Chip Deffaa’s The Irving Berlin Duets Album,
Volume One
(Garret Mountain Records)
July 10, 2020
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
Producer/director/performer/songwriter Chip Deffaa returns with another over-stuffed collection of gems from one of our most important Golden Age songwriters, Irving Berlin. With “an All-Star New York Cast” offering up these discoveries, there is much to treasure here, and discoveries they are for the most part. True, a few standards are mixed into the playlist, including “I Love a Piano” and “Old Fashioned Melody,” but only the true connoisseur will recognize “Just One Way to Say I Love You” and “A Couple of Song and Dance Men.” As to “I Love to Quarrel with You” and “The Schoolhouse Blues,” well, you get the idea. And a few such as “I’ll Take You Back to Italy” trade on stereotypes best left forgotten. Some of these rarities are trivial, others are truly reflective of the genius that Jerome Kern claimed “has no place in American music. He is American music.”
It is a bit regrettable that Deffaa, who deserves great credit for rediscovering these numbers and issuing a series of CDs featuring them, spends most of the space in the accompanying generous booklet discussing the singers. There’s an emphasis on the other projects of his they have appeared in, and very little about the background of the songs themselves—what decade from the Berlin’s more than half-century career they came from or for which theater/film project they were intended. That information would be most welcome. (There is a highly humorous exchange between Erich Schuett and “Mr. Chip” on the recording that provides a bit of background for “There’s Something Nice About the South” but that’s about it.)
As to the cast, there are a few highly recognizable stars: Stephen Bogardus from Broadway, Jon Peterson from Off-Broadway, and Joan Jaffe from cabaret. Most come from Deffaa’s stock company and are familiar voices from his various projects. As with the songs, there are some exciting young talents and some less-than-thrilling ones, who lack of enticing personalities. It’s not Emily Bordonaro fault that she can’t summon an inner Ethel Merman on “You’re Just in Love,” though her partner Schett brims over with youthful energy.
Among of the joys of the production is the charming “In a Cozy Kitchenette Apartment” crooned by Keith Anderson and Beth Bartley showing off Berlin’s ease with the working-class environment. There’s the “let’s-get-away-from-society” (a theme popular with the composer’s good friend, Cole Porter) attitude of “Settle Down in a One-Horse Town” charmingly sung by Luka Fric and Rachel Hundert. Even more upbeat are the feel-good numbers; “Some Sunny Day” is theatrically offered up by Michael Townsend Wright and Clark Kinkade (channeling the Eddie Foys, Sr. and Jr.), and the back-to-back bouncy military numbers, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” (Tyler DeBoys and Jack Saleeby) and “This Is the Army, Mr. Jones” (nicely harmonized by Alec Deland and Jon Peterson).
If the recording as a whole is a hit-and-miss effort with the good outbalancing the weak, it definitely includes enough to earn a place in the library of any collector, especially those who want to fill in the holes in their Irving Berlin section. A whole lot of charm here.
