Cast recording
Encyclopedia
A cast recording is a recording of a musical
that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording, as the name implies, features the voices of the show's original cast. A cast recording featuring the first cast to perform a musical in a particular venue is known, for example, as an OCR "original Broadway
cast recording" or an "original London
cast recording".
Cast recordings are (almost always) studio recordings rather than live recordings. The recorded song lyrics and orchestrations are identical (or very similar to) those of the songs as performed in the theatre. Like any studio performance, the recording is of course an idealized rendering, more glossily perfect than any live performance could be, and without audible audience reaction. Nevertheless, the listener who has attended the live show expects it to be an accurate souvenir of the experience.
cast recordings of shows that had already opened on Broadway, but had not been recorded with their original Broadway cast. This led to the odd situation of having, for example, a 1928 recording of the London cast of Show Boat
, but no recording with the actual 1927 Broadway cast, and a recording of the London cast of Sigmund Romberg
's The Desert Song
, but not of the 1926 Broadway cast - even though both of these shows are Broadway musicals, rather than British ones.
Prior to the development of original cast recordings, there had of course been recordings of songs from musicals, and collections of several such songs, and recordings of songs performed by cast members; but they were recordings of songs, not recordings of a musical.
The first American
original cast recording as we know it was an early experimental LP of program transcriptions of selections from The Band Wagon
, a 1931 revue starring Fred
and Adele Astaire
. It was not widely released.
The following year, Jack Kapp
produced an album of songs from Show Boat
timed to the 1932 Ziegfeld revival. This album featured Helen Morgan
and Paul Robeson
doing their songs from the show but used studio cast singers for the leads.
As the 1930s progressed, Liberty Music Shop in New York City
made mini albums of songs from the Ethel Merman
musical comedies Red Hot and Blue and Stars in Your Eyes
. These were more like personality recordings, since the arrangements were not the ones heard in the theatre.
The first complete so-called original cast album was Marc Blitzstein
's 1938 album of songs from The Cradle Will Rock
although these were recorded with just piano accompaniment and not the show's orchestra. In 1984, the original recordings from Very Warm for May
(1939) were discovered and issued on an LP. However, these recordings were not made with the original orchestrations.
RCA Victor had made an album of the key songs from Porgy and Bess
using the theatre orchestra but featuring Met opera singers Lawrence Tibbett
and Helen Jepson
singing the songs. Decca
riposted with another album of the same highlights sung by the actual stars of the original production, although recorded five years after the premiere. When a revival was staged in 1942, Decca issued a second album of some of the secondary songs from the opera by the revival cast and later combined these two albums onto one LP and called it the "original cast recording". Decca also issued an album of songs from the all-soldier revue This Is the Army
by Irving Berlin
.
Finally in 1943, came Decca's recording of Oklahoma!
. It not only featured the original cast, but the show's original chorus, all accompanied by the same orchestra heard in the show, playing the music in the original Robert Russell Bennett
orchestrations and conducted by the show's original conductor, Jay Blackton. The show was the biggest hit Broadway had experienced up until that time and people who could not get tickets bought the album. It would eventually sell over 1 million copies as a set of 78-rpm records, and millions more on LP and Compact Discs.
Decca soon began recording every hit musical that came along including Carmen Jones
, Carousel
, and Annie Get Your Gun
. Soon, all the other record companies were bidding for the rights to record Broadway shows with their original casts.
Capitol
recorded St. Louis Woman
in 1946, and RCA Victor recorded Brigadoon in 1947. Although Decca abandoned the cast album field in the mid-1950s, Capitol and Victor actively bid for recording rights. Sometimes problems arose as when RCA Victor signed on to record the 1950 musical Call Me Madam
even though the show's star, Ethel Merman
was then under exclusive contact to Decca Records. This resulted in two albums of the score being released: Merman with a studio cast on her label, while the rest of the Broadway cast made an album for RCA Victor with Dinah Shore
singing the Merman role!
The label that would dominate the field until the late 1970s, however, was Columbia
. They began by issuing an album of the 1946 revival of Show Boat
followed by the original Broadway cast of Finian's Rainbow
in 1947. A year later the label introduced LP
records and used the format for two best sellers: Kiss Me, Kate
and South Pacific
, both recorded and released in 1949.
