On the Lang-Segal "Pal Joey", Lang for some reason doesn't sing "Do It the Hard Way". It is sung and credited to Kenneth Remo as Joey for the song, who otherwise sings Ludlow Lowell on the recording. Perhaps Lang wasn't feeling well that day that he didn't record it? The song "Zip" has 3 verses; both Elaine Stritch and Jo Hurt sing the same first verse, but each only does one of the remaining verses (a different one on each recording). I own an old copy of the Lang-Segal recording, and listened just recently to the Helen Gallagher tracks on YouTube of the other recording for the first time. She sounds gloriously brassy -- one can almost hear her winning her first Tony with such a vibrant vocal performance. T
hat Lang-Segal revival, with Bob Fosse understudying Lang, ran over 500 performance starting in 1950 and held the record for many years of longest Broadway revival. It was certainly more popular with audiences than the original production, who probably just weren't ready for its sophisticated but also kind of tawdry characters. |
