THE CY COLEMAN JAZZ TRIO

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Cy Coleman Jazz Trio: Flower Drum Song (Westminster, WST 1503, 1959)

Cast Notes: Cy Coleman was better known as a composer than a musician but this album was recorded early in his career, before he found a truer calling composing for musicals (appropriately enough). Coleman's best known song is "The Best Is Yet To Come" which was recorded by everyone from Sarah Vaughn to Tony Bennett to Blossom Dearie but is probably most connected with Frank Sinatra.

This site has an interview with Coleman (when he was still alive) that includes this interesting trivia bit from the man himself regarding recording this album:

"Originally, I didn't want to do it but I was being held to my contract so I went in, did it in two afternoons, and never listened to it afterwards. Strangely enough, I listened to it two years later and thought to myself that it wasn't a bad album (laughs)."

Music: TBA

Cover Art: Yikes. My first thought when I saw this cover was, "what the hell is that supposed to be?" I'm no expert, but for one thing, that costume looks much more Thai than Chinese. Whatever the case, this just is not a very well-designed cover. Minimalist, sure, but the font choice here is ugly and the photograph is more jarring than "eye-catching."

Back cover is mostly text save for a photo of Coleman which almost looks like it's out of a high school yearbook.

--O.W.

THE MASTERSOUNDS

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The Masterounds: Flower Drum Song (World Pacific, 1252, 1959)

Cast Notes: The Mastersounds were lead by two brothers of guitarist Wes Montgomery - bassist William "Monk" Montgomery and vibraphonist Charles "Buddy" Montgomery, plus Richie Crabtree on piano and Benny Barth on drums to round out the quartet. The only recorded six albums with World Pacific; this likely would have been one of the last albums by the group since they disbanded in 1959.

Music: TBA

Cover Art: I've always like the cover for this particular LP. The use of the fortune cookie may be an easy motif but the design is clean, the font isn't as over-the-top Orientalized as most others and there's just a nice quietness to everything else.

Back cover is mostly text save for a photograph of the quartet.

--O.W.

MORRIS NANTON TRIO

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Morris Nanto Trio: Flower Drum Song (Warner Bros, 1256, 1959)

Cast Notes: I was actually familiar with New Jersey pianist Morris Nanton already thanks to his underrated 1966 album for Prestige, Soul Fingers but I never realized that recording an FDS album was his first recording.

Music: Unfortunately, even though my vinyl copy of this LP looks near mint, it had so much noise in playback (even after a thorough cleaning) that recording it seemed pointless as the sound files would have been too cracky to enjoy. If someone has a cleaner copy and wouldn't mind digitizing some songs, please let me know.

Given that the official soundtracks were recorded by big bands and orchestras, it's intriguing to hear the same songs tackled by a far quieter and more intimate jazz trio. Had I included songs, I would have highlighted "Chop Suey" since, interestingly, Nanton's choice on arrangement here is actually to "Orientalize" the song through some stereotypical Eastern music motifs...even though the song is all about American assimilation! His "Grand Avenue" is lively and jazzy and is fitting enough and his take on the slower ballads "works' in a jazz trio treatment though perhaps a bit too sparse for my tastes.

Cover Art: This cover is striking on a few levels; while shot off of Grant Avenue (not clear what the intersection is), there is absolutely nothing visual that suggests Chinatown. More than that, all the visible faces you see are White, notably the two male musicians walking across the street and then there's that white lady at the corner who is staring - not in a very friendly way - at a presumably Chinese couple whose back is to us. Considering that this album is recorded by an African American lead...about a Chinese American story...you'd think they could have thrown some more color on there but perhaps Warner Bros. was a little gunshy about having too many (or, uh, any) non-White faces here. (Nanton doesn't even get his photo anywhere here...and it's his debut. At least there's no Oriental font anywhere.

Speaking of which, the backcover has a small illustration of S.F. Chinatown (pagodas and cable cars, check!) plus a rather out-of-place photo of Warner Bros' studio console. Sexy!

--O.W.

MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK

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Flower Drum Song: Motion Picture Soundtrack (Decca, DL 79098, 1961)

Cast Notes: The Broadway production of FDS was a huge success - one of the bigger, bonafide R&H hits after a couple of failures - and film development began soon after. Casting-wise, several of the key actors from the musical came back, namely Umeki and Hall, but most of the other major principles were replaced. Playing Wang Ta was now JA heartthrob James Shigeta - who was already a recording artist and successful actor - replacing hapa Hawaiian singer Ed Kenney. Jack Soo moved up from understudy to take over as Sammy Fong. Benson Fong stepped in as Wang Ta's father (replacing Keye Luke) and most surprising, to me, Pat Suzuki was replaced by Nancy Kwan. I'm not privy to the details behind that casting choice but while Kwan was undoubtedly the bigger actor draw - she didn't have singing experience and in the film, her voice was dubbed in by B.J. Baker (a white singer).

