LOST WEST END VINTAGE – Various Artists (Stage Door Records – STAGE 9051)
A double CD album from Stage Door Records follows on from the label’s previous Lost West End releases. This time the two CDs contain lots of treasures from the 1940s onwards up to the 60s. The first CD has tracks taken from original cast recordings such as Ace of Clubs, Carissima, Romance in Candlelight, Mister Venus, Lady at the Wheel, Expresso Bongo, Vanity Fair – to name but a few.
Artists features include Cicely Courtneidge, Pat Kirkwood, Lester Ferguson, Sally Ann Howes, Frankie Howerd, June Laverick, Bertice Reading, Elisabeth Welsh, and I could go on and on. It is simply a cornucopia of wonderful names and some long-forgotten talent. Although what accent Anna Neagle is trying to portray as Queen Victoria in one of the excerpts from The Glorious Days is anyone’s guess!
The second CD is filled with ‘covers and other rarities’. Artists such as The Melody Maids, Reg Dixon, Edmund Hockridge, Joan Regan, The Beverley Sisters, Tommy Steele and Beatrice Lillie give their renditions of songs from the shows.
The great thing about this is the fact that they are not all instantly recognisable songs but you can see why they had this (sometimes short) life outside the musical itself.
Being Stage Door Records, the booklet is very informative and has some lovely shots of sheet music covers from some of the shows included.
Yes, you may already have the cast recordings from some of the shows on the first CD, but the ones you certainly will not have make up for that in droves.
I have had this collection in my possession for three days now and every time I sit down at my computer I am playing tracks from the two CDs. I have played them through, then put them on shuffle – I just can’t get enough of them.
These are the musicals I was brought up on and it is just such a lovely feeling to hear these long-forgotten voices coming through my speakers in such great remastered quality – thank you Stage Door Records.
Nick Wakeham
This CD is available HERE.
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