[Dixielandjazz] South Pacific Lives On In Jazz

[Stephen G Barbone]

Hey Band Leaders, looking for new tunes to play? Broadway has always,  
and still does, offer lots of tunes that can be formatted for OKOM.  
Here's South Pacific for example.

Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

'South Pacific' Lives On in Jazz
THE NEW YORK SUN BY WILL FRIEDWALD April 7, 2008

The new Lincoln Center production of "South Pacific" is a classic, the  
best Rodgers and Hammerstein production in many a year, and one that  
was well worth the six-decade wait. Or maybe we could call it a five- 
decade wait. Sure, the great musical opened on Broadway in 1949, but  
it wasn't until a decade later that some of the best "South Pacific"- 
inspired jazz reached the public.

When the original "South Pacific" closed on Broadway in 1954 after  
five blockbuster years (a staggeringly long run at the time), composer  
Richard Rodgers came up with a list of 49 different recordings —  
presumably not including the original Broadway cast album — of various  
songs from the score. This was obviously an underestimate, yet it was  
more than enough for the thoroughly disgusted Rodgers, who referred to  
the tally as "an all-time record in vulgarity." Famously, the great  
Broadway composer-producer found it hard to be diplomatic when pop  
singers and jazz musicians kept reinterpreting his songs according to  
their own personal dictates.

What really must have irked Rodgers is that through the early LP era  
and the great decades of the Broadway "book" show (which he did as  
much as anyone to create), "cover" albums often reached the market  
before the show had opened and the official cast album had been  
recorded. In 1949, at least two labels released recordings of the  
"South Pacific" score featuring their leading lights: Decca's version  
starred Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, and Capitol's (which will  
soon be reissued by DRG Records) spotlighted Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee,  
and future Rodgers and Hammerstein movie lead Gordon MacRae.

In 1958, when 20th Century Fox was about to release the film version  
of "South Pacific" (the most disappointing of the studio's six Rodgers  
and Hammerstein movies), the record companies were prepared and ready.  
The tradition of a jazz version of a popular show score had been  
established two years earlier with the double whammy of the "My Fair  
Lady" original cast album and its jazz doppelganger, by the drummer  
Shelly Manne with pianist André Previn. That year, at least six jazz  
and big band versions of "South Pacific" made it to stores alongside  
the film's soundtrack, by artists ranging from the Dixieland pianist  
Bobby Hammack to the "progressive" West Coast drummer Chico Hamilton.

If the sailors, marines, and nurses stationed on the tiny island of  
Espiritu Santo, where the action of "South Pacific" transpires, ever  
held a dance, they'd hire Les Brown and his Band of Renown to play the  
music. Brown's album, "Dance to South Pacific" (issued as half of a  
twofer CD on British Capitol) is by far the smoothest and creamiest  
jazz treatment of the score. In the '50s, the Band of Renown was  
presenting what amounted to a hybrid of traditional swing and cool  
jazz, and most of the band's soloists (such as the tenor saxist Dave  
Pell, alto saxist Ronnie Lang, and trombonist Ray Sims) were  
definitely in a modern mode. Throughout, the band employs exaggerated,  
Basie-esque dynamics and whimsy, as on "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right  
Out of My Hair," rendered by a choir of mutes and flutes.

Bob Crosby's 1958 record "South Pacific Blows Warm" (issued thus far  
only on a Dot LP), with arrangements by bassist Bob Haggart, isn't  
quite the masterpiece that the same team's "Porgy and Bess" is, but  
it's a contender. As ever, Crosby and his Bobcats blended unabashed  
Dixieland with the swing band format: "This Nearly Was Mine" is a hard- 
stomping whoop-up for clarinetist Peanuts Hucko, while "There's  
Nothing Like a Dame" becomes a New Orleans-style parade march down  
Rampart Street for trumpeters Billy Butterfield and Yank Lawson (in  
all his muted glory), and tenor sax pioneer Bud Freeman. Every track  
is relentlessly bright and hard-swinging, and even Rodgers and  
Hammerstein's more intimate ballads are reimagined as lusty,  
aggressive up-tempos.

Contrastingly, the remaining 1958 treatments of the score, featuring  
the unique pianist and arranger Dick Hyman, are considerably more  
contemplative. The only "South Pacific" jazz album ever available on a  
domestic CD is the most recent — a 1990 set of duets by Mr. Hyman and  
the iconoclastic cornetist, Ruby Braff, titled "Younger Than  
Swingtime." Here, Mr. Hyman begins with a set of stride variations on  
"Bali Ha'i" that sounds as if Fats Waller had paid a visit to that  
island of revelry and debauchery (though Waller would have turned it  
into Harlem on the High Seas).

Listening to their expressive duos, it dawned on me for the first time  
that both Nellie and Emile's key character statements are in rhythms;  
here, the usually chipper "Wonderful Guy" and the somber "This Nearly  
Was Mine" become darker and more introspectively lyrical. Braff, who  
had worked with Rodgers and Hammerstein onstage as a musician in "Pipe  
Dream," once described the team to me as a couple of "monsters" (not  
that Ruby himself was always the most lovable guy). But he didn't hold  
that against them, and devoted his full vocabulary of brass effects to  
enhancing tunes that already sounded great.

The rarest and most underrated gem in this exclusive group is Tony  
Scott's "South Pacific Jazz." For half the album, as on the minor-key  
"Bali Ha'i," Scott plays clarinet in a style that suggests a midpoint  
between New Orleans and the avant-garde. On the rest (as on "Honey  
Bun"), he switches to a baritone saxophone approach that's so  
aggressive it's almost confrontational, and Mr. Hyman accompanies him  
on a Basie-inspired electric organ. At first, the baritone-organ  
numbers seem so different from the original Broadway ideas as to be  
almost perverse; but the more one listens, the more one becomes  
attuned to their inherent, inner logic: This "Enchanted Evening" is  
amazingly erotic, and the baritone timbre fully suggests a jazz  
equivalent of the de Becque character's traditional basso register. In  
these last two albums, Braff, Scott, and Mr. Hyman clearly hatched  
their own highly effective way of bringing Nellie and Emile together.

After seeing "South Pacific" on Wednesday, I heard its famous overture  
again on Friday, this time from an awe-inspiring 60-piece orchestra,  
at the start of an all-Hammerstein program by the New York Pops,  
conducted and hosted by David Charles Abell. Aaron Lazar was a fine  
enough baritone, and the majority of both the comic ("Honey Bun") and  
emotional ("Mr. Snow") highlights were the responsibility of the  
peerless Sutton Foster.

The second half of the performance spotlighted the four best-known  
Rodgers and Hammerstein classics, but the first half explored  
Hammerstein's earlier, lesser-known work with classically informed  
composers Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern. The star of the more  
operatic portions of the program was Rosena Hill, an exceptional  
soprano who effortlessly knocked out high notes with crystal clear  
enunciation. Together, Ms. Hill and Mr. Abell thoroughly whetted my  
appetite for more full-length productions of Hammerstein's brilliant,  
operetta-style works such as "The Desert Song" and "Music in the Air."  
She has a voice and a presence that reach way up even to the cheap  
seats.

wfriedwald at nysun.com



Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband