Reviews

Edna Ferber in 1928, two years after the publication of her Show Boat novel and a year after the première of Jerome Kern's musical

Andrew Lamb reviewed the album on CD in Gramophone in November 1988. "Never", he wrote, "... have I been so bowled over by a musical theatre recording as by this". Before listening to it, he had been apprehensive that it might be one of those albums on which a Broadway score was mistreated by a gang of gatecrashers from the world of opera. In the event, his fears had proved needless.^[5]

Innumerable artists, among them some of the most eminent, had sung "Bill", "Ol' man river", "Make believe" and "Can't help lovin' dat man", but none that Lamb had ever heard had presented these numbers with the "beauty and style" bestowed upon them by the singers chosen by John McGlinn. "The love duets between [Frederica] von Stade and Jerry Hadley", he wrote, were "quite stunningly beautiful, and Bruce Hubbard's firm, honeyed baritone has absolutely nothing to fear from the inevitable comparisons with Paul Robeson".^[5]

In their secondary roles, Karla Burns (as Queenie), David Garrison (as Frank), Robert Nichols (as Cap'n Andy) and Paige O'Hara (as Ellie) were all "superb" too. This was not to say that every soloist was entirely perfect in every respect. Teresa Stratas, while "ravishing" in "Can't help lovin' dat man", occasionally came across as "a shade too self-conscious", and Nancy Kulp brought back memories of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.^[5]

There was no doubt that the Ambrosian Chorus had relished their "rousing" contributions, and the London Sinfonietta were positively riotous in the jazzy music that Kern wrote for Kim's scene in Act 3. But neither they nor any of the album's famous soloists deserved as much credit for the album's success as its conductor. John McGlinn's use of Robert Russell Bennett's original orchestrations made his recording very different from any previous version of Show Boat. This was plain from the very first bars of the overture: a tuba sounded "a note of dark foreboding" before a cheery banjo led the way to the orchestra's enthusiastic introduction to "Why do I love you?". (As well as his work on the podium, McGlinn put in a cameo appearance as Magnolia's rehearsal pianist in Act 2.)^[5]

Oscar Hammerstein II

The album's historical authenticity was not the only thing that set it apart from its predecessors. It was also encyclopedically comprehensive. "Mis'ry's comin' aroun'" was just one of several excellent pieces heard on McGlinn's discs that had been excised from the score of Show Boat almost before Kern's ink had had time to dry. An appendix included every note that a Kern devotee could desire, except for "How'd you like to spoon with me?", a number added for a production in London in 1928. McGlinn had also recorded lengthy passages of underscored dialogue, and it was the magnificence of these, ironically, that laid him open to accusations of an error of judgement. There were places - Act 1, Scene 3 for example - where dialogue was wholly absent. "By all means abridge the linking dialogue", Lamb wrote, "but to include the dialogue and underscoring complete in some scenes and not at all in others seems to me to distort the scale and balance of the piece". It might have been wiser to buy room for the missing dialogue by pruning the appendix a little. Two of its items - found in manuscript in a second-hand bookshop - hardly sounded as though they had anything to do with the Cotton Blossom at all.^[5]

All in all, though, the album was an "inspired", "quite irresistible achievement". What Solti's Decca Ring cycle had been to the history of opera, McGlinn's Show Boat was to the history of American musical theatre.^[5]

Eric Salzman reviewed the album on CD in Stereo Review in December 1988. "John McGlinn", he wrote, "is a man on a mission: to restore the lost glories of the great old American musical". His Show Boat was the most ambitious project that he had undertaken to date. Never before had a musical been reconstructed so meticulously. The original score, numbers that were dropped and new numbers composed for the stage or the screen were all present and correct.^[6]

Jerome Kern in 1934

Robert Russell Bennett's 1927 orchestrations had been retrieved from the cobwebbed recesses of a warehouse in Secaucus. The sombre overture had been rescued from oblivion. Listeners could enjoy several wonderful old dance tunes and some liberally underscored dialogue (unbowdlerized. even at its most offensive).^[6]