The film, like the musical, was also a success and has become the most familiar way most Americans have ever become familiar with the musical and its songs.

Music:

Most of the songs I picked out here are ones featuring new singers from the musical. That includes Shigeta doing one of Wang Ta's few real solos, "You Are Beautiful," which shows off the fact that Shigeta can indeed sing but isn't that compelling as a vocalist, lacking a real dynamic range or presence. Soo's no Sinatra either but for "Don't Marry Me" benefits more from his sardonic tone than the need for a true troubadour.

Lastly, I included B.J. Baker knocking out "I Enjoy Being a Girl," which has become the definitive version of the song given the film's popularity.

Cover Art: Despite having as much, if not more text than the musical soundtrack, the film soundtrack uses the visual space of the cover much better, placing the fan front and center and tasking it as another tableau upon which the album title (still in fake Chinese font) and Chinatown buildings (more pagodas!) a drawn. Nice use of "Fan Tan Fanny" (aka a photo of Nancy Kwan) on top to add a bit of visual spark.

Back cover includes the same Kwan photo plus stills from the film and a minimum of liner notes.

--O.W.

PAT SUZUKI: BROADWAY '59

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Pat Suzuki: Broadway '59 (RCA Victor, LPM-1965, 1959

Cast Notes: Technically, this isn't a formal FDS album but released a year after her triumphant run on Broadway as Linda Low, Suzuki put out this LP full of different showtunes, including a three-song suite from FDS.

Music: What's notable about this LP is that it contains, in my opinion, the single-best vocal version of "Love Look Away" even though Suzuki's character in the musical doesn't actually sing the song. She brings a lot of depth and nuance to the song and the arrangement behind her hits the right mood too. I first heard this version on Renee Tajima's My America and it took me several years to figure out it was from a Suzuki solo LP and not some variation on a FDS soundtrack.

Cover Art: Suzuki's albums are an interesting study in how to market an Asian face within mainstream pop music in the late 1950s and early '60s. Most of them, like Broadway '59 usually try to place her in an All-America setting, or at the very least, don't play up her ethnicity in any stereotypical ways. The back cover here is different insofar as we see Suzuki dressed in a Chinese-influenced shift but she's also clearly in the studio and the suggestion here is to link back to Flower Drum Song and remind the consumer that Suzuki was one of the major leads in the film.

--O.W.

ORIGINAL BROADWAY SOUNDTRACK

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Flower Drum Song (Original Broadway Soundtrack) (Columbia Masterworks, OS 2009, 1958)

Cast Notes: There's a longer story, of course, behind the original development of FDS from C.Y. Lee's novel into a Broadway musical but I'll leave it to a better site to summarize that history. What's wort gleaning from this is that Rodgers and Hammerstein were committed to using (in the words Lee) "an all-Orieintal cast," rather than White actors in yellowface and that meant FDS (and the subsequent film) would draw from then-little known talent to fill the key roles. Two non-Asians were eventually used - Larry Blyden as nightclub owner Sammy[1] and veteran African American singer Juanita Hall who played Madam Liang on both Broadway and in the film.

Pat Suzuki, who was cast on Broadway as Linda Low, was already a recording artist prior to being cast but her role helped elevate her profile considerably. And the top billed star was Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki who had won an Academy award for her work in Sayanora a year or so prior.

Music:

Besides the overture, the first real song in the movie is "One Hundred Million Miracles", sung by Umeki as a way to demonstrate her mastery of traditional Chinese culture. While flower drum songs exist in China, I don't know how close R&H hewed to recordings of them or if they simply riffed on the concept. Personally, I always thought the song-writing on this song bordered, at times, on fortune cookie-ness and especially as the first song, it can be rather cringe-worthy. Regardless, I just don't consider it a very interesting song musically or compositionally but I'm including it here given that it is a notable attempt at "representing" Chinese culture within the musical (and luckily, one of the few).

"I Enjoy Being a Girl" is one of the musical's most enduring songs, still showing up in commercials. It's also one of the more hated songs (at least amongst those who are wont to hate songs from FDS) for its girly-girl message. Not a feminist anthem, no no no. Lyrically, the song is memorable enough but as with "Miracles," I don't find it compelling, musically.

