Angel Records
1999
Annie Get Your Gun
About This Album
Although the role of Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun was written for and most closely associated with bold and brassy Ethel Merman, the part has been effectively interpreted by other actress/singers with less bravura approaches. Betty Hutton brought her usual dizzy energy to the 1950 film version, for example, while Mary Martin gave a warmer and more subtle portrayal both in the first national tour in 1947 and on a live television broadcast in 1957 (chronicled on a TV soundtrack album). Bernadette Peters pays greater attention to the Martin version than any other in her personable performance in the 1999 Broadway revival, an approach consistent with the overall style of the production. Orchestrator Bruce Coughlin takes the music down from the sub-operatic arrangements of Robert Russell Bennett in the original. Responding to the Western subject matter, the decision to add dance sequences, and the new show-within-a-show structure (with its exaggerated staginess), he has come up with charts emphasizing country & western influences that had no place in earlier versions.

Coughlin is also fond of building numbers; for example, the show now starts with a slow, thoughtful rendition of "There's No Business Like Show Business" sung by male lead Tom Wopat that turns into an introduction of the show and the cast, while "I Got the Sun in the Morning" similarly starts as a tender ballad sung by Peters that turns into a square dance-based production number.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,7,9,10,13,14,15,16 and 18)

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