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Gene Kelly
Summer Stock/I Love Melvin/Everything I Have Is Yours
Label: MCA Records
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Back in the early days of compact discs, it was not only customary, but necessary -- because of the high cost -- to pile several short albums onto the same CD release. MCA managed to squeeze three film musical soundtracks onto this CD (and could even have shoehorned a third in there if they'd wanted, from among MGM's shorter soundtrack LPs). The disc leads from its strongest point by using Summer Stock to open the compilation -- and the Summer Stock score opens with its best number (and one added to the movie only months after production wrapped), Harold Arlen and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg's "Get Happy," which effectively closed out Judy Garland's work at MGM. This is easily the strongest part of this 19-song CD, and well worth hearing -- beyond "Get Happy," one also finds first-rate material and performances from Kelly and Garland on "You Wonderful You," "Friendly Star," and "(Howdy Neighbor) Happy Harvest," not to mention the ensemble and Phil Silvers novelty numbers "Heavenly Music" and "Dig-Dig-Dig-Dig for Your Dinner"." The mastering is surprisingly clean and bright on this late-'80s CD, which makes it a bargain twice over. As to the other scores, Skip Martin's and Josef Myrow's music for I Love Melvin is the strongest part of a charming but paper-thin plot, mostly assembled to re-team Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds. O'Connor provides the soundtrack with most of its best moments, on numbers such as "I Wanna Wander" and "We Have Never Met as Yet"." Everything I Have Is Yours was much more of a dance-focused musical than a song-oriented production, what with Marge and Gower Champion as the stars, but there are still four pleasant, solid numbers here. As with most early reissues of this sort, the annotation is virtually non-existent, and the way the track list is presented on the back of the CD, one has to know the scores in question to recognize the divisions between the three separate soundtracks. But that doesn't detract from the listening pleasure to be derived from this collection of second-ranked MGM musical material -- though it should also be pointed out that most of this has been reissued in better-mastered and more generous CD compilations through Rhino Records. Bruce Eder, All Music Guide








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