This is kind of fun!
Howard Kissel, reporting on the recording session for the Encores! Face the Music:
Monday the cast of the City Center Encores! concert revival of Irving Berlin's 1932 "Face the Music" recorded the score -- probably best known for the standard "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" -- in a studio on the far West Side.
Maestro Rob Fisher, who did as exhilarating a job with the New York Philharmonic on "My Fair Lady" last month as he did with "Face the Music" a few weeks ago, was again on the podium.
...The most interesting moment in the session came when a dispute arose over a lyric in the song "Manhattan Madness," which was hauntingly sung by Jeffrey Denham. Denham had been singing "Traffic that stops and goes without knowing/ What all the shooting's for," an entirely logical sequence of words that was in the score transcribed from the Library of Congress.
Someone, however, noticed that in the collection of Berlin lyrics edited by Robert Kimball, a musical theater scholar of impeccable thoroughness, the line reads, "Traffic that stops and goes without knowing/ What's all the shootings for."
Much Talmudic wrangling ensued, but the issue was resolved by something that could not have been used even a few years ago -- YouTube.
In researching his role, Denham had come across a clip from a '30s movie ("Strictly Dynamite," starring Jimmy Durante and Lupe Velez) in which "Manhattan Madness" is sung in the background during a nightclub scene. The YouTube clip was summoned up on one of the half-dozen computers used in the session.
Presumably Berlin exerted tight control over the use of his material at the height of his career. Although it's a little hard to hear under the dialogue, the movie clearly supports the Kimball reading. So, if it sounds odd when you get the album later this spring, you should know it's entirely authentic.
