I do not like polygamy - or even moderate bigamy

Starting my trip back through the 1956 album charts.

30/12/56 : The King And I OST - Yul Brynner, Marni Nixon and others

I suspect we may be seeing a few soundtracks this year, so let's start the year with this one.  I've never seen the film and I'm not aware I know any of the songs, so let's see how it goes.  I'm expecting something sounding quite old-fashioned, but given it's nearly 70 years old that's maybe not such a surprise.

The album starts with an overture - you can't see anyone doing that these days, can you?  It's actually all very orchestral, but that comes with the times I guess.  I did know "Getting To Know You" and "Shall We Dance" (my mum used to sing both of these a lot!) - I can't say any of the other songs particularly stuck with me, but they were all fine for that sort of thing.  The ladies all acquit themselves well - Marni Nixon (singing for Deborah Kerr here, who broke Hollywood convention by crediting Nixon - Marni also sang for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, without Natalie's knowledge), Rita Moreno (best known for West Side Story, an EGOT winner to boot and still with us at the ripe old age of 91) and Terry Saunders (best known for, errr - The King And I) all belt out the songs impressively.  Whereas Yul - well, he puts on a dubious accent and talks his way through the whole thing.  Let's just say that's what the role asked for, shall we?  I didn't mind this, but there are plenty of other musical soundtracks I'd pick ahead of it.

Unsurprisingly, we're at #1 in the charts this week on its fourth week of a 25 week run - of those 25 weeks, it spent 21 weeks at #1 and the other four weeks at #2.  Somewhat bizarrely this was its fourth run in the charts (out of 32 in total, taking it into 1963) - it seems like every so often it would just drop out of the chart for a week or two and then reappear, often in the early days towards the top.  My suspicion is that issues with either distributing the album for sales or counting sales figures are responsible, but all told it spent 193 weeks in the charts of which 43 were at #1.  The rest of the chart was Lonnie Donegan, the High Society soundtrack (another one I've never heard), Bill Haley and Frank Sinatra - and I'll be amazed if we don't get to visit all of them in the coming weeks.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the album, but there's a very interesting entry on the musical - it was initially conceived of by theatrical attorney Fanny Holtzmann, who was looking for a vehicle for her client Gertrude Lawrence (who I know was a big thing on the stage, but that's pretty much it) and she convinced Rodgers and Hammerstein to create it.  They were initially looking to get Rex Harrison or Noel Coward to play the king, but they were both unavailable so they turned instead to the little known actor and television director (which was a pretty new career at the time) Yul Brynner - who had a full head of hair beforehand, shaved his head for the role and continued to do so for the rest of his life.

It was an immediate success, winning Tony Awards for the show and for Gertrude and Yul.  Gertrude unexpectedly died of cancer a year and a half after the opening but Yul did the full run on Broadway, a West End run, a US tour, the film (for which he won an Oscar) and many, many revivals with him last playing the role in 1985 shortly before he died - all told he played the role 4,625 times on stage.

"Customers also listened to" soundtracks to The Sound Of Music, Oklahoma, Brigadoon and Half a Sixpence - this is certainly no TSOM but it would stand a chance in a head to head against Oklahoma (I've not heard the other two, but it won't surprise me if I get a chance to listen to them).  It's very much of its time, but I guess that time was a long time ago now...

23/12/56 - An enjoyable music history lesson
1999 - Not the best year, but definitely not the worst