Show Boat itself. alas, was not as great a work as some of its apologists claimed. Its source, Edna Ferber's novel, was not "a deathless work of art ('potboiler' might be closer to the mark)". Oscar Hammerstein II's text was spoiled by a ramshackle plot and a good deal of sentimentality. Despite moments of seriousness such as "Ol' man river", it was concerned less with social history or psychology than with the hackneyed trope of "what show-biz folks are like behind the scenes." Kern's frequent repetition of his catchiest melodies was an instance of a composer flogging his best tunes to death, not of one engaged in an architecture of Wagnerian leitmotivs. Kern and Hammerstein had crafted their magnum opus at a time when Puccini was in his grave, and Berg, Eugene O'Neill. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill were already famous. Show Boat was already old-fashioned when it was premiered, and it would be a mistake to claim more for it than "a certain antique charm".^[6]

McGlinn's cast included some outstanding singers, but it was questionable whether a Show Boat starring Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley, Teresa Stratas and Bruce Hubbard could seem other than a "very old-fashioned, if inspired operetta". Kern had tried to re-energize the tired genre in which he worked with an infusion of jazz and blues. These were musical territories to which most of McGlinn's stars were strangers, and McGlinn's brisk, businesslike conducting allowed little scope for a bluesy mood to be created. Karla Burns was a "heavy jazz and blues performer of the old school", but McGlinn never gave her an opportunity to really do her thing. McGlinn's London Sinfonietta did not have a rhythm section that could play either jazz or blues satisfactorily.^[6]

The original Broadway production of Show Boat, 1927

McGlinn's album was best enjoyed when listened to unreflectively. One could recognize that it was an extraordinary performance. McGlinn's rebuilt performing score worked very well. His long appendix was a cornucopia of treats. Von Stade and Stratas were astute enough to sing Kern in a manner closer to that of operetta than to that of their usual opera. McGlinn's pacing was sometimes too brisk, but most of his tempos were appropriate, and he took "the bigger numbers (where he is at his best) up to some rather breathless and even thrilling heights".^[6]

To sum up, Show Boat was not a work of any depth either musically or dramatically. But Hammerstein made up for his crude storytelling with some good, and even great, lyrics. Kern supplied "endlessly lavish musical innovation", and was one of the few composers to have successfully infused operetta with a contemporary American idiom. Bennett's orchestrations were extremely well crafted. The best numbers in the score "had not lost any of their lustre". There were enough good things in Show Boat to merit the "care and genuine affection" and "devotion, talent and enthusiasm" with which McGlinn and his colleagues had gone about their work,^[6]

J. B. Steane reviewed the album on CD in Gramophone in January 1989. At first, he wrote, listening to the recording was blissful. The overture, with its ominous opening chord, delighted and impressed him with its implicit promise of a performance of genuine substance. Then the first few choruses lifted him up into the gaiety of the Cotton Blossom's spirit. Magnolia von Stade's contribution to "Only make believe" melted him; Bruce Hubbard's "Ol' man river" enraptured him; and "when it came to 'Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly' and their many repetitions, they couldn't do what they gotta do too often for me". And then, having loved everything that he had heard thus far, he decided to take a break.^[7]

Show Boat at the Muny – the St Louis Municipal Opera Theatre – in 2010

After his interval, he rejoiced to find that some of the musical's biggest hits were still to come. But between "Why do I love you" and "Just my Bill", things started to go wrong. There was a lacuna in the narrative. He wanted to know what had happened to the characters in the interval, but EMI's booklet had nothing to say on the matter. The disappointment would have been easy to shrug off if the music had sustained its excellence, but then, in the music-hall sequence, Kern's inspiration seemed to wilt in tandem with the album's story-telling. Ravenal's desertion of Magnolia was glossed over, and the ending of the piece felt all but "perfunctory". Like Lamb before him, Steane felt that McGlinn would have been wiser to sacrifice some of his bonus tracks in order to make room for more dialogue. "Scholarship and entertainment are somewhat at odds here."^[7]

Patrick O'Connor mentioned the album in Gramophone in March 2003 while reviewing a disc of excerpts from it. It was, he wrote, "something of a landmark, ... one of the best recordings of any music-theatre piece ever made. The cast is flawless, ... with Teresa Stratas a vivid, ironic Julie. ... John McGlinn has done nothing better in disc; the production sounds as fresh now as fifteen years ago."^[8]