Ah..."Chop Suey". I have to say, at least someone did their history since for a song about the complexities of ethnic assimilation, "Chop Suey" does indeed seem apropos to explain the Chinese American condition. The only problem is that while "Chop Suey" comes off as a laundry list of Americanisms - hula hoops! nuclear war!(?) - what R&H managed to leave out was...the Chinese and/or Chinese American parts. As it stands, "Chop Suey" is a rather one-sided take on double consciousness. That said, once this song sticks in your mind, you will never, ever get it out, especially the way Juanita Hall opens it with that loud, brash, "chop sueeeeyyyyy, chop sueeeeyyyy." Don't say we didn't warn you.

For reasons explained in another post, the ballad "Love Look Away" is one of my favorite songs of the musical...but not because of how it's sung here by Arabella Hong, playing the lovelorn Helen Chao. I mean no disrespect to Hong but her approach to this song feels way too operatic; it's an ill-fit and even sounds a bit shrill. Nonetheless, I thought it important to include the song's original form so that later versions could be compared to it.

There's this great moment in Wayne Wang's masterpiece Chan Is Missing, right at the end of the film, where the song "Grant Ave." comes on and it's meant to be this moment of irony as Wang contrasts FDS' stage set fantasy of S.F. Chinatown (the actual neighborhood already being a fantasy set itself) to the verité shots of early 1980s Chinatown and its people. In a way, "Grant Ave." is unintentionally intriguing as a facile take on a neighborhood that very much wears its artificialness on its own facile walls. It's also a swinging, catchy tune - very R&H - but so cloying, you could get a toothache off it. The songwriting here makes "One Hundred Million Miracles" sound like a Dylan song. "And the girl who serves you all your food is another tasty dish?" Eeesh.

[1] In the film version of FDS, Sammy is played by the actor who was Blyden's understudy in the musical: Jack Soo.

Cover Art: Let's see - Chinese calligraphy-influenced font? Check. Pagoda? Check. Golden Gate Bridge? Check. Cable cars and Chinese lanterns? Check.

No real subtlety here - the cover art splashes together all the requisite visual cliches you need to know that this is going to be some kind of story that is connected to both the Chinese and San Francisco. Design-wise, it's also awkwardly saddled by the arrangement of text on the left that competes for visual attention with the graphic elements.

Back cover is purely text and provides a synopsis of the musical and a run-down of the main talents.

--O.W.

INTRODUCING THE FDS PROJECT

This is not a love song.

This is not a celebration of The Flower Drum Song (FDS), nor a critique, nor a recuperation. It is, at its most basic, a collection of album scans and recording samples from different version of FDS that have come out since the original Broadway soundtrack debuted in 1958.

I started with a few versions of the LP I already owned and am hoping to build from there with reader contributions. According to Castalbums.com, there were approximately 20 FDS albums recorded (I could be wildly mistaken about that) but as far as I know, no one's ever bothered to collect/catalog them all.

So why now and here?

The FDS Project was inspired, first and foremost, by Roger Bennet and Josh Kun's And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past As Told By the Records We Have Loved and Lost. I contributed to that book and in looking through the finished product, I was very much struck by how innovative their approach was. I had long loved books about album covers, but Trail of Our Vinyl went beyond design and into the realm of community, culture and identity.

None of this is to say that The FDS Project seeks to remotely live up to that ideal or accomplishment. But their book did make me think about how something as simple as album covers can be portals into larger conversations. As someone with a deep interest in the history of Asian Americans and popular music, FDS seemed like as good a place as any to test the waters.

With FDS, I thought it was a small enough album phenom to document yet that doesn't mean there's a lack of things to ponder about it. For better or for worse (many would say "for worse"), FDS was one of the sole ways the rest of America in the 1960s knew anything about Chinese America (let alone the not-yet-created idea of Asian America).

Was it a distortion? Absolutely. Isn't there something terribly problematic about two White men (Rodgers and Hammerstein) adapting C.Y. Lee's tale of the generation/culture gap between Chinese immigrants and American-born Chinese? Probably. At best, shouldn't FDS fill us with ambivalence? Yup.

But none of this negates the ways in which the book/musical/movie - or as I'm arguing specifically in this project, the soundtrack - is a representation of Chinese/Asian America and one of the very few circulating in popular culture of its era. And so I'm drawn to the FDS as a way through which to view the past and its ideas about Chinese culture and Chinese American society.

It's not as if I expect these albums to exist as prime sociological data but as artifacts from the era, it's intriguing to think about what they may or may not say about American society's larger ideas about Asian-ness in their midst, not the least of which is addressing the question: what does Chinese America sound like?

I don't know if FDS was meant to answer that question but it at least gives us some place to start. Listen in.

--O.W.