Most music writers I know grew up surrounded by music, with certain songs and albums becoming forever intertwined with our childhood memories. The words and melodies are lodged right there in the old hippocampus, waiting for the moment needle hits vinyl to re-emerge, as if the last time I\u2019d heard them\u2014back in the 1970s\u2014was yesterday.<\/p>\n
And in fact, despite several decades having elapsed since the last time I\u2019d heard this album, there wasn\u2019t a single surprise when I put it on the turntable again last month. Every nuance of the lead vocal performances by Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, and Broadway-debuting, show-stealing ingenue Julie Andrews was long since embedded in memory, thanks to my mother playing it over and over (and over) through my childhood. When Mom passed away several years back, I held onto a handful of her old LPs that sparked memories from my childhood, including this one.<\/p>\n
Besides the power of memory, the most fascinating part of revisiting this album has been learning things about it that I couldn\u2019t have known back in the day. For example: I had no idea that this album was a groundbreaking release in that it\u2019s not<\/i> a recording of a performance of the Broadway show. Rather, it\u2019s a recreation recorded in the midst of its acclaimed run, by the original cast, in a proper recording studio, accompanied by a live orchestra.<\/p>\n
This approach\u2014commissioning and releasing a soundtrack album while the show\u2019s original Broadway run was still going\u2014proved both innovative and very successful. The original studio Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady<\/i> spent 15 weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts and logged a total of 480 weeks on the Billboard 200, in the process establishing a market for Broadway cast recordings. Still, probably the most astonishing thing about My Fair Lady<\/i> is this: the entire 15-track, 51-minute album was recorded in a single marathon session on March 25, 1956.<\/p>\n
My Fair Lady<\/i>\u2014Lerner & Loewe\u2019s acclaimed musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw\u2019s stage play Pygmalion<\/i>\u2014unleashed a timeless set of showtunes on the world. Harrison\u2019s stuffed–shirt Henry Higgins is featured on lively, witty numbers like \u201cWhy Can\u2019t The English?\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m An Ordinary Man,\u201d both of which might feel dated by 2025 standards, but expertly captured mid-20th century British attitudes about class and gender roles. Later on, the show\u2019s heart emerges onto its sleeve for Harrison\u2019s sentimental closing ballad \u201cI\u2019ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrison might be the headliner on the marquee, but Andrews is the one who shines like the star she was in the process of becoming. She simply crushes every number she\u2019s given with a winning combination of charm and dazzling vocal firepower. She\u2019s sweet and beguiling on \u201cWouldn\u2019t It Be Loverly?\u201d, fierce and forceful on \u201cJust You Wait,\u201d and soars through a show-stopping turn on \u201cI Could Have Danced All Night.\u201d Even the way she steals the scene on \u201cThe Rain In Spain\u201d seems to charm her song partner Harrison; he knows when he\u2019s in the presence of greatness. <\/p>\n
The ensemble numbers are terrific as well, with the standout being the effusive Cockney anthem \u201cWith A Little Bit Of Luck,\u201d featuring Stanley Holloway, Gordon Dilworth and Rod McLennan.<\/p>\n
Another remarkable thing about this album is that, while it includes only the briefest smatterings of spoken dialogue, Lerner\u2019s lyrics carry so much of the load of telling the story unfolding on stage that you hardly feel like anything is missing. It\u2019s a condensed version of the story,\u00a0<\/i>but all of the essential elements are present.<\/p>\n
The original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady<\/i> is one of the most lauded albums of its kind in the history of recorded music. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1977, into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2007, and into my childhood memories between 1962 and 1975 or so. Thanks, Mom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7274],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-47189","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-original-broadway-cast-recording","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47189","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47189"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}