Under the leadership of Columbia
's Goddard Lieberson
, the label's cast recordings came to define the genre. Columbia Masterworks produced the original cast recordings of such shows as The Pajama Game
, My Fair Lady
, The Sound of Music
, West Side Story
, Gypsy
, and Camelot
. Lieberson also recorded important shows that had failed at the box office including Candide and Anyone Can Whistle
. In 1956, he recorded Frank Loesser
's musical The Most Happy Fella
complete on three LPs, the first time an entire Broadway show had been fully recorded.
A 1970 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker
, Original Cast Album—Company gives a straightforward view of the making of a cast recording. It shows how the recording studio looks, how performers are arranged, and how the director behaves. The cast feels the pressure of delivering a definitive performance, with a degree of perfection beyond that ever required on stage, under a time limit imposed by the high cost of studio time.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon for cast albums to become best sellers. My Fair Lady
, The Music Man
, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly!
all reached the #1 position on the Billboard magazine best-sellers chart. As popular music split away from the traditional Tin Pan Alley song stylings of Broadway and Hollywood, and Rock music became the dominant pop culture form, show albums began selling less well. Also, as radio and TV moved away from showcasing Broadway numbers the ability for a show to reach an audience beyond the traditional Broadway fans lessened.
Today few show albums even appear in the Billboard top 200, and the rare breakout hit like Wicked receives no radio airplay.
New boutique labels such as PS Classics
and Ghostlight
release many of the cast albums of recent Broadway hits. With the recent merger of Sony Music (formerly Columbia Records) and BMG Music (formerly RCA Victor), many older editions of cast recordings are being deleted and newly remastered editions are being released.
By the 1980s, the rise of the compact disc
with its 74-minute recording capacity (which was increased to 80 minutes in the 1990s) resulted in improvements in cast recordings, which were now usually capable of including all songs, the full overture and entr'acte, and, when appropriate, lead-in dialogue to the songs.
In recent years, some cast recordings have been recorded live, but maintaining perfect quality. This is due to theaters that contain recording studios within. What is often a vibrant stage performance, however, often does not translate as such to discs and these recordings lack the heightened sparkle that leading album producers can bring to studio made cast albums.
, or of the cast of a revival produced many decades later than the original production.
For some musicals created before cast recordings became the norm, studio cast recordings are all that exist to document the original productions' orchestrations. Such studio cast recordings have been made of many early musical comedies by the Gershwins, Vincent Youmans
and Rodgers and Hart
.
Studio cast: assembled by a record company. In the early days the studio cast singers were often lesser known performers with good singing voices, usually joined by one fairly well known star. Mary Martin
made a number of studio cast recordings for Columbia in the early 1950s including Babes in Arms
, Girl Crazy
and Anything Goes
. More recent studio albums have tended to be note-complete recreations of the original orchestrations often with opera singers taking the leads such as EMI's recordings of Brigadoon and Show Boat
.
Soundtracks: The performers who appear in Broadway shows sing the score live each night. When a Broadway cast album is made, it is recorded in a studio and produced with the home listener in mind. While it is perfectly correct to call a movie soundtrack a "cast recording" since it does have the performances of the film cast, it is wrong to call a cast recording a "soundtrack".
This term soundtrack
came into use in the late 1940s when MGM
started releasing albums of songs from their movie musicals. MGM called these "original cast" recordings stating they were "recorded directly from the soundtrack." In fact they were remixed from the original studio discs and often contained performances and dialogue that was not heard in the finished film. Although these albums sold well they were marred by a flat boxy sound, as the listening environment in a huge movie palace is far different from the acoustics of a standard living room.
Some early soundtrack albums were actually studio recreations of the songs, as in Capitol's album of Jane Froman
, who provided Susan Hayward
's singing voice in the film, performing songs from the Froman biopic With a Song in My Heart
. Columbia's "soundtrack" albums of Calamity Jane and Red Garters
combine actual soundtrack recordings with studio re-creations.
Some soundtrack albums, such as those of Oklahoma!, Carousel
, or The King and I
, may include performances markedly different from those heard in the films.
Many soundtrack albums of musicals contain songs, or portions of songs that were deleted before the films were released. In the case of Carousel, there are two songs on the soundtrack album which are not in the film; in the case of The King and I, there are three. Finian's Rainbow
and Chicago
each contain a song that was cut from the movie before the film was sent out to theatres.
, known from the 1940s until the 1990s simply as Decca Records, is the label that began the trend in North America. They released 78-rpm album sets of Porgy and Bess
, Oklahoma!
, A Connecticut Yankee, One Touch of Venus
, Carmen Jones
, Bloomer Girl
, Song of Norway
, Carousel
, Annie Get Your Gun
, Call Me Mister
, and Lost in the Stars
. Many of these were transferred to LP in 1949/1950 although sometimes songs were abridged or left out completely. The label added more titles to their cast album library in the early 1950s: Guys and Dolls
, The King and I
, Wonderful Town
, Seventh Heaven, On Your Toes
and Anchors Aweigh
.
In 1949, Decca began to re-release the best-selling of these albums on LP and in the late 1950s began offer electronically enhanced for stereo editions, which sounded thin, "echoey", and hollow.
The label was out of the business of recording new cast albums by the end of the 1950s. Decca was bought by MCA and in the early 1970s many of these titles were re-released on the MCA label, all using the fake stereo masters.
MCA released many of their classic shows on CD in the 1990s, going back to original master discs and tapes to generate excellent sounding (and complete) remasters of the originals. When MCA and Polygram were merged into the new Universal Music Group, a new label, Decca Broadway, was born. Decca Broadway has re-mastered and reissued virtually every cast album in the old Decca catalogue including many rare titles that had not been available in almost 50 years. Decca Broadway has also recorded recent hits including: Wicked
, Monty Python's Spamalot, Seussical
, and Spring Awakening
. Wicked, in particular has been a big seller for the label and continues to sell well. Although they are being selective about what they record, Decca Broadway plans to continue making cast albums, including the Mel Brooks
musical Young Frankenstein
and Andrew Lippa
's The Addams Family: A New Musical
. Although some of the slower-selling catalog titles have been deleted, many remain available as downloads.
recorded St. Louis Woman
in 1946, mainly because lyricist Johnny Mercer was one of the label's founders. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, that the label began bidding for cast album rights. Their first few choices were generally not big hits: Flahooley
, Top Banana
, Three Wishes for Jamie
, and the revival of Of Thee I Sing
. They finally got a hit show in 1953 with Cole Porter's Can-Can
, which remained in print until the end of the LP era. Recordings featuring the film casts of three Rodgers and Hammerstein
films (Oklahoma!
, Carousel
, and The King and I
) were also released on Capitol during the 1950s, all earning RIAA gold record awards. An even bigger hit came along in 1957 with The Music Man
, which reached the #1 spot on the Billboard charts and stayed there for 12 weeks. It was also the label's first stereo cast album. They scored another bestseller in 1964 when Barbra Streisand's label Columbia Records passed on recording Funny Girl. Capitol recorded it, and the album became a million seller. Without a TV/radio network affiliation (such as Columbia had with CBS and RCA with NBC) Capitol sometimes had to content themselves with also ran shows. The 1960s found them with recording rights to a number of minor hits: No Strings
, The Unsinkable Molly Brown
, and Golden Boy
but mostly they got flop shows: Sail Away
, Kwamina
, The Gay Life
, Skyscraper
, Walking Happy
, Zorba. They did record Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut as a composer with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
, but in 1971 they came under fire for refusing to record the complete score of Sondheim's Follies
as a 2-LP set. The label executives complained that "cast albums don't sell" ignoring the ongoing success of Funny Girl and The Music Man and the fact that many of their shows had been outright flops. Follies was truncated to a single LP missing four songs and abridging many of the others. It would be Capitol's last original cast album.
EMI's classical division took over the Capitol Broadway cast catalogue in 1992 and reissued all 40 of the cast albums on the Broadway Angel label. The CDs were well packaged with booklets containing detailed notes and production photos. Although only a half dozen of these releases are still in print as of October 2007, most of the deleted titles have been reissued by DRG keeping the scores available for collectors.
Broadway Angel has recorded some recent shows such as: Crazy for You
, Passion
, The Color Purple
and Curtains
, the 1994 Broadway revival of Carousel
, as well as the Bernadette Peters revivals of Annie Get Your Gun
and Gypsy.
