There are plenty of options for revisiting the entertaining legacy of David Daniel Kaminski (1913-1987), known on-stage, in movies, radio, and television as Danny Kaye. His volume in Columbia River's Cocktail Hour series is pretty much like any other well-stocked Kaye collection, for example, Living Era's 22-title Entertainer Extraordinary or Jasmine's 48-track two-fer The Maladjusted Jester. As is the case with virtually every Columbia River Cocktail Hour collection, the Danny Kaye edition uses two CDs to contain 28 tracks ...
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There are plenty of options for revisiting the entertaining legacy of David Daniel Kaminski (1913-1987), known on-stage, in movies, radio, and television as Danny Kaye. His volume in Columbia River's Cocktail Hour series is pretty much like any other well-stocked Kaye collection, for example, Living Era's 22-title Entertainer Extraordinary or Jasmine's 48-track two-fer The Maladjusted Jester. As is the case with virtually every Columbia River Cocktail Hour collection, the Danny Kaye edition uses two CDs to contain 28 tracks, and as all but seven of those selections are less than three minutes in duration, one can't help feeling that the producers could either have fit it all on one CD, or upped the ante and filled the package with more than 40 minutes per disc. After all, there are plenty of Kaye recordings to choose from. Aside from this irksome detail, the Danny Kaye Cocktail Hour collection will work nicely as a general purpose "best-of" sampler from his wild and crazy career. Herein you will find two numbers from Rodgers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific" and six from Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark , which starred Gertrude Lawrence...and Danny Kaye. His ability to sing with passion and poise is splendidly demonstrated during Victor Herbert's "Eileen" and that traditional masterpiece of sentimentality, "Molly Malone." "Farming" is Cole Porter's cynical plug for rural agriculture as a fashionable trend, and "Ballin' the Jack" demonstrates Kaye's knack for handling a real old-fashioned jazz tune. He delivers the lyrics to "Coca Roca" with characteristic precision, but the best version of this silly number (which appears to harbor a double message) is still the giddy interpretation by Seattle-born pop vocalist Jack Smith. That is really most unusual, for not many people were capable of sounding giddier than Kaye. Curiously, there is some measure of crossover between the two singers, who each recorded "The Big Brass Band from Brazil" and the cute but racist "Civilization (Bong Bongo Bongo)". A lot of the material on this collection is corny as hell, but corn was one of Kaye's specialties. He dished it out uncommonly well, tossing off cartoon-like woodpecker imitations on demand, and making "Oh! By Jingo" (devised by Albert von Tilzer and Lew Brown for the 1919 Broadway production "Linger Longer Letty") sound almost as if it had been specially written so as to eventually be sung by Danny Kaye. Sylvia Fine's "The Little Fiddle", on the other hand, comes across more like a Victor Borge imitation, albeit a skillful one. In the event that this collection actually gets utilized during an authentic cocktail hour, Kaye will most likely seem funnier and more entertaining at a later hour after inhibitions have receded and everyone is feeling more or less slaphappy. ~ arwulf arwulf, Rovi
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Add this copy of Cocktail Hour: Danny Kaye to cart. $11.25, good condition, Sold by Meadeco Media rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from VINE GROVE, KY, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Columbia River Ent.
Add this copy of Cocktail Hour: Danny Kaye to cart. $13.94, good condition, Sold by Prime Goods Outlet rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Troy, OH, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Columbia River Entertainment Group.
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