Sunny: The Musical Comedy
This archival collection gathers together various recordings of music from the 1925 Jerome Kern musical Sunny, without always identifying them clearly. The opening track is a medley of the show's songs performed by George Olsen & His Music; Olsen's band was the pit orchestra when Sunny opened on Broadway on September 22, 1925, for the first of its 517 performances, and this recording serves as a virtual overture. Tracks 2 through 12 appear to constitute a radio adaptation of the show, complete with enough dialogue to follow the story line (which concerns romantic complications involving two war veterans, their fianc es, and Sunny herself, who entertained the troops and now works in a circus), although the annotations never reveal the exact source of the recordings or name the performers, leaving the impression that they are members of the original Broadway cast. Track 13 is another medley, this one by the Victor Light Opera Company, recorded for Victor Records in 1926. Track 14 is a studio recording of "Paddlin' Madelin' Home," Cliff Edwards' interpolated specialty number (written by Harry Woods), recorded for Path  Records in 1925, and the 15th track is a studio recording of "A Little Bit of Rhythm" (aka "Just a Little Thing Called Rhythm," written by Eddie Ward and Chick Endor), another interpolated specialty performed by Edwards in the show, but recorded by Olsen for Victor in 1925. Tracks 16 through 24 are studio recordings made by members of the original London cast of 1926 for the English Columbia Records label and previously released on several different LPs. The final two tracks are drawn from the soundtrack to the 1930 film adaptation of Sunny, featuring Marilyn Miller of the original Broadway cast and Lawrence Gray. Naturally, there is a fair amount of repetition, with the show's main songs, the standard "Who?," "D'Ye Love Me?," and the title tune, turning up several times each. But the different sources also trace the changes in the score over time, with "I Might Grow Fond of You" and "I've Looked for Trouble" new to the London production and "I Was Alone" written for the movie. Still, in any version this is not one of Kern's stronger scores (with the exception of "Who?," of course), and the radio adaptation only confirms that the story was slight as well. Musical theater buffs will revel in this recording, despite the sometimes "extremely distressed" (as a sleeve note puts it) state of the sound, but more casual fans will be less impressed. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi