We’ll start this review with two admissions. Admission number
\none: I am not that familiar with Louis Prima. In fact, the last
\ntime I had heard him was back when I was about 13 years old, and
\nThe Disney Channel was added to basic cable in our household. A
\nprogram, “DTV,” played “That Old Black Magic” done by Prima and
\nanother singer with cartoons playing in the background. Obviously,
\nit’s been a long time since I saw that video, so I plead total
\nignorance on Prima.<\/p>\n
Admission number two: Despite the fact I once owned the
\nMary Poppins<\/i> soundtrack as a child, notwithstanding the fact
\nthis was once the most popular soundtrack of all time, I don’t
\nunderstand the fascination with the music from this movie. Burl
\nIves covered some of the songs from this movie (on an album we
\nreviewed a few weeks ago), and now I’m presented with
\nLet’s Fly With Mary Poppins<\/i>, an album of songs from the
\nmovie performed by Prima with his wife Gia Maione. (If this isn’t
\nenough, I now have the re-issued soundtrack of
\nMary Poppins<\/i> sent to me from Disney to review. Guess I’d
\nbetter rent the video.)<\/p>\n
This album (part of Disney’s
\nArchive Collection<\/i> reissue series), first released in 1965,
\ndoes show off Prima’s scat singing well, such as on “Chim Chim
\nCher-ee,” a song that builds up from a slow, gentle start into a
\nmore jazzy version. Likewise, “Stay Awake” shows off a more subdued
\nside to Prima’s vocals. To Maione’s credit, songs like “Feed The
\nBirds” and “Sister Suffragette” demonstrate her vocal capabilities
\nwell (though she should have lost the Cockney accent on “Sister
\nSuffragette” – she only used it for part of the song anyway).<\/p>\n
For all its strengths, though,
\nLet’s Fly With Mary Poppins<\/i> has some flaws. Why two Italian
\nversions of songs were included on this album I have no clue, and
\nthe alternative versions of “Stay Awake” (scat-jazz in Italian? I
\ndon’t think so) and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (brother,
\ndon’t try running
\nthat<\/i> through the spell-checker) could have been dropped.
\n(Then again, this disc only clocks in at 27 minutes, and the tracks<\/p>\n
do<\/i> pad it out a little more.) And while “I Love To Laugh” is
\nnot a bad track, the forced laughter of Maione is just annoying –
\nyou can tell it’s faked, which makes it unbearable. Oh, well.<\/p>\n
The few duets between Prima and Maione are spotty. “Jolly
\nHoliday” is a decent enough number (in which they have to partially
\nre-write the lyrics to fit each other’s names in), but
\n“Supercali….” oh, whatever… and “The Perfect Nanny” are nothing
\nspecial.<\/p>\n
\nLet’s Fly With Mary Poppins<\/i> is a disc that will most likely
\nplease the diehard
\nMary Poppins<\/i> fans, but the disc itself does have limited
\nappeal – even for fans of Prima’s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7503],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-39225","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-louis-prima-gia-maione","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39225"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}