Columbia Masterworks MM-850 is a Broadway legend. 1949's original cast album of South Pacific is one of the best-selling albums of all time, has never been out of print, and continues to be available in a remastered digital release. In its original release, MM-850 is a chunky set of seven 10" 78-rpm discs. I am fortunate to have acquired a mint-condition copy, played only a few times before coming my way, still with its original factory seal wrapping, and looking brand spanking new. Handsome little album, beautifully designed and executed.
MM-850: 10" 78 rpm discs in prime condition
I grew up with the later LP release, OL-4180, the one with a publicity shot of stars Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza on the cover and a full-color shot of Mary Martin singing "Honey Bun" on the back. It didn't have the nifty boat-anchor artwork of the original. But I played that sucker practically down to the bare vinyl. I wonder how much of my razor-sharp adult ear came from all those playings of South Pacific followed by sessions at the piano, repeating for myself what I had just heard? I know that by the time I was about 9 or 10 years old I could play the entire album on the piano, just as I could with a number of other Broadway standards—My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, The King and I, Gypsy, and Finian's Rainbow, all courtesy of my original cast albums.
The 1957 LP reprint
I picked up the superb remastering of South Pacific about a year ago and gave it a listen. Mostly I was struck by the dramatically different audio, stemming largely from the decision to use the magnetic tape masters instead of the acetate 78s that were used for the LP and the earlier CD release. South Pacific dates from those critical transitional years when 78s were giving way to LPs, and it was released in both formats. (If it had been an RCA Victor album, no doubt it would have come out on 45s as well.) Tape mastering was under way as well, although the engineers were still getting their feet wet in that department. Lots and lots of folks prefer the original 78 acetate masters to the tape masters. I'm not sure where I stand.
I rather enjoy my mint-condition set of 78s. Like most 78 discs, they have their problems, particularly inner-groove distortion and a fair amount of surface noise. But there's a nice crispness about them that you miss on the LP, and a largeness to the sound that is also missing on the most recent CD transfer, probably due to decay in the original master tapes. It's just a shame that South Pacific didn't come out just one year later, when magnetic tape/LP mastering was the norm. For one thing, we would have gotten more of the score—10" 78 records can get a shade over 3" per side, no more, so not only were songs skipped, but musical numbers were trimmed in order to fit them onto a single side.
Nevertheless, it's a bonafide Broadway classic. Whether it's all that good a performance of South Pacific is another matter entirely. It's one of the weaker performances of the show around, when you get right down to it.
Part of the problem is Ezio Pinza. Broadway audiences might have been dazzled having an authentic Metropolitan Opera star right there on a stage, singing Rodgers & Hammerstein, but when I listen to his performances just for themselves, minus the publicity bling and minus the patina of legend that surrounds the man, I find his singing pedestrian and his musicianship lacking. His intonation is questionable. His phrasing is execrable. He doesn't appear to understand the words he's singing. Everything sounds just the same: big and lyrical, to be sure, but that's about all. When you get right down to it, he's the single most uninteresting Emile de Becque in my experience. God knows that Brann Stokes Mitchell in the live Carnegie Hall recording utterly wiped the floor with Pinza, not only dramatically but also vocally.
Now about Mary Martin. Nellie Forbush was her big role, the one that established her once and for all as a reigning Broadway diva. But again the performance isn't really all that interesting. She sings clearly, a must for musical theater folk back then when there weren't any head mikes. Her diction is impeccable—maybe a little too impeccable. She sounds very, very correct and very, very blah. She might have been cute on stage, washing her hair and flinging soap suds around. But she sounds like a diva, not an actress.
One of the high points vocally of the album is William Tabbert as Joe Cable. He gets two of the juiciest numbers in the entire show, "Younger than Springtime" and "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." He still sounds just lovely in the former—although not really all that passionate—but hearing him again in the latter explains why I never got the 'message' of that particular song. Tabbert sings it cleanly, clearly, and without a trace of understanding. The song is sarcastic and cynical, really a cry of self-disgust and self-loathing from a Princeton-educated WASP who knows he can't bring a Tonkinese (i.e., Vietnamese) woman home, and who furthermore knows that he doesn't want to bring her home, either. But he hates himself for it. Tabbert gives Oscar Hammerstein's somewhat overly-earnest lyrics all the passion of a grocer reading through a list of ingredients.
Tempi are kinda sluggish throughout. The orchestra is a grand old Broadway type, but the conducting is wooden. Everybody just whacks through it, as though they're in a marching band. The Seabees sound like a glee club.
When you get right down to it, the only really convincing vocal performance comes from Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary.
So, all in all, MM-850 is a priceless documentation of a not-so-great performance of a now-classic work of the musical theater. As the original, it will always have pride of place. But just as Stravinsky's and Copland's performances of their own works are rarely the best of breed, thus this original cast of South Pacific. The more recent Broadway recording, or the stunning Carnegie Hall live performance, are far more compelling and more musically interesting.
But it's fun to have a crisp & fresh copy of the 78rpm album, like a little time traveller that somehow jumped over 70 years and bounced into my house without showing the usual age-related decay.
