In recent years, although performers and musicologists have paid an enormous amount of attention to the Broadway musicals of the post-1920 style, very little study has been made of the earlier, equally significant, decades when ragtime and operetta existed side by side. This is one of the Anthology of American Music series sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1970s and in its LP version has long been a favourite with scholars of early musical comedy.
A couple of the songs have remained familiar, George M. Cohan's ''Yankee Doodle Boy'' mostly due to James Cagney's version in a 1940s Cohan biopic, and also the very early Jerome Kern duet ''How'd you like to spoon with me?''—from the Broadway version of The Earl and the Girl. The song that gives the album its title, ''I wants to be a Actor Lady'' was conversely written for the London run of a Broadway show, In Dahomey, which can lay claim to being the first real Black American musical to play in Europe. Its star was the lovely Aida Overton Walker and this song, done with some spirit here by Renee Crutcher, is by Harry ('Down at the Old Bull and Bush') von Tilzer. It has the cakewalk beat that distinguishes most of the pseudo-Black numbers of the time. The full-blooded lyrics of May Irwin's Bully Song would surely start a riot today but it was May Irwin's greatest hit (her recording of it has recently been reissued on Pearl—to be reviewed next month) and it is easy to understand why, with its infectious, danceable melody.
Kim Criswell has since become famous for her Annie and other recordings; here she is heard in the Kern duet already mentioned as well as an unusual Victor Herbert song from Babes in Toyland, ''I can't do the sum''. From A Trip to Chinatown, a success at the Madison Square Theatre in 1891, it is a surprise to find ''The Bowery'' is the song familiar to British music-hall addicts as ''Brighton'', made famous by R. G. Knowles (''They do such things/They say such things/I'll never go there anymore!'').
All these cross-references between London and New York styles, not to mention the German element provided by the 'Fritz' character which was Joseph K. Emmet's standby—Frank Kelley sings the ''Lullaby'' from Fritz, Our German Cousin with all the appropriate stereotypical accent—make this a richly fascinating selection of numbers from a much under-researched period. The performances all have a sense of style and all lack just that last little touch of genius that distinguishes a vaudevillian from a mere singer. But no one interested in the history of musicals will be disappointed. Notes with song texts are included, with a useful bibliography.'