'Me and Juliet' - the Contemporary Recordings

Me and Juliet is considered one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flops, even though it ran on Broadway for a year in 1953-54. Such was the team's record of success that anything but a legendary musical was considered a failure.

As with the duo's other lesser-known shows - Allegro and Pipe Dream - there is much to admire about the Me and Juliet score, even though it produced but one hit, "No Other Love" - which had a recycled melody and has not survived as a standard. In this post we'll re-examine the some of the songs of Me and Juliet through the non-cast recordings made when the show was new.

RCA Victor underwrote the Broadway production, so several of the discs below along with the original cast album were issued on that label.

Me and Juliet is a backstage musical with a show within the show, titled, confusingly enough, "Me and Juliet." The principal characters of the meta-Me and Juliet were ancillary to the production of the play-within-a-play. Jeanie (Isabel Bigley in the original cast) is a singer in the chorus; her competing suitors are Larry (Bill Hayes), an assistant stage manager, and Bob (Mark Dawson), an electrician. Bob is the heavy.

The show starts with Jeanie singing the wistful "A Very Special Day." It's a simple song, befitting Jeanie's personality, but lovely and affecting. For our collection, it is very well done by Sue Bennett, one-time Kay Kyser vocalist who had recently finished a stint on Your Hit Parade. 

Sue Bennett

Bennett is backed by the orchestra and piano of Ted Straeter, the long-time bandleader at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The number is one of four on a "songs from" EP that M-G-M records put out at the time of the Broadway production. Three songs from the EP appear in this compilation.

Ted Straeter

The next number is "Marriage Type Love," which is performed by Charlie and Lily, the two principals in the play-within-a-play. The song is both a precursor to Jeanie and Larry's eventual marriage and a contrast to the difficulties in their relationship. The lyrics are deliberately moony: "We made a date, couldn't wait for my day off. / Now it's a thing, with a ring for the pay-off."

In our set, the song is performed very well by Bennett and Straeter. Ted was one of those singers-without-a-voice who proliferated in nightclubs and cabarets. He was wonderfully effective within his limits - he had clear diction and a great feel for lyrics - and his ringing piano playing is a pleasure to hear.

"Marriage Type Love" is one of the several songs in the score that have a Latin beat. Rodgers was picking up on the then-current fashion for the the mambo in particular. The next song in the set, "Keep It Gay," is another example. We hear it first from Straeter, then in an actual Latin arrangement from the Venezuelan bandleader Aldemaro Romero, who was then working for RCA and probably recorded the number in New York with a studio band. Romero's arrangement shows the influence of the fashionable sound of the George Shearing Quartet. Shearing would soon release Latin albums of his own.

Aldemaro Romero

In the show, "Keep It Gay" is designed to show off the insincerity of Larry's competitor Bob.

The best known song from Me and Juliet - and its only hit - is "No Other Love." Richard Rodgers wrote it as a instrumental tango called "Beneath the Southern Cross" for the 1952 television documentary Victory at Sea. (You can find the excellent original soundtrack LP via this earlier post.) In the musical, the song is a duet for Larry and Jeanie.

"No Other Love" was a big success for Perry Como in an overblown arrangement by Henri René that has the Moaner belting at the end (which he does quite well). The flip side of the record is Perry's version of "Keep It Gay," which has an even worse arrangement, so I've not included it in this compilation.

Noro Morales

I've added a version of "No Other Love" by the well-known Puerto Rican bandleader Noro Morales, who turns the tango into a mambo with the feel of a cha-cha-cha, which dance was just beginning its period of popularity. I believe Morales made this record in New York. 

Jo Stafford

The final song from the score to merit a commercial recording was "I'm Your Girl," a hymn from Jeanie to Larry. Religious and quasi-religious songs were popular back then - "I Believe" had been a hit for Jane Froman in early 1953 - and of course Rodgers and Hammerstein had a huge success with "You'll Never Walk Alone" in Carousel.

"I'm Your Girl" is an affecting piece, particularly in the rapt rendition by Jo Stafford that concludes this compilation. Although her singing always is warm, she has seldom sounded so involved with the words. The only clinker is Hammerstein's final line, "I'm the girl you own," which sounds wrong to modern sensibilities.

There were several other notable songs in Me and Juliet that did not achieve recordings outside the original cast album, including "That's the Way It Happens," "The Big Black Giant" and "It's Me." 

Me and Juliet didn't enter the R&H pantheon for many reasons. Its songs, particularly the lyrics, were not as strong as other shows. Its story was both too complex (the show within a show) and too simple (a good guy and a bad guy compete for a girl). But the critical issue was the public's expectations - that R&H should present "must-see" spectacles, which more modest shows like Me and Juliet, Allegro and Pipe Dream could not provide.

The recordings come from my collection and Internet Archive. The sound is generally excellent.

LINK

Rodgers and Hammerstein in the run-up to the show opening, 1953