Posted 8:09 PM by Gene

It is always very pleasing to learn that a CD you paid $6 for is now (supposedly) worth a lot of money -- in this case a Broadway-cast-album version of the hit London musical Canterbury Tales, which now (supposedly) sells for up to $856!!!!! on Amazon.co.uk. By rule very expensive collectable albums aren't much, and this one's no exception: a RIGHT ON! WITH IT! NOW! late-sixties fossil with every last pseudo-rock cliché in the book; the constant brass bleats make Chaucer (or rather the E-Z-Chaucer of Nevill Coghill) sound totally vulgar -- though come to think of it he was anyway. Astonishingly Frank Loesser co-produced it, perhaps dazzled by its ultimate 2,000-performance run on the West End; one fears Loesser may have been thoroughly addled by the lung cancer that killed him scarcely two months after the show closed at 121 performances. Of course some sensations don't survive a trip overseas -- London audiences needed a glossary to understand Guys and Dolls -- but others (the liner notes say Dick and Liz were at the London open! RIGHT ON!!!!!) can't last because they aren't any good -- and here is one of 50,000 Exhibit A's, whatever its price.

By contrast tonight I've been skimming through a British reissue of an album issued sixteen years ago as Sammy Davis Jr.: Capitol Collectors Series, some songs from very early on, and if he spends too much time mimicking his way through (first Billy Eckstine and Brook Benton, then Fats Waller in his facetious mode), one thing's still sure: his best will never go out of style.