Though
Irving Berlin
came from the old school of Broadway songwriters, he was also highly adaptable. He approached his assignment as substitute for
Jerome Kern
(who had died suddenly) on
Dorothy
and
Herbert Fields
' musical about
Annie Oakley
in the spirit of integrated musicals that producers
Richard Rodgers
Oscar Hammerstein II
had established with
Oklahoma!
only three years before.
Berlin
's songs for
Annie Get Your Gun
were all about character and plot, from the bawdy
"Doin' What Comes Natur'lly"
in which
Annie
affirms the value of a common-sense barnyard education, to the witty
"Anything You Can Do,"
which illuminates her final confrontation and reconciliation with love interest
Frank Butler
. Ordinarily, that should have meant that the songs were less easy to extract for the hit parade, but in fact
's score produced more chart hits through cover versions than any Broadway score before or since.
Star
Ethel Merman
and her co-star
Ray Middleton
were Broadway veterans of the pre-microphone era, experts at projecting their voices from the footlights to the rear balcony, and their stage styles carried over to the cast recording.
Merman
, of course, possessed a clarion voice that was never better represented than in songs like
"I Got the Sun in the Morning,"
while
Middleton
's sonorous baritone informed
"The Girl That I Marry"
"My Defenses Are Down."
But even though
wrote simply and directly, the singers hit his meanings as surely as they did his notes. The result was exactly what a cast album should be, an accurate representation of the music of a show. And since this show was a landmark in Broadway history, that made the cast album an important contribution to musical history as well as an aural delight. ~ William Ruhlmann