, and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro
. Brigadoon was a big seller and remains in print on CD today. High Button Shoes was a hit show but the album did not do well. RCA's budget label, Camden, reissued it on LP in 1958 and Victor re-released it in 1965. At that time they also did the first LP transfer of Allegro.
As the LP era dawned, Victor competed with Columbia for cast album rights. Their first LP release was Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam
but because the star Ethel Merman was under contract to Decca, she was replaced on Victor's album by Dinah Shore. The album was a failure and was out of print until Red Seal reissued it in 1977. Victor did better with Paint Your Wagon, and Damn Yankees
, but had their share of flops: Seventeen, Make a Wish, Hazel Flagg
, and Pipe Dream
, along with minor hits Me and Juliet
, Happy Hunting
, New Girl in Town
, Jamaica
, Redhead
, Take Me Along
, Do Re Mi
, Wildcat
, and Milk and Honey
.
In the 1960s, Victor did better with the Tony award winners How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
, Hello, Dolly!
, and Fiddler on the Roof
. They hit the top of the charts with Hair
in 1968. During this time it also released five of the cast albums from the Music Theatre of Lincoln Center revivals, The Merry Widow
with Patricia Munsel, Show Boat
with Barbara Cook
, Constance Towers
, Stephen Douglass
, David Wayne
and William Warfield
, Kismet
with Alfred Drake
, Annie Get Your Gun
with Ethel Merman
, Carousel
with John Raitt
and The King and I
with Rise Stevens
and Darren McGavin
.
In 1976, Thomas Z. Shepard
left Columbia Records for RCA's Classical division and under his guidance RCA Red Seal eclipsed Columbia as the dominant label for cast albums. Shepard recorded Sondheim's scores for Pacific Overtures
, Sweeney Todd
, Sunday in the Park With George
and Merrily We Roll Along
, the 1977 Broadway revival recording of The King and I
, as well as the hits Ain't Misbehavin', 42nd Street
, and La Cage aux Folles.
In 1985, Shepard staged an all-star concert to make a complete recording of Sondheim's Follies
. When pre-production costs escalated, label president Jose Menendez
wanted to cancel the recording. Shepard held his ground and won the battle. The 2 LP set was a bestseller and made profit within a month of release. Early in 1986 Shepard resigned and went to MCA.
With the rise of compact discs in the late 1980s, RCA was bought out by BMG. At this time Bill Rosenfield used RCA Victor to re-release the label's vast catalogue of show albums on CD and to record new shows including: Into The Woods
, Jerome Robbins' Broadway
, Grand Hotel
, Kiss of the Spider Woman
, Titanic
, Steel Pier
, Ragtime
, Fosse
, The Full Monty
, Thoroughly Modern Millie
, Urinetown
, and Avenue Q
. During this time RCA Victor also released the cast recordings for the Broadway revivals of Anything Goes
(1987), Guys and Dolls (1992), Chicago
(1996), Candide (1997), Cabaret
(1998), The Sound of Music
(1998), You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
(1999), and Man of La Mancha
(2002).
Many of the older, more obscure titles were deleted in 1999/2000 but the catalogue remains active. The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor cataogs.
's first original Broadway cast album was the 1946 revival of Show Boat
, soon followed by an album of Finian's Rainbow
. In 1948 Columbia introduced the Lp to the record market and soon offered LP editions of their 78-rpm sets. The first cast album recorded as an LP was Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate
, which was a big hit on records and was followed by the blockbuster Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific
. The producer of these albums was Goddard Lieberson, who brought unquestionable taste and skill to translating a Broadway show to records. He didn't just record the songs. It was his goal to make the album an enjoyable listening experience for home listeners who, quite often, had not even seen the shows. Recorded in an old converted church on 30th street in New York City, Columbia's albums had a lush, open, spacious sound. When stereo came along in the late 1950s, Lieberson used stereo placement to enhance the performances but avoided any gimmicks. As a result Columbia's albums of Kismet
, The Pajama Game
, Bells Are Ringing
, and Flower Drum Song
remain classics in the field.
In 1956, Lieberson persuaded CBS to put up the entire capitalization for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady
. This ensured that Columbia got the cast album rights and that CBS held all film and TV rights to the property. The show was the biggest hit of the decade, selling out for nearly 6 years on Broadway. The original cast album reached #1 on the Billboard charts, and stayed on the charts for nine years. Because the Broadway cast had been recorded only in monaural, when the cast opened it in London Columbia re-recorded it in stereo. The label later offered the film soundtrack and a 1976 20th anniversary revival cast albums as well as recordings in French, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew.
