Original released on LP RCA Victor LSO 1032
(US, 1958)
Character-forming. There weren't many records around when I was a kid, but this was one of them, or at least an EP with four of these songs on it. I don't think "Happy Talk" could have been one of them, because I don't remember playing it, and I tended to gravitate towards the most annoying songs available. The one I do remember playing a lot is "There is Nothing Like a Dame". I liked its simple oom-pah rhythm, and I probably liked the contrast between male chorus and individual voices. I didn't think to ask what a dame was, because I knew: Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Flora Robson. Confirmation, if it were needed, came from another version of the song on an LP of showtunes alongside "There's No Business Like Showbusiness". A dame, everyone knew, was an elderly English actress. Listening to it now in perhaps the first time for twenty-five years, I realise what I must have known subconsciously for a long while: that it's a remarkably frank song about a group of sailors so sexually frustrated that they're on the brink of begetting mermaids. Hearing this as a child may perhaps have led to my liking for opera; it's not impossible that it also planted the seeds of my Francophilia; what's certain is that it ensured I spent thirty years of my life confusing sex with theatrical performance. (in RateYourMusic)
Something really odd about this movie is the way they used extreme and almost surreal color-filters for a number of key-scenes. Friggin' irritating, if you ask me. But in regards to the music, it's a totally different ball game. The songs are not only both terrific and exquisite, they've rarely been bettered, which means close to definite versions of such immortal Rodgers-Hammerstein tunes as "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "There Is Nothing Like A Dame", the almost unreal beauty of "Bali Ha'i" and the most understated anti-racist rant you're ever likely to hear in the glorious "Carefully Taught". Man, that's what I call music. If you get it on vinyl, make sure to get a hold of a copy with the splendid gatefold sleeve and the accompanying booklet. No color filters there... (in RateYourMusic)