This collection combines an eight-song original Broadway cast album (initially released on 78s and as a 10" LP in 1950) with six tracks from the soundtrack of a 1956 movie musical. The unifying element between
Texas Li'l Darlin' and
You Can't Run Away From It is lyricist
Johnny Mercer, who wrote the words for both projects, giving both his knack for vernacular humor.
Texas Li'l Darlin', which appeared on Broadway on November 25, 1949, for a moderately successful run of 293 performances, concerns a blowhard politician played by Kenny Delmar, which gives
Mercer the opportunity to set a comically boastful lyric to Robert Emmett Dolan's "Oklahoma!"-like music on the title song and to offer a sarcastic tribute to the joys of "Politics." Those are the highlights of a winning score that was a bit too specific to spawn a pop hit.
You Can't Run Away From It, which opened in movie theaters in November 1956, was, of all things, a musical remake of It Happened One Night with
Jack Lemmon in the
Clark Gable role and
June Allyson replacing Jean Harlow. There were only three songs in the picture (plus a title song sung under the credits by
the Four Aces), and the music first got to record in a 1957 LP that also contained material from The Eddie Duchin Story, On the Waterfront, and From Here to Eternity. Its rescue from such obscurity is welcome in that the witty patter song "Temporarily" deserves to be considered one of
Mercer's more inventive pieces. The lyricist's sensibility really does hold the two different scores together, making this one of those CDs that will be a pleasant discovery to show music fans. (Less appealing, however, are
Will Friedwald's error-littered liner notes. For the record, Louisiana Purchase ran on Broadway in 1940, not 1948, and
Sammy Cahn, not
Mercer, co-wrote "Teach Me Tonight" with
You Can't Run Away From It composer
Gene DePaul.) ~ William Ruhlmann