The profits from the My Fair Lady album financed many of Columbia's subsequent original cast and classical recordings.
The label recorded Frank Loesser's near sung-through musical The Most Happy Fella
, virtually complete and issued it as a 3-record set as well as a single Lp of highlights. Lieberson made sure that important scores were recorded even if the shows were not box office successes. Thanks to his foresight the original casts of Candide, Anyone Can Whistle
, and Goldilocks are preserved.
Columbia recorded as many hits as they did flops - Gypsy, The Sound of Music
, Bye Bye Birdie, Camelot
, Sweet Charity
, Mame, 1776
, Cabaret
, West Side Story
, Company
, A Little Night Music
, and Annie
.
In the 1980s, the label began to withdraw from the cast album field as RCA began to dominate it. Sony bought CBS records in the late 1980s and began reissuing many older cast albums on the Sony Broadway label in 1991-94 and later the Sony Columbia Broadway Masterworks labels. The few, mainly obscure flops, that Sony chose not to reissue were farmed out to DRG and other specialty labels.
The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor catalogs. Masterworks Broadway has also launched a new website (www.masterworksbroadway.com) offering the combined Victor and Columbia catalogs.
Disney Records - This label, owned by Disney, has recorded cast albums for the musical adaptations of their films Beauty and the Beast
, The Lion King
, Tarzan
, Mary Poppins
, and more recently, The Little Mermaid
.
DRG – Hugh Fordin's Discovery Record Group records Broadway cast albums and Cabaret performances. Recently the label has reissued a number of out-of-print cast albums from the Capitol, Columbia and RCA Victor catalogues.
Fynsworth Alley – Although now defunct, the label reissued some Columbia albums and recorded some solo artists.
JAY Records - A studio and original cast recording label. JAY produces recordings of both studio and stage casts. They operate a Masterworks edition section in which top-class two-disc complete recordings of classic Broadway
musical scores are produced featuring well-known opera singers and musical theatre singers. The King and I, Calamity Jane, Guys and Dolls, Annie Get Your Gun and My Fair Lady (which won a Grammy Award
) have all been produced on the Masterworks edition label.
Kapp – an MCA label now owned by Universal. Their most famous Broadway album is the 1965 original cast recording of Man of La Mancha
, starring Richard Kiley and Joan Diener
. It remains a bestselling classic to this day and is currently available from Decca Broadway Records.
Original Cast
- Founded by Bruce and Doris Yeko in 1975, this label specialises in recordings of obscure theatrical productions that would not otherwise get the chance to be commercially recorded. The label's output has included original cast and studio cast albums of notorious Broadway flops, recordings of lesser-known off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows, and the commercial release of privately-made theatre-related recordings (such as composer's demos) .
Polydor – Part of the Polygram group that includes London (U.S. label for British Decca), Deutsche Grammophon
and Philips
. Polydor released a few show CDs under license from John Yap's TER label in UK but these were quickly deleted. Polydor also released many of the cast recordings from the Andrew Lloyd Webber
musicals through the Really Useful Records label. Polygram merged with MCA to form Universal Music Group, and many of the cast recordings that Polydor has released are released in the US on the Decca Broadway label.
Geffen
- Although Geffen is a pop label, it released the cast recordings for five shows of which David Geffen
was an investor. It released the original off-Broadway cast recording and the film soundtrack of Little Shop of Horrors
, the original Broadway cast recordings of Dreamgirls and Les Misérables
, and the original Broadway cast recording of Cats
. Geffen also released the London cast recordings of Cats and Miss Saigon
in the USA. Now almost all of the Geffen cast albums are released through the Decca Broadway label.
PS Classic – In a few short years PS Classics has built an impressive catalogue of cast albums including Grey Gardens
, A Year with Frog and Toad
and the revivals of 110 In the Shade
, Fiddler on the Roof
, Company
, Assassins
, and Nine
.
Sh-k-Boom and Ghostlight – Both are owned by Kurt Deutsch and Sherie Rene Scott
with Ghostlight having recently become a dominant player in the cast album field. They have released albums of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
, Legally Blonde: The Musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
, Vanities
, The Drowsy Chaperone
, Everyday Rapture
, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (musical)
, The Book of Mormon (musical) and the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes
.
