#28 Original Soundtrack: West Side Story

Sometimes it all just…clicks…

(Philips)

Released: October 1961

Topped the Chart:

17th June 1962 (for 5 weeks)

26th August 1962 (for 1 week)

9th September 1962 (for 1 week)

23rd September 1962 (for 3 weeks)

11th November 1962 (for 1 week)

9th December 1962 (for 1 week)

6th January 1963 (for 1 week)

13 weeks total

Over the course of this series, we’ve explored a number of musicals facing the horrors of age- from the “Yellow-face” of The King and I, to the portrayal of women and domestic violence in Pal Joey and Carousel respectively.

1961’s West Side Story film adaptation is certainly no different, with its studio-bound locations, actors relying on make up to change their race and pretty much none of the people on screen singing the songs credited to them on the soundtrack. And yet, as Steven Spielberg’s recent remake proved, this is a musical malleable to its time of release, even if its particular racial divides and jazz music are very much of the 1950s.

It manages timelessness as a searing criticism of the American Dream, and the way it continues to fail young people and immigrants—still disturbingly relevant as we enter the second Trump age. Take a song like Gee, Officer Krupke, on the surface the film’s crowd-pleaser, but beneath the silly voices and frolicking, it follows a kid passed from police to court to social worker to prison, everyone blaming someone else for his predicament and doing nothing. How many other musicals feature an indictment of how young people fall through the cracks of the system so easily?

Finding new superlatives to describe West Side Story is a big ask, even in its cut-down original release designed to fit on a single LP (instrumentals are shortened, dialogue is removed and whole songs have been left aside—including, bizarrely, the full version of the musical’s emotional backbone Somewhere). The sheer quality of the songs that we do get in undeniable; they have become standards for a reasons, from biting satire America, the achingly romantic Maria (the different emotions that vocalist  Jim Bryant can put into repetitions of the same name- chef’s kiss) and Tonight, to the thrilling intensity of Cool. These are not songs that are lacking in praise and literary discussion.

Instead, the main takeaway nearly 65 years later is how much storytelling is being done by Leonard Bernstein’s score and arrangement; perhaps not a surprise considering what esteem the composer is held in, but it’s a level of depth that we just haven’t seen in the musicals we’ve covered to date. From the click-heavy—and what beautiful clicks!— Prologue  which introduces the personalities of our two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, to the heartbreaking finale version of Somewhere, where the visual of the two gangs coming together united in grief is brought to mind without the need for visuals, it’s all done through the tender, aching flutes in the orchestra.

Best of the lot is Dance at the Gym, moving effortlessly between styles - the dissonant notes between brass and strings in the opening sections representing the sweaty, confusing hormones at play as young men and women eyeball one another for the first time, you can smell the Lynx Africa hanging over the scene. Stuffy grown-ups try to bring decorum in the none-more-square square-dance section, before the teenagers take control during the mambo section. The way reality swirls away during the ballet sequence as Tony and Maria meet for the first time, then returns to rudely remind our lovers how impossible their connection is—it’s masterful, and it tells the whole story without a word. West Side Story makes the listener care for the characters through its use of repeating themes and melodies, and it’s very easy to have an emotional reaction to the closing notes without watching the film.

As a 1950s show trying to be as contemporary as possible, elements of the soundtrack have dated, with wobbly accents in places and a couple of tracks (I Feel Pretty  and One Hand One Heart) laying on the doomed romance a bit too thick. Marni Nixon, here covering for Natalie Wood in totality and occasionally Rita Moreno, is on excellent form as ever, but her voice carries a little too much experience when standing in for a young teenager. It’s an issue that the remake soundtrack fixes by (mostly) hiring people to act who can also sing the songs.

In the end, this version of the soundtrack is not the final word on one of the greatest collections of songs ever gathered together- thank goodness for the CD length version available on streaming today. But, even when failing to provide all of West Side Story’s gifts, the music is of such a high standard that its effectiveness if simply without equal.

Click…click…click…

Score: 10/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      Prologue (shortened)

2.      Jet Song

3.      Something’s Coming

4.      Dance at the Gym (shortened)

5.      Maria

6.      America

7.      Tonight (shortened)

SIDE B

8.      Gee, Officer Krupkee

9.      I Feel Pretty

10.  One Hand, One Heart

11.  Tonight- Quintet

12.  The Rumble

13.  Cool

14.  A Boy Like That/I Have a Love

15.  Somewhere (Finale) (Shortened)