Lullaby Of Broadway: The Best Of Busby Berkeley At Warner Bros.

Archive: Listening

Lullaby Of Broadway: The Best Of Busby Berkeley At Warner Bros.

I don't own a recording of a theatrical musical. Partly because of a bias favoring CDs that feature a single artist. A prejudice I can sometimes overcome but not when my main interest is the singer.

Only own four or five movie soundtracks. Lullaby Of Broadway: The Best Of Busby Berkeley At Warner Bros. is my favorite. If you only know Dick Powell from his later career like Reservoir Dogs you'd never guess that in his youth he was a leading man and crooner in musical comedies.

Since they songs are from Busby Berkeley comedies they are all chipper, sometimes zany. Warner Brothers reused their music relentlessly, notably in the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons series (hence their names). Growing up I thought of We're in the Money and Shuffle off to Buffalo as Bugs Bunny songs. Honeymoon Hotel if I remember aright was used for a weird cartoon in which a spider ran a hotel as a flytrap for honeymooning flies.

Often I've wished that Harry Warren's songs had been recorded by more jazz and pop singers. I've never known if it was because being from movies they didn't have the prestige of similar material from the Broadway composers like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin or that Jack Warner was tight with the rights. An Ella Fitzgerald Harry Warren songbook from her Verve years would be a delight.