Finian's Rainbow

This budget-priced British release contains the original Broadway cast recording of Finian's Rainbow, which may confuse show music fans who know that Columbia Records recorded the show back in 1947 and suspect, correctly, that Sony Music Entertainment, current owner of the Columbia catalog, claims copyright. That's only true in the U.S., however; in Europe there is a 50-year copyright limit on recordings, entitling Prism Leisure (or anyone else) to press up their own version using old records as the source. (Nominally, such albums are not for sale stateside; in fact, they are easy to obtain through mail order.) Of course, once such a free for all is allowed, the results can be sloppy. This is an album on which the title of the show's best-known song, "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?," is misspelled twice, and in which hapless annotator Tony Watts (who doesn't seem to have seen any production of the show, much less the original one) starts out by announcing that the setting of Finian's Rainbow is Ireland! (It isn't, as he confusingly acknowledges a paragraph later.) On the other hand, the sound quality isn't bad. (Maybe the folks at Prism just went to the local record store and bought a Columbia CD to copy.) The price should be low. And the compilers have added three bonus tracks, pop covers of songs from the show including Dick Haymes' version of "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?," which was one of the four hit recordings, and Margaret Whiting's chart rendition of "Old Devil Moon." Haymes' take on "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" will be of interest to those who are curious about the bowdlerization of lyrics on pop recordings -- it studiously avoids use of the objectionable word "bosom"! ~ William Ruhlmann|