Listening to “Daddy Long Legs” Demo Recording

Knowing full well what I was getting myself into by listening to this demo recording of Daddy Long Legs I thought I was going to hate it. And surprisingly I don’t, at all. I still have a few fundamental issues with a some of the songs, but several of the songs are highlighted so differently in this demo recording and I ended up loving them.

First off, Jayne Patterson has an entirely different quality to her voice than Megan McGinnis. While I love McGinnis’ voice, I’m thinking that it’s maybe not suitable to the material. Patterson has such a warmth in her vocal tone that it actually changes the whole quality of the song. It’s inviting and beautifully warm. Patterson was in Paul Gordon’s musical, Jane Eyre, as Helen Burns and is in the revival production of A Little Night Music with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. Paul Gordon, the composer, sings the role of Jervis very tentatively. I wish Gordon would have employed another working Broadway actor — maybe Cheyenne Jackson or Gavin Creel. (They would sound amazing on this.)

One of my favorite songs – that I mentioned in my review – was the heart wrenching, “I Couldn’t Have Known Someone Less”. It soars on this recording. Absolutely beautiful. I want more of this. Obviously, Gordon is a talented composer. We all knew that from listening to Jane Eyre, but this song, in particular, has the arc and climax that’s missing in several of his other songs.

Skip the following tracks: “I’m a Beast”, “When Shall We Meet”, “Good on the Farm”, “She Thinks I’m Tall” and “Graduation Day”.

Overall, I can see why it was initially pursued. It’s a really great demo recording; you can hear the promise in these songs. There’s only 16 of them on this recording and in the show there are 28 songs. Probably 12 of those songs need to be cut. I wonder if the story was developed more in the script, than the songs would be highlighted differently and be better off that way. I hope that they’ll make the various changes in the book and music to create characters that we can all fall in love with, because I think they are worth falling in love with.

While this recording isn’t perfect (it’s a demo after all), it’s worth listening to. You can actually buy it on Paul Gordon’s IndiEclectic site. (Go buy it!)

Read the review of Daddy Long Legs at Theatreworks.

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LISTEN TO:

“Like Other Girls”

“Secret of Happiness”

“The Color of Your Eyes”

“I Couldn’t Know Someone Else”

“I Have Torn You From My Heart”