Ethel Merman - Merman, Ethel: It's De-Lovely (1932-54) (2007)

During the 1930s, when she recorded 15 of the 20 tracks on this unlicensed British reissue, Ethel Merman spent most of her time performing in Broadway shows, interrupted by a couple of sojourns in Hollywood. She did not spend much time making records, which was typical in a time when Broadway and Hollywood singers usually were not also recording stars. In fact, the bulk of her recorded output in the decade is found here. Nor did she necessarily record the songs she was singing in her shows and films. She did cut "You're the Top" and "I Get a Kick Out of You" from Anything Goes, but not "I Got Rhythm" from Girl Crazy, the song that made her a star. (There is a version of it here, done 17 years after she sang it on Broadway.) And she also cut some Tin Pan Alley pop. So, a compilation such as this is more a Merman miscellany than a Merman best-of, even though it has been seeded with a few later tracks, including a radio transcription of "Friendship" with Bert Lahr and a version of "There's No Business Like Show Business" from the 1954 soundtrack of the film of the same name, not from the musical Annie Get Your Gun, where it originated. Restricted to remastering old 78s as the source material for an album devoted to recordings that are out of copyright in Europe, but not America ("Not for Sale in the United States," reads a legend on the back cover), the compilers are unable to include later Merman favorites such as "Everything's Coming Up Roses," and the sound quality is variable, with surface noise audible at times. But even when there's hiss, Merman's clarion voice cuts through easily, and she is never anything less than enthusiastic as she nails one song after another. This may not be a great Ethel Merman compilation, but there's practically no such thing as a bad one.~© William Ruhlmann /TiVo