South Pacific Soundtrack, by Various Artists (March, 1958)

Brad's Take:


Once again, we have a soundtrack to review. I have never seen the actual Broadway show or film South Pacific so it's kind of hard to get really into this.

The film stars Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor, but apparently for the soundtrack, Brazzi's vocals were overdubbed by Giorgio Tozzi. I'm actually interested in watching the movie because I would love to compare Brazzi's voice to Tozzi's. Giorgio Tozzi sounds way too much like Dracula. I can't take his vocals seriously at all. I just imagine Dracula trying to re-invent himself by starring in a romance movie to show the world that he actually does have a sensitive side that wants love... not just blood.

The orchestration is good, and Mitzi Gaynor's voice is great, but the vocals by Dracula Tozzi are "bloody" distracting (in a bad way, if I haven't made that clear yet.) There are some good songs though. I like "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair." I can imagine that was every teenage girl's anthem when their boyfriend's were jerks.

I didn't really get into this album much at all. I feel like there are probably far better soundtracks that could have taken the place of this one in 1958, but for what it is, it's better than "okay" but I wouldn't call it a "classic."

Dad's Take:

Great. Now I'm going to hear Dracula, whether I want to or not. Thanks, Brad.

I've seen "South Pacific," of course, but I can't claim to know it very well. We used to listen to the Hi-Lo's version of "Bali Ha'i" before a play I was in in high school, so that's the song I know best, in a much different version.

And, yeah, I hear Dracula. Thanks again, Brad. Bela Lugosi singing "Some Enchanted Evening." Wow.

South Pacific is a great musical. It even became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Like most musicals, the songs make the most sense in the context of the play. Although there are some great songs here that stand on their own, most are best when watching the show or if you know the show well enough that the songs conjure up visions of the play.

"Bali Ha'i" is a great song (although I prefer the Hi-Lo's version, but then I'm a sucker for harmony vocals), as is "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" (which Brad is too young to associate with a certain TV commercial) and "Some Enchanted Evening." "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" sounds like Stan Freberg to me, but that's because Freberg is great at capturing the feel of a musical in some of his production numbers. "Honey Bun" is also a fun song.

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" is interesting now in light of its controversial nature when the musical came out, with it's justification of interracial marriage, which at the time was deemed indecent and "pro-communist" and a threat to the American way of life. The song inspired a bill in Georgia that outlawed entertainment that contained "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow" when the musical toured the southern United States. The writers of the musical refused to remove the song because it reflected the whole reason they wanted to do the play in the first place.

On its own, as an album, with only a weak mental context for the songs, and now with that vision of Dracula stuck in my head, it doesn't stand up as well on its own. But it's mostly an enjoyable listen anyway. I think Brad would like it more if he watched it instead of just listening. The songs are meant to be acted and danced, not merely listened to.

Calypso, by Harry Belafonte (June, 1956)

Dad's Take:

It can be argued that Belafonte's classic album really belongs to Exotica genre. In the mid-fifties, people apparently developed a taste for travel via hi-fi, maybe due to the new pictures that came to them over their new television sets.

Belafonte's classic, "The Banana Boat Song,"aka "Day O," has been forever changed for me by Stan Freberg's equally classic send-up of the song. It really is a great song, but I can't listen to it without inserting Freberg and Peter Leeds as the calypso singer and the bongo player. Or the Muppets.

My mom used to listen to Harry Belafonte when I was small, so it has sentimental meaning to me. "Jamaica Farewell" was one of my early favorite songs, and it still sounds great. I also like "The Jack-Ass Song," if only because it gives me a reason to say, "Don't tie me donkey down dere." And then there's one about Santa building a houseboat. What? It's Hosanna who build de houseboat? OK. If you say so. I could have sworn it was "Oh Santa."And I can't forget the beautifully sentimental "Come Back Liza." The album ends with a couple of social statements. "Brown-Skinned Girl" is a poignant look at the babies left behind by American sailors. Finally we get one of popular music's earliest feminist songs, the very funny (and true) "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)."

Harry Belafonte was a great performer, with a voice as smooth as the white sands of Jamaica. But the album suffers from the same problem a lot of reggae and other records have to deal with: there's a sameness that sometimes overwhelms the quality of the songs. It doesn't help that the same song is on here twice, with very slight changes to the lyrics ("The Banana Boat Song" and "Star-O"). It's a fun record. It might never be one of my favorites, but it deserves its place in our list like it deserved its then-record 31 weeks at the top of the American charts.

Brad's Take:

Welp, now I know who originally sung the song from the dinner scene in Beetlejuice that always cracks me up.

Side A of "Calypso" starts with "Day-O" and then side B starts with "Star-O." I was listening to the album straight through so I didn't realize that it was split into two parts. I forget that that's how it was back then... So I wondered why he'd put those two songs on the same album because they are basically the same exact song, but it made a lot more sense when I realized that the album was divided into two parts like that. My poor young naive self.

"Calypso" is not an album I thought I'd ever listen to. Harry Belafonte's name hardly even sounded familiar to me. This isn't something I'd listen to on an average day, but for what it is, I enjoyed it. It's actually pretty fun to listen to. I even caught myself singing along with the final chorus on "Dolly Dawn."

All of the songs have the same Jamaican folk beat and sound so it's a little hard to tell one song from another, but sometimes the same of one thing is good if it's a good thing to begin with (which it is, in this case.)