses that had probably been heard nowhere except inside the theater.
"The Lady is a Tramp" must have been one of the top ten sung and/or recorded songs of the 50s and 60s. My favorite version (so far) is from Ol' Blue Eyes 60s TV special A Man and his Music. there were three of these in the 60s and I think this was the second, available on DVD. The guest stars were Antonio Carlos Jobim and Ella.
Frank and Ella closed the show a super swinging rendition of "Tramp." That whole show was pretty memorable. Ella and Frank were in great voice and I wish the segment with Jobim had been longer. Only the jokes fell flat.
Posted: 12/21/15 at 4:25pm
Stritch. "You Took Advantage of Me":
Posted: 12/21/15 at 4:48pm
I'm gonna toss out two from "Too Many Girls." "I Like to Recognize the Tune" and "You're Nearer."
Posted: 12/22/15 at 7:54am
Not actually a Rodgers and HART because Larry had nothing to do with it, but "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up the first time I heard it. Nothing has ever been more evocative of the 1930s for me. I was instantly transported.
