Name: Mad Dogs & Englishmen: Complete Recordings, Vol. 2
Brand: Naxos Nostalgia
SKU: 614396
Availability: OutOfStock

Tracks

1. Mad Dogs And Englishmen

2. Let's Say Goodbye

3. The Party's Over Now

4. Something To Do With Soring

5. Noel Coward Presents

6. I Travel Alone

7. Most Of Ev'ry Day

8. Love In Bloom

9. Fare Thee Well

10. Mrs.Worthington

11. We Were So Young

12. Family Album Scenes

13. Shadow Play, Scenes

14. Red Peppers, Scenes

Performer Notes

Personnel includes: Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence (vocals); Carroll Gibbons (piano); Ray Noble & His Orchestra.
Recorded in London, England between 1932 & 1936. Includes liner notes by Peter Dempsey.
Digitally remastered by Graham Newton.
Personnel: Carroll Gibbons (piano).
Liner Note Author: Peter Dempsey.
Recording information: 09/??/1932-10/29/1934.
This second volume in Naxos' series of the complete recordings of No‰l Coward contains material from six recording sessions held in a three-and-a-quarter-year period between September 1932 and January 1936, running from four songs from the musical Words and Music to three musical segments from the play cycle Tonight at 8:30. Some of Coward's better-known compositions are included, among them "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" and "Mrs. Worthington." While this was a period prior to the advent of the original cast recording of a stage show, there are attempts to create something like that. An April 11, 1933, session for Victor Records in New York with Leo Reisman & His Orchestra finds Coward and the band running through at least the choruses of ten numbers, seven of them from his musical Bitter Sweet. (Broken into two parts, the nine-minute medley was released as a special 12" 78-rpm single.) The three Tonight at 8:30 selections, each featuring Gertrude Lawrence, are actually edited versions of the one-act plays themselves, including dialogue. Throughout, Coward sings in his high tenor with a fine sense of his own lyrics, and he even tries the works of others, crooning "Love in Bloom" and "We Were So Young." But it's his own songs in his own voice that are the most impressive. (The tracks were mastered from old 78s, with noise reduction applied, since Naxos is taking advantage of the 50-year copyright limit on recordings in Europe. The result is listenable, though some surface noise remains.) ~ William Ruhlmann