Our 5 Favorite Things From ‘The Sound of Music’ Super Deluxe Edition Soundtrack

The original RCA Victor edition of The Sound of Music clocked in at about 45 minutes and included all of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein show tunes from the blockbuster film. This, however, is the first time that all the music from the film has been released on one set. Now, are you likely to plug arranger Irwin Kostal’s “The Laendler” (which plays during that sexual tension-filled dance between Maria and Captain Von Trapp) into all of your “best musical” playlists? Probably not. But having every note of music from this film in one place is a lovely, long overdue thing.

Plummer was famously dismissive of the film, though he grew to embrace its cultural impact near the end of his life. Perhaps figuring into his estrangement from the movie was the fact that unlike co-star Andrews, Plummer’s singing voice was dubbed for the theatrical release. Bill Lee, a Disney vocal veteran, provided Plummer’s vocals for “Edelweiss” and everything else, though audiences at the time didn’t know it.

There’s no real tea (a drink with jam and bread) here: Such things were commonplace at the time — just one year earlier, Audrey Hepburn starred in My Fair Lady without singing a note. Now, decades after the film’s release and three years after his death, we can finally hear the acting legend singing these beloved songs. Plummer’s pipes are actually pretty good – nothing spectacular (you can hear him stretching when he sings “I go to the hills” on “The Sound of Music (Reprise)”) but he’s better than plenty of actors who sang in big-budget musicals this century. They made the right choice dubbing him back in the day — this role demands a vocal knockout, not an amateur — but it’s still a real treat to hear Plummer crooning… and to hear his laughter during “Something Good.”

Speaking of vocal dynamos who dubbed for the stars, this expanded edition features ghost vocalist Marni Nixon singing an early demo of “I Have Confidence.” Nixon secretly provided the singing voice for Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Deborah Kerr in The King and I. She even appeared onscreen in The Sound of Music as Sister Sophia — she’s the nun who defends Maria, singing, “But her penitence is real” during the convent diss track “Maria.” During the film’s early production days, Nixon helped Rodgers get some of the songs into shape by singing on demos such as this one. Her operatic training is abundantly clear on this demo, and when you compare it to Andrews’ version, you truly appreciate the rambunctious charisma Andrews brought to the song.

Of the numerous alternate takes on this edition, none of them are radically different from the film. Still, it’s fun to listen and pick out slight variations in the unused takes. For example, the alternate version of Andrews singing “I Have Confidence” is, well, not quite as confident. Most noticeable is the way she delivers the lyric, “A captain with seven children / What’s so fearsome about that?” In the film, she gives the line a bit of a snap, as if to goad herself into meeting this challenge head-on. It’s a smart, funny delivery, but it’s absent from this alternate version, where the line is delivered sweetly. Hearing these shelved takes provides a fascinating look into how these classic songs took shape — and it makes you realize how sublime the final product turned out.

The Super Deluxe Edition includes four audio tracks circa the film’s 1965 release: commentary from Rodgers, plus three separate interviews with Rodgers, Wise and actress Charmian Carr, who played eldest child Liesl von Trapp. Rodgers is drily humorous and rather prescient, predicting (accurately) that despite the success of musicals in the mid-sixties, there was likely to be a fallow period that followed given that Hollywood genres tend to “run in cycles.” Carr’s interview is also a delight – she all but fell into this role-of-a-lifetime. And if you’ve ever wondered where her unusual first name comes from (or how it’s pronounced), well, you’ll just have to listen.