Noël Coward, Vol. 4: I Wonder What Happened to Him (1944-1951)

Album review

The fourth volume of Naxos' series of Noël Coward's complete recordings begins with a find: half-a-dozen previously unreleased recordings made by Coward in Calcutta, India, in 1944, during his tour of war zones in World War 2. The tracks come from the private collection of Norman Hackworth, Coward's piano accompanist, who toured with him, and they include a song written by Hackworth, "Music Hath Charm." They also demonstrate that Coward was already singing songs he would use in his 1946 musical Pacific 1860, such as "Nina" and "Uncle Harry," both comic numbers with an international flavor that is repeated in their regular studio recordings later in the disc. The immediate post-war era was a transitional one for Coward, who was closely identified with the interwar period and had to find his feet as a writer in a different time. He spent the period coming up with musical shows for London, including the revue Sigh No More and the book musicals Pacific 1860 and Ace of Clubs, with spotty success. He also continued to go into the studios of HMV Records regularly and record his versions of the songs for these shows. (Those recordings are now in the vaults of EMI, which has issued them in various legitimate packages, but they are also out of copyright in Europe, allowing Naxos, among others, to remaster old 78s and put out its own unlicensed collections, such as this.) Probably the best remembered of these songs is the touching ballad "Matelot," written for Sigh No More, but Coward's wit certainly hadn't deserted him, which is demonstrated on such songs as "I Wonder What Happened to Him" and "His Excellency Regrets." And by the end of this period, in 1951, he had launched a new career as a nightclub entertainer. He was also coming to the end of his association with HMV, and it's unclear whether this also marks the end of Naxos' soi-disant "complete" set of his recordings. (He went on to record for Philips in the U.K. and Columbia in the U.S.)
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo