[78-L] Listen, all you New Yorkers .....

[Randy Watts]

Capitol's MANHATTAN TOWER was released a couple of years ago by both DRG and Sepia. DRG's CD is a licensed reissue from Capitol and sounds fine. I haven't heard Sepia's version and can't comment on that one.

If the Decca reissue of MANHATTAN TOWER you mention was on the Razor & Tie GORDON JENKINS COLLECTION disc from Universal Special Products, then yeah, it was poorly done. I've got another Razor & Tie/Universal Special Products collection of some of Ethel Merman's Decca sides, released around the same time, and it's equally slipshod. Some of the material--the ANNIE GET YOUR GUN sides, as I recall--was apparently transferred from Decca's 'simulated stereo' LP masters. Which is useful, I suppose, in case you've forgotten what an awful thing fake stereo was.

Will Friedwald wrote the liner notes for the Razor & Tie Jenkins collection and he's no fan of MANHATTAN TOWER or other Jenkins compositions that were in the same vein. He had similar harsh opinions of Jenkins' THE LETTER and WHAT IT WAS, WAS LOVE.

Randy

 

--- On Mon, 2/8/10, DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com> wrote:

> This year, on May 12, it will be
> Gordon Jenkins' 100th birthday.  I'm wondering if
> "Manhattan Tower" still has a life.  (I realize many people
> would answer, "Did it ever have a life?")  Recently, I was
> watching an episode of CSI NY, and during the opening
> montage music, which is always pretty dense, there was this
> snippet from Manhattan Tower - nothing more or less than
> "Listen, all you New Yorkers".  Strangely that line was
> sung by a man, although in the work it is sung by the woman,
> (Julie).  I was curious how anyone young enough to work on
> that show would be old enough to even know Manhattan
> Tower.  I only have two recordings of it: the two record
> set by Decca and the much longer version which came out
> about 10 years later on Capitol using the same cast,
> (Elliott Lewis and Beverly Mahr).  I think an ideal length
> for the piece would be somewhere between these two.  The
> first omits the love story completely while the second has
> some, (IMO),
>  tedious songs - "Happiness Cocktail", "Repeat After Me"
> and "Once Upon a Dream", which puts words to the theme tune
> of the piece, including such meaningless metaphors as "a
> dawn without a sunrise", (hello Mr. Jenkins, a dawn IS a
> sunrise).  But let me not ridicule the piece.  I do enjoy
> it and I found a pristine copy of the Capitol LP in a used
> record store in Ann Arbor which I have mastered onto a CD,
> since no commercial CD exists, and occasionally play in the
> car.  Some, (I think), excellent songs added in this
> version are "learnin' my Latin" and "Married I can always
> get".
> 
> According to the notes on the LP, the piece has enjoyed a
> huge success, (at least up to 1956), being played annually
> in Atlanta (?!) as well as many other venues around the
> country.  I don't know if the original Decca version was
> abridged at the time or if that is all there was to the
> piece then.  That version has been issued by Decca on a CD
> but the booklet belittles the piece, "...the written
> narration is so hokey it's hysterical."  Also, surprisingly
> for Decca, the remastering is very slip-shod.  The sound
> quality isn't great and each side of the 78s is left hanging
> for several seconds before it carries on.  Anyone who knows
> the work and the recording knows that side 1 ends with a
> musical phrase which is repeated at the beginning of side
> two, an easy edit and side two ends on the same note as
> starts side three, once again, child's play to put together,
> (sides three to four can just be joined).  In the booklet
> for this version it calls Manhattan
>  Tower one of the "signature works of the LP era" and
> mentions that Patty Page and Robert Goulet also recorded
> full length versions of it.  These are recordings I have
> never seen.
> 
> (Later the same day)
> 
> I have just gone to e-bay and discovered that the Capitol
> version has just come out on CD, but no label is mentioned
> so it might just be the product of a free-lancer like
> myself who has copied the LP.  I wish a label like "Oldies"
> would issue it from the master tape.  The Robert Goulet
> version was issued on a stereo Columbia LP, but I can't find
> anyone selling a copy of it, and I just purchased the Patti
> Page version on a Mercury LP.
> 
> db