Editorial Reviews

Though this album is billed as the "original Broadway cast recording," that doesn't mean the same thing it usually does in this case because it contains a recording of the 1971 Broadway revival cast of No, No, Nanette. But there was no original Broadway cast album of the original 1925 production (indeed, there were no albums then, period), so the revivers can be forgiven their little fib. Nevertheless, it points up an important distinction: this is hardly the first time this music has been heard. No, No, Nanette, in its Broadway, London, and national productions, was one of the biggest hits of the 1920s, and the songs "I Want to Be Happy" and "Tea for Two" became standards. There were three movie versions. The revival of the show, in addition to the still-impressive score by composer Vincent Youmans and lyricists Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, also boasted such veteran talents as Busby Berkeley (credited with "supervising" the production after he was ousted from the director's chair in tryouts) and Ruby Keeler, who had made her Broadway debut back in the '20s. The show was mounted in an essentially faithful style. The trifle of a plot concerned a romantic roundelay with a flapper at its center, and in the nostalgia-laden early '70s, the revival ran longer on Broadway than the original production had. [The 1999 reissue of the album added some dance music, two songs that had been trimmed from the first release for space ("Peach on the Beach" and "Only a Moment Ago"), and brief interviews with principals Caesar, Keeler, Bobby Van, Patsy Kelly, and Helen Gallagher.] William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

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