Search - Fats Waller, Ray Shell :: Ain't Misbehavin' (1995 London Cast)

Not worth it.

Jeff Stoffa | Miami Beach, FL United States | 12/31/2002

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I grew up listening to the original 1978 soundtrack with Nell Carter as a child. I am not African-American but came from a musical household and appreciated the fact that what makes this music so special is the voice range of the singers, the dialect, and the skat. As an adult I decided to buy the CD for myself and since the London version from 1995 was so much cheaper I thought I'd try it. BIG MISTAKE! These people have to be British. They have no soul, they don't skat. They changed the "ain't"s to "isn't," and the "I goes" to " I go." The women seem more comfortable singing operatic soprano than soulful jazz. You could call this "Gilbert and Sullivan do 'Ain't Misbehavin." Every word is perfectly enunciated. I yearned for Nell Carter's whiney American accent and incredible range as I heard a different woman sing a clipped perfectly enunciated "Oh Honey." You get the feeling that the singers don't really understand the music, nor do they feel it the way the original cast did. It's not part of their culture. You can tell they are singing something foreign to them and it is painful to hear how they obviously are trying to sound Harlem of the 1930s and 1940s but do a lousy job. They couldn't have gotten a speech coach to teach them that Americans don't exaggerate words ending in "t" when they sing? Especially Harlem jazz? I ended up throwing this CD away and buying the original version for $$$ after all so it was a waste. Maybe for the British this was entertaining, but for an American, this CD is comical."

Lively; maybe too lively at times.

Johann Fu | Bellevue, WA USA | 03/13/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Very lively performance. Makes you want to get up and dance. The American accents sound ok to me. I don't know why another reviewer is so hysterically down on this recording."