#6a: Cast Recordings: "Very Good Eddie"

Very Good Eddie

DRG Records, CDRG 6100, 1977

Original Broadway production:

Opened at the Princess Theatre on 23 December 1915 and played 341 performances

Music: Jerome Kern

Lyrics: Schuyler Green, et al

Book: Guy Bolton

Revival on Broadway:

Opened at the Booth Theatre on 21 December 1975 and played 304 performances

Very Good Eddie was the second of the Princess shows (see Blog Post No. 5). That, however, is not the version on this recording.

The show was revived by Goodspeed Opera House in 1975 and was such a hit that the production was moved intact to Broadway. That is the production recorded here.

There were several songs from other Kern shows that were interpolated into the new production, including two with lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse and four with lyrics by Anne Caldwell. (Anne Caldwell, among her 32 Broadway shows, did five Kern shows as librettist and lyricist.)

I am not usually a fan of additional songs being crammed into a score until it becomes a sort of greatest hits, but in this case they fit in seamlessly. Part of why this works is that all the orchestrations are appropriate for the time period of the original production. I am guessing that they used the original Frank Saddler orchestrations where they could and for the rest had new orchestrations written very sympathetically by Russell Warner. To my ears it all works beautifully.

When I am feeling blue, this recording is a sure way to cheer me up. The music is tuneful and peppy and some of the lyrics are terribly clever. Although some, it must be admitted, aren’t. Take, for instance, this:

The world’s all right when someone loves you

‘Tis our delight to do as doves do

From morn till night we’ll coo as doves coo

Pidgy-woo!

Pidgy-woo!

Pidgy-woo!

The “pidgy-woo”s aside, it is a wonderful recording. It simply makes me happy.