The Original Broadway Cast album of South Pacific was recorded in 1949, which means that it fell out of copyright and into the public domain in Europe as of January 1, 2000 (while remaining under copyright in the U.S.). That entitled anyone who wanted to remaster a copy of an old record and issue an unlicensed CD of it, and certain British reissue labels that watch the calendar closely quickly did that. Naxos also takes advantage of the short copyright term in Europe, but this far more reputable label has taken its time and come up with a version of South Pacific to rival the legitimate reissue. Producer David Lennick has the chutzpah to claim that his transfers, from "a clean 45 rpm set" of the original recordings are to be preferred over the authorized CD version; that's not true, of course, but the sound is good. What makes this South Pacific CD valuable, however, is the added material Naxos has appended. In 1949, orchestra leader Al Goodman recorded a version of the score for which he hired the Broadway understudies to leads Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, and four songs from that album are included, with vocals by Sandra Deel and Dickinson Eastham (including, in the case of "This Nearly Was Mine," some lyrics that were trimmed from the Original Broadway Cast recording). There is also an amusing version of "There Is Nothing Like a Dame," by the Guild Choristers, with some slightly bowdlerized words. During the show's run on Broadway, both Martin and Pinza went into the studio and recorded some extra material that is also added here. Pinza made a single of "Bali Ha'i," a song he didn't get to sing on-stage, while Martin made a single out of two songs that had been cut from the score before the Broadway opening (and that were restored in the movie version), "The Loneliness of Evening" and "My Girl Back Home." In the latter case, she had to change the lyrics to the third person (actually singing "His Girl Back Home"), since the song actually was intended for a male character, Lt. Joseph Cable. (The Pinza and Martin tracks are included on the legitimate CD reissue released on Sony Classical/Columbia/Legacy in 1998.) These welcome rarities make the Naxos version of the Original Broadway Cast recording of South Pacific one that theater buffs will want to seek out. ~ William Ruhlmann