Writing about the making of the album in The New York Times on 25 September 1988, Stephen Holden described it as "magnificently recorded and sung" with "vital, intense performances".^[2]

Accolades

Writing in Gramophone in December 1988, Adrian Edwards included the album in his Critics' Choice list of the best recordings of the year. "I had never believed that Show Boat could be mentioned in the same breath as Porgy and Bess," he wrote, "yet McGlinn's recording demonstrates how subtly Kern and Hammerstein placed each number in the course of their 180-minute saga."^[9]

In the Gramophone Awards for 1989, the album won the prize for the best musical theatre recording of the year.^[10]

Writing in Gramophone in December 1989, Andrew Lamb named the album as his Critics' Choice best recording of the decade. "To select a Record of the Eighties is a formidable task indeed", he wrote. "But ... I find no real challenge for the three-CD Show Boat. ... Singing and playing are superb, and ... the use of original orchestrations plays its part in the success; as well as the inclusion of much splendid, rediscovered music,"^[11]

Musicians and actors

Frank - David Garrison

Ellie - Paige O'Hara

• Robert Nichols (1924–2013), Cap'n Andy Hawkes, owner of the Cotton Blossom, husband of Parthy
• Nancy Kulp (1921–1991), Parthy Ann Hawkes, wife of Cap'n Andy
• Frederica von Stade (born 1945), Magnolia Hawkes, daughter of Andy and Parthy
• Jerry Hadley (1952–2007), Gaylord Ravenal, a riverboat gambler
• Kerry Schulz, Kim, daughter of Magnolia and Ravenal, as a child
• Frederica von Stade, Kim as a woman
• Bruce Hubbard (1952–1991), Joe, a dock worker, husband of Queenie
• Karla Burns (1954–2021), Queenie, a cook, husband of Joe
• Steve Barton (1954–2001), Steve Baker, a leading man, husband of Julie
• Teresa Stratas (born 1938), Julie LaVerne, a leading lady, wife of Steve
• David Garrison (born 1952), Frank Schultz, a performer, husband of Ellie
• Paige O'Hara (born 1956), Ellie May Chipley, a singer and dancer
• Ed Bishop (1932–2005), Windy McClain, pilot of the Cotton Blossom
• Ron Travis, Pete, engineer of the Cotton Blossom
• Jack Dabdoub (1925–2014), Sheriff Vallon
• Margaret Tyzack (1931–2011), Mother Superior
• Tayleurs Dumme, 1st Barker
• George Dvorsky, 2nd Barker
• Kevin Colson (1937–2018), 3rd Barker
• Merwin Goldsmith (1937–2019), Jim
• John McGlinn (1953-2008), Jake, Magnolia's rehearsal pianist
• Gillian Bevan (born 1956), a Mincing Miss
• Deborah Poplett, a Mincing Miss
• Simon Green, a Trocadero patron
• Evan Pappas, a Trocadero patron
• Vernon Midgley (born 1940), the Faro Dealer
• Ray Gill (1950–1992), a Gambler
• Mark D. Kaufmann, a Lounger
• Dyer Thurst, a Lounger
• Mark D. Kaufmann, a Show Boat patron
• Jeanne Lehman, a Show Boat patron
• Rebecca Luker (1961–2020^[12]), a Show Boat patron
• Maryetta Midgley (born 1942), a Servant
• Meriel Dickinson, a Servant
• Michael Pearn, a Servant
• Leslie Fyson, a Servant
• Lillian Gish (1893–1993), the Lady on the levee
• Simon Green, dance double
• Peter Burke, dance double
• Wayne Marshall (born 1961), stage piano
• Ambrosian Chorus
• John McCarthy, chorus master
• London Sinfonietta
• William Hicks, répétiteur
• John McGlinn (1953–2008), conductor^[1]

Other

• John Fraser, producer
• Michael Sheady, balance engineer
• John Kurlander, remixing engineer
• Peter Mew, 24-track Sony editing
• Alison Fox, production assistant
• Michael Allen, director of administration^[1]