Stage Door Records
- A UK based reissue label that specialise in London and Broadway cast recordings and vocal albums, most never available on CD format before. Highlights from the Stage Door catalogue include the Original London cast albums of Colette and Mutiny! - both released on CD for the first time. Other cast albums include Napoleon, The Far Pavilions, Beautiful And Damned and Out Of The Blue. Stage Door have also released best selling vocal albums on Twiggy
, Anthony Newley
and the late Steve Barton
.
Varese-Sarabande – Established as a label for movie scores, they did branch out into cast albums in the 1990s recording a number of Broadway and off-Broadway shows. The label has re-organized and is now focused on film scores only. Many of the Broadway shows have been deleted.
lists every release from the first 78-rpm set to Decca Broadway
's recent CD edition. (http://castalbums.org/recordings/3714)
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording, as the name implies, features the voices of the show's original cast. A cast recording featuring the first cast to perform a musical in a particular venue is known, for example, as an OCR "original Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
cast recording" or an "original London
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
cast recording".
Cast recordings are (almost always) studio recordings rather than live recordings. The recorded song lyrics and orchestrations are identical (or very similar to) those of the songs as performed in the theatre. Like any studio performance, the recording is of course an idealized rendering, more glossily perfect than any live performance could be, and without audible audience reaction. Nevertheless, the listener who has attended the live show expects it to be an accurate souvenir of the experience.
History
The British were the first to make cast recordings, and they were also the first to make original LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
cast recordings of shows that had already opened on Broadway, but had not been recorded with their original Broadway cast. This led to the odd situation of having, for example, a 1928 recording of the London cast of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
, but no recording with the actual 1927 Broadway cast, and a recording of the London cast of Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...
's The Desert Song
The Desert Song
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...
, but not of the 1926 Broadway cast - even though both of these shows are Broadway musicals, rather than British ones.
Prior to the development of original cast recordings, there had of course been recordings of songs from musicals, and collections of several such songs, and recordings of songs performed by cast members; but they were recordings of songs, not recordings of a musical.
The first American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
original cast recording as we know it was an early experimental LP of program transcriptions of selections from The Band Wagon
The Band Wagon
The Band Wagon is a 1953 musical comedy film that many critics rank, along with Singin' in the Rain, as the finest of the MGM musicals, although it was only a modest box-office success. It tells the story of an aging musical star who hopes a Broadway play will restart his career...
, a 1931 revue starring Fred
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
and Adele Astaire
Adele Astaire
Lady Charles Cavendish , better known as Adele Astaire, was an American dancer and entertainer. She was Fred Astaire's elder sister. Her birthdate was often given as 1897 or 1898, but the 1900 U.S...
. It was not widely released.
The following year, Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp was a record company executive with Brunswick Records who founded Decca Records in 1934. After his death, his brother Dave Kapp took over American Decca. Dave Kapp later founded Kapp Records, based in New York....
produced an album of songs from Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
timed to the 1932 Ziegfeld revival. This album featured Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s...
and Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
doing their songs from the show but used studio cast singers for the leads.
As the 1930s progressed, Liberty Music Shop in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
made mini albums of songs from the Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
musical comedies Red Hot and Blue and Stars in Your Eyes
Stars in Your Eyes
Stars in Your Eyes is a 1956 British musical film directed by Maurice Elvey.-Plot:As the world of vaudeville gradually loses its attraction, more and more entertainers are losing their jobs. In hopes of fixing their financial problems, a group of entertainers band together and buy a run-down...
. These were more like personality recordings, since the arrangements were not the ones heard in the theatre.
The first complete so-called original cast album was Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
's 1938 album of songs from The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman. The show was recorded and released on seven 78-rpm discs in 1938, making it the first cast album recording.The musical is a...
although these were recorded with just piano accompaniment and not the show's orchestra. In 1984, the original recordings from Very Warm for May
Very Warm for May
Very Warm for May is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was the team's final score for Broadway, following their hits Show Boat, Sweet Adeline, and Music in the Air...
(1939) were discovered and issued on an LP. However, these recordings were not made with the original orchestrations.
