SOUTH PACIFIC
South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed that they could write a musical that would be financially successful and, at the same time, would send a strong progressive message on racism. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant's song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". (More from Wikipedia)
I have also been reading about another CD that came out more recently which featured a lot of the same music, called It's a Happening! Texas Girls of the 60's. Because the CD features the Heart Beats and Linda Pierre King, I assumed that it was basically a reissue of the earlier CD that I had. Actually, the 26-track album mostly features other bands; but more importantly from my standpoint, there are four songs by King that did not appear on the We Had the Beat CD: the South Pacific chestnut "Bali Hai", the traditional ballad "Jack-A-Roe" ("The Train" is another traditional song that is on the earlier CD), an original song called "Where Are We Going?", and a second Bob Dylan song, "Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)". That's a total of 12 songs and is enough for a full-blown album for Linda Pierre King herself. I guess I'm going to need to track down that CD also!
(April 2012)
