My Fair Lady

The original Broadway cast album of MY FAIR LADY is a mandatory disc in every self-respecting musical fan's collection. It captures the cast at the top of their game, and Julie Andrews at the peak of her Broadway career. Her voice is sparkling and effervescent, with Rex Harrison as a thrilling Higgins and Stanley Holloway a delight as Eliza's erstwhile father Alfred P. Doolittle. The monaural sound is warm and lush in Columbia's best style. This newest remaster of the album sounds better than ever. By the time the London cast album was recorded 4 years later (to take advantage of the new stereo format), a tired feeling had crept into Julie Andrews' singing (or perhaps boredom), so the Broadway edition is the format of choice, despite the technical limitations of the mono mix.

Earlier, I had written a review of the 1959 London Cast Stereo recording of "MY FAIR LADY." Many amazon.com customers seem to prefer the original Broadway Cast recording to the later London Stereo LP. I'm such a "Fair Lady" fan, I have both discs. The disc I'm reviewing here is a Gold Disc with an extra Bonus Track. Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson conducts post-recording interviews with Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, lyricists Alan Lerner and conducter Franz Allers. Liberson states that "FAIR LADY" is "possibly the most successful musical of this (20th) Century." He got that right! Here, you hear Rex Harrison give a full out performance, when he was still excited by the material and everything was fresh and new. Boredom set in afterwards. Harrison growls and grunts his way through Higgins' songs on the London Cast Album, and in the 1964 film version (for which he received an Academy Award), Harrison couldn't be more listless, static, and boring; giving a one-note "phoned in" performance. Much better than Harrison, in any case, is Julie Andrews; then on the brink of her brilliant career. She is best at full fire and music, exploding with fury and rage in "Just You Wait! " and "Show Me." Simply put, Julie Andrews is the best Eliza Doolittle of all time. Added to all this is a delightful dash of Stanley Holloway. For pure freshness and vitality, you can't beat this original recording of MY FAIR LADY. And the Post-Recording interviews make this an irresistable treat, not that everything else wasn't enough!

I have to agree with Mr. McCatain and others in saying that the ORIGINAL Broadway cast album of "My Fair Lady" is much better than the London cast album, and that it must be one of the best original cast albums ever made. The sound is so clear you can't tell for a minute that it's in mono. (What mono?) But the main difference is that, because the orchestrations are much faster, the performers have to be much more "structured" than they were in the stereo London recording. As a result, their performances are much better. Rex Harrison talks his lyrics more here than in London, and his performance is that much sharper as a result. As wonderful as she always sounds, Julie Andrews never has sounded quite like this again; her voice is so much brighter, fresher, and all-around better than in London. Stanley Holloway is, quite simply, wonderful. John Michael King, while obviously American and not British, is a much better singer than the London Freddy, Leonard Weir. Because the performers were so much more laid-back in London, (Perhaps they were a little too used to their roles by that time) the wonderful Loewe score really took center stage on that recording, which certainly isn't a bad thing. But the performers (and Lerner's great lyrics) are the show here, and they really do have, in the words of another reviewer, a "zip and zing of discovery" that you just won't find in London or probably any other recording of this show. Must certainly be one of the, if not THE, must-have in any music, musical, or theatre lover's collection.