Kiss Me Kate (& Let's Face It)

Since Columbia Records' album of the original Broadway cast of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate was recorded and released in 1949, it entered the public domain in Europe in 2000. Naxos, one of several British labels that specializes in taking advantage of this relatively short copyright term to issue its own unlicensed versions of such albums, is unlike some of its rivals in that it tends to take its time and come up with more considered releases, and that is the case with its 2005 CD of Kiss Me, Kate. Although it boasts good annotations and liner notes by Richard Ouzounian, the real draw is the added material, nine tracks of music associated with an earlier Porter show, Let's Face It! When Let's Face It! was mounted in 1941, the "original Broadway cast recording" concept had not yet come into its own, and there was no such album made. But Mary Jane Walsh of the cast made an album (of 78s, of course) for the Liberty Music Shop label of the show's songs, including two instrumental medleys performed by William Scotty's Cotillion Room Orchestra; Danny Kaye of the cast included a couple of his numbers, "Farming" and "Let's Not Talk About Love," on his self-titled 1942 Columbia album; and the nightclub singer Hildegarde, who had no connection with the show at all, nevertheless also made a contemporary album of the songs for Decca. Those are the sources for the material here, and in addition to being well performed, it fits well with the Kiss Me, Kate songs. "You Irritate Me So" (sung by Hildegarde) and "I Hate You, Darling" (sung by Walsh) easily could have fit into Kiss Me, Kate, which boasts such thematically similar numbers as "Why Can't You Behave?" and "I Hate Men." As such, the additions not only bring into the digital realm some previously rare tracks from forgotten 78s, but also complement the main attraction. ~ William Ruhlmann|