Liz Milner wrote this review.
Why did I spend an inordinate amount of time tracking down this forgotten London musical from 1958? To quote our Music Editor’s response to my query, “Sir Thomas More singing to a Latin jazz beat? How could I resist?!”
Strange are the ways of popular culture, and the history of Expresso Bongo is very strange indeed. It began its life in 1958 as a hit London musical comedy that lampooned the new musical fad known as rock ‘n’ roll and its leading proponent at the time, English proto-rocker Tommy Steele. In the ironic way of Tin Pan Alley (or in this case, Denmark Street), satire was transmuted into tribute when the musical’s authors found that there was more money in praising rock ‘n’ roll than there was in panning it. For the purposes of making a movie starring Cliff Richard, the plot was changed. Bongo, the Cliff Richard character, was transformed from a lout to a naïve but talented youth. Most of the satire was lost along with all of the songs from the musical, with the exception of “The Shrine on the Second Floor.” Within a year, the musical that had mocked Tommy Steele and his kind became the movie that paved the way for Cliff Richard’s rise to stardom and eventual knighthood.
Once the movie was released, in 1959, the stage musical disappeared and has seldom been revived. After listening to this recording, I’m mystified as to why that should be. The musical, written in a trad-jazz idiom, is different enough from the movie to stand on its own merits.
The plot of the musical is similar to that of the movie. Small-time talent agent Johnnie Jackson walks into a coffee bar where a young bongo player named Herbert Rudge has captivated a teenage audience. Jackson sees Rudge as a means of making money off of the emerging youth culture. He persuades Rudge to retain him as his manager for 50% of all future earnings. He then gives Rudge the stage name “Bongo” Herbert and uses the media panic over juvenile delinquency to position Bongo as the spokesman for Troubled Youth. Bongo becomes a media sensation and is besieged by a horde of opportunists intent on making money off the newest media craze. Bongo soon breaks his contract with Johnny, and sleeps his way into high society and eventual stardom. Johnny is ruined, but in the final moments of the musical he is redeemed by the love of a good woman, his girlfriend Maisie, the singing stripper, who improbably lands a lead role in the musical “The Secret Life of Omar Khayyam.”
Expresso Bongo is high on my list of great underappreciated recordings for a number of reasons. First and foremost, this recording is tons of fun. It starts out on a genuine high note with a joyful skirl of horns that only a really tight jazz band could pull off. The band is one of the best trad jazz bands I’ve ever heard. The instrumentation was unusual for its time: electric guitars and horns playing Latin jazz before The Tijuana Brass was a twinkle in Herb Alpert’s eye. Sadly, the CD doesn’t identify the individual band members. They are known only as “The Expresso Bongo Pit Orchestra.” It’s a pity because they sail through an inventive score that’s loaded with landmines — tricky Latin beats, time changes upon time changes, modulations upon modulations — with aplomb and I’d really like to know who these guys were.
In addition to a great band, the recording features wonderful comic performances. The late, great classical actor Paul Scofield, (A Man for All Seasons, King Lear, The Train), plays the anti-hero, film noirish talent agent Johnny Jackson. He sings, and yes, to a Latin jazz beat! His pitch may wobble a bit on the sustained notes, but the attitude is spot-on. It’s ironic that Scofield, the most modest of men, portrays a self-besotted lounge lizard so perfectly that at times I felt I was listening to a long-lost member of the Rat Pack.
The rest of the cast — James Kenney, Millicent Martin, Hy Hazel, Meyer Tzelniker and Elizabeth Ashley — are glorious singers and great comic actors. Kenney, as the singer Bongo Herbert, does his best to parody the excesses of rock and skiffle singers; he slurs, gasps and growls out his lyrics. My only criticism is that he sounds too good to be the mediocre Bongo. There is an infectious joy in his singing that made me want to join the girls who were screaming and fainting for Bongo. Millicent Martin (Daphne’s “Mum from Hell” on Frazier), who plays Maisie, the singing stripper, combines superb comedic timing, fabulous diction and an immense vocal range. Hy Hazell has a rich, sensual alto voice that is perfect for the role of Dixie, the fading Hollywood star. Her solo on the haunting beguine “Time,” probably the best song ever about being middle-aged and in love, is a stand-out. Meyer Tzelniker does a marvelous comic turn as a classical impresario who turns to rock ‘n’ roll, a music that sickens him, as a means of saving his record company, while Elizabeth Ashley plays Lady Rosemary, a twittering upper-class twit.
The satirical song lyrics anticipate the songs in That Was the Week That Was and often seem far ahead of their time. In “We Bought It,” two conspicuously consuming socialites sing what could have been the anthem of the greed filled years before the latest stock market crash, “Oh, well, what the hell/ why do the plebes make a fuss, We’re equal to everyone/As long as they’re equal to us!” There are also great songs for female grown ups. “Don’t you Sell Me Down the River,” for example, is a catchy New Orleans style tune about refusing to be used as a doormat.
Musically, what A Mighty Wind did for folk, Expresso Bongo does for trad and Latin jazz. The songs, which were written by the team of David Heneker, Monty Norman (“James Bond Theme,” “Dr. No”) and Julian More (“Irma La Douce”), function on two levels. They are exquisitely crafted examples of trad-jazz, New Orleans jazz, Latin jazz, skiffle and other popular music styles of the late 1950s, but they are at times also sly musical parodies of these styles. When I tried to sing along with the recording, I’d suddenly find myself feeling like Wile E. Coyote. Musically, I’d suddenly gone over a cliff and was hovering impossibly in mid-air with no possibility of a resolution. But instead of having the music crash, leaving me in a large impact crater, out of the blue there would suddenly come an absurd yet totally appropriate modulation or an opera allusion or snippet of Latin jazz and I’d somehow be wafted to solid musical ground again. And I loved the bizarre blend of electric guitar and trumpets. If there were British mariachi music it would sound like this!
One could also make a somewhat tongue-in-cheek case for Expresso Bongo as a work of sociology. Wolf Mankowitz, who wrote the book for the musical, was steeped in the Cockney and Yiddish culture of England’s music industry which was then centered on Denmark Street, in London’s Soho district. Characters in the play such as Mr. Meyer (played by Yiddish Theatre star Meier Tzelniker) reflect the precarious role Jewish entrepreneurs played in the industry as small-time agents, promoters, and impresarios.
Let’s see … musical fusion, ethnic diversity, black comedy, casual sex, cocaine and a rampaging “cougar” … is it any wonder that Expresso Bongo went way over the heads of its 1958 audience? Here’s hoping this re-issue will bring it the audience it deserves.
This CD reissue comes with performance notes, two lo-res photos of the principal cast members, a bonus track “The Dip is Dipping” and selections from Irma La Douce.
(Must Close Saturday Night, 2009)
