Frank Loesser, Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee - How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961 Original Broadway Cast)

The Best Recording

The best. [period]
Robert Morse is J. Pierrpont Finch
I can see why this show won the Pulitzer Prize...one of only five to ever get it June 27, 2008

Disapointing

This musical may be very attactive to american audiences. However, approached from abroad, it sounds quite uninteresting and dull. The music said nothing to me, being hard to find one single attractive melody. According to the records, 1962 was not really fortunate for the Broadway musical. The plays nominated for the Tony were not really brilliant. And this musical made it. As the proberb says: "In the land of the blind, the cross-eyed is the King"... May 9, 2008

Enjoyable!

Chockful of bonus items, but not quite the catchy songs I expected. I just purchased the 1990's Broadway Cast version and the difference is like night and day! The new recording has a more jazzy, swing feel and is a revelation!
Stick with the Matthew broderick 90's CD. A more lyrical affair.

Matthew Broderick in "How to Succeed in Business WIthout Really Trying!"
Greenwillow (1960 Original Broadway Cast) April 12, 2008

Sublime Remastering

Yep, here is another cd I had to buy again to get the new remastering and the improvement in sound is well worth the investment. It sounds crisper and has a more vivid aural presence than the previous issue. That's important in a show recording as quirky as this one. It's now easier to hear all the instrumental details in Robert Ginzler's ingenious orchestrations. Just listen to "Paris Original" or "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm" for some really off-the-wall instrumental humor. And that wildly eccentric jazzy Overture which keeps bouncing about with off-key flourishes from melody to melody until it seems at last to swing into the four square "Brotherhood of Man" like a sudden blast of inspiration (it took many listenings for me to "get" the sound of this score). I regret that the packaging is inferior to the 1st cd issue (no jewel box--just a cardboard fold-out), but the new liner notes are good, and you get the fun of hearing Frank Loesser sing the original version of "A Secretary is not a Toy" as a bonus track. January 5, 2008

Still an electrifying album

What the world needs now and then -- what it used to get now and then -- is a true smash Broadway hit. We got an idea when "The Producers" opened, when reviewers raved and people rushed for tickets and The New York Times predicted it would run fifteen years. And then...Nate and Matt left, with Nate's place taken by some fellow who'd done Shylock on the West End, and he got fired, and the whole premium-priced house of cards crumbled in slow motion -- no more sellouts (at least none without the boys), no one acclaiming the "genius" of the newest Max Bialystock or of Susan Stroman, no one willing to overlook the indifferent songs or the "hoary" jokes (so Ben Brantley called them -- on opening night!), and the show closed nine years before the Times said it would, and now it's a relic, just another overrated -- vastly overrated -- memento of its day, a "Black Crook" of over-the-top "comedy."

"How to Succeed in Business" was the "Producers" of 1961 -- a highly-buzzed-about show that became a smash hit and earned tons of awards, including the Pulitzer. JFK came to see it, the ultimate stamp of approval. The difference, of course, is where Mel's show had an amanuensis, this one had the real thing in Frank Loesser. As the theatrical historian Gerald Bordman has noted, Loesser's strong suit was satire, yet somehow he got sidetracked into several big romantic shows, square pegs in round holes given his snappy up-to-the-minute style; he'd bombed the year before with the idyllic whimsy of "Greenwillow." Here he returned to the brassy form of "Guys and Dolls", and if it wasn't at that rarefied level (what could be?) his score was still one of the best -- and like most of the era's hits it was expertly and excellently cast, and thankfully for us superbly recorded. Whether the show itself is so excellent is another matter; it derives from a paper-thin in-joke parody of how-to manuals, and Abe Burrows's book pulls its punches from the get-go, content with easy set pieces. But the satirical prospects for "How to Succeed" have since increased exponentially. One could wrench "A Secretary is Not a Toy" from the weak orbit of Bob Fosse's finger snaps (the clever use of the typewriter here was evidently just for the album and most likely never made the show) and plunge it straight into an office machinery maelstrom of beeping computers and grinding copiers and ring-tone-playing cellphones. Of course J. Pierrepont Finch wouldn't be the only one with executive ambitions -- why not his beloved Rosemary? One or both could sell his (or her, or their) brilliant promotional scheme with a PowerPoint to end all PowerPoints. And Wall Street has outdone itself with imaginative crookery; merely hiding stock for a televised treasure hunt won't do -- unless of course Money Honey® emceed it on CNBC. Maybe she could be the femme fatale. Alas come the 1995 revival the producers' idea of humor was to emblazon their every poster (and the album art too) with a big fat "H2$" -- unfortunately H2S is the chemical symbol for hydrogen sulfide, sewer gas (yes, I know, it's a dollar sign, but it's also an S) -- and to get A&P's Eight O'Clock Coffee in for a willfully ignorant product placement.

Perhaps it can't be done. Perhaps this brilliant cast album is a deceptive siren song to a revival's possibilities -- like "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever", a first-rank score next to a rank book. But "Pal Joey" became a stage treasure thanks to Goddard Lieberson's studio album, and the stage is nothing if not for dreaming. May 29, 2007

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