If I had one of those new-fangled Broadway Time Machines that can whisk you back to another era to see any production, I think I'd use mine to see the original My Fair Lady. Obviously, there are a lot of dandy choices but there always seemed to be something magical…almost legendary about the Lerner-Loewe adaptation of Mr. Shaw's Pygmalion. It opened at the Mark Hellinger on March 15, 1956, which was a Thursday. The following Sunday, as is often the custom, the cast used its day off to record the cast album. Little did they suspect they were recording what would be the most-played, best-selling cast album in the history of mankind. And what's interesting is that it didn't sell as many as it might have because Columbia, the company that released it, decided to compete with themselves and put out a second one. The first album was in monaural recording, which was "state-of-the-art" that week.
Two years later, when the London company opened, they did a new album with the same songs, same arrangement and pretty much the same cast — Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway, etc.
The only difference was that this one was in stereo. Columbia assumed they could then phase out the mono version but buyers would have none of that. Even though the new one had the same lead performers, there were minor variations, especially in Mr. Harrison's performance, and we liked our My Fair Lady to sound exactly — right down to the very syllable — the way it was supposed to sound.
I say "we" because my parents played that first album. And played it and played it and played it and played it and played it and how many times must I type that before you grasp the concept that they played it a lot? It is so ingrained in my psyche that, when I watched Harrison perform the same songs in the movie — or when I saw him live on his farewell tour — I sat there and thought, "He's pausing in the wrong place…that line oughta go faster…why did he emphasize a different word?" (The farewell tour, which he did at age 78, was sad in a way. I mean, it was nice that he made what must have been Huge Bucks, and it was wonderful that we all got to say, "I saw Rex Harrison do My Fair Lady." But he was forgetting lines and fumbling about, and the standing ovation at the close was more for his body of work than for anything he'd done that evening.)
My affection for the first cast album is so intense that I couldn't even listen to the CD of the recent London version with Jonathan Pryce. Bought it, put it in the CD player, pressed "play"…and the new arrangements sounded so utterly wrong to me, I had to hit "stop." I mean, I assume this incarnation is fine in its own way but certain tunes are the musical equivalent of Comfort Food. You don't want someone "improving" your mother's recipe for beef stew and I don't want someone fiddling with my My Fair Lady. Variations and updates are tolerable and even welcome in some places and not in others.
Fortunately, the original My Fair Lady cast album was released a few years ago on CD. What's more, a better CD release comes out May 28, the same day as the new Li'l Abner CD. This version of M.F.L. has been remastered for allegedly better sound and includes a few bonus tracks: An interview with Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, as well as a chat between Lerner, the album's producer and lead performers. You can order this CD from Amazon-dot-com (and give us a few dimes) by clicking right about here. And in a day or so, when I get some time, I think I'll post some recollections of the first musical I ever saw in a for-real theater. It was the first national touring company of My Fair Lady with a gent named Michael Evans in the role of Higgins. I was around eight at the time and I sat there the whole time thinking, "That doesn't sound like the record."
See? Even then, I was stubborn about my favorites.