RCA Victor had made an album of the key songs from Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
using the theatre orchestra but featuring Met opera singers Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Mervil Tibbett was a great American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera company more than 600 times from 1923 to 1950...
and Helen Jepson
Helen Jepson
Helen Jepson was an American lyric soprano noted for being a "stunning blond beauty" as well as for her voice....
singing the songs. Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
riposted with another album of the same highlights sung by the actual stars of the original production, although recorded five years after the premiere. When a revival was staged in 1942, Decca issued a second album of some of the secondary songs from the opera by the revival cast and later combined these two albums onto one LP and called it the "original cast recording". Decca also issued an album of songs from the all-soldier revue This Is the Army
This Is the Army
This Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime motion picture produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz, and a wartime musical designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Sgt. Ezra Stone...
by Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
.
Finally in 1943, came Decca's recording of Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
. It not only featured the original cast, but the show's original chorus, all accompanied by the same orchestra heard in the show, playing the music in the original Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...
orchestrations and conducted by the show's original conductor, Jay Blackton. The show was the biggest hit Broadway had experienced up until that time and people who could not get tickets bought the album. It would eventually sell over 1 million copies as a set of 78-rpm records, and millions more on LP and Compact Discs.
Decca soon began recording every hit musical that came along including Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical starring Muriel Smith in the title role, later made into a 1954 musical film; the play also ran for a season in 1991 at London's Old Vic and most recently in London's Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre in 2007. It is an updating of the Georges Bizet...
, Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
, and Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
. Soon, all the other record companies were bidding for the rights to record Broadway shows with their original casts.
Capitol
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
recorded St. Louis Woman
St. Louis Woman
St. Louis Woman is a musical by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer based upon the novel God Sends Sunday by African-American writer Arna Bontemps. The musical opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on March 30,1946 and ran for 113 performances...
in 1946, and RCA Victor recorded Brigadoon in 1947. Although Decca abandoned the cast album field in the mid-1950s, Capitol and Victor actively bid for recording rights. Sometimes problems arose as when RCA Victor signed on to record the 1950 musical Call Me Madam
Call Me Madam
Call Me Madam is a musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.A satire on politics and foreign affairs that spoofs America's penchant for lending billions of dollars to needy countries, it centers on Sally Adams, a well-meaning but ill-informed...
even though the show's star, Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
was then under exclusive contact to Decca Records. This resulted in two albums of the score being released: Merman with a studio cast on her label, while the rest of the Broadway cast made an album for RCA Victor with Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...
singing the Merman role!
The label that would dominate the field until the late 1970s, however, was Columbia
Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the...
. They began by issuing an album of the 1946 revival of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
followed by the original Broadway cast of Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The 1947 Broadway production ran for 725 performances. Several revivals and a 1968 film version followed. A Broadway revival ran from October 8, 2009 until January 17, 2010...
in 1947. A year later the label introduced LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
records and used the format for two best sellers: Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...
and South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
, both recorded and released in 1949.
Under the leadership of Columbia
Columbia Masterworks Records
Columbia Masterworks Records was a record label started in 1927 by Columbia Records.It was intended for releases of classical music and artists, as opposed to popular music, which bore the regular Columbia logo. Masterworks Records' first release, in 1927, was a complete performance of the...
's Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson
Goddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle....
, the label's cast recordings came to define the genre. Columbia Masterworks produced the original cast recordings of such shows as The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game is a musical based on the novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell. It features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven-and-a-half cents raise are going unheeded...
, My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
, The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
, West Side Story
West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)
West Side Story is the 1957 recording of a Broadway production of the musical West Side Story. Recorded 3 days after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, the recording was released in October 1957 in both mono and stereo formats. In 1962, the album reached #5 on Billboard's "Pop Album"...
, Gypsy
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...
, and Camelot
Camelot (musical)
Camelot is a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe . It is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White tetralogy novel The Once and Future King....
. Lieberson also recorded important shows that had failed at the box office including Candide and Anyone Can Whistle
Anyone Can Whistle
Anyone Can Whistle is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The story concerns a corrupt mayoress, an idealistic nurse, a man who may be a doctor, and various officials, patients and townspeople, all fighting to save a bankrupt town...
. In 1956, he recorded Frank Loesser
Frank Loesser
Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the lyrics and scores to the Broadway hits Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for...
's musical The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
complete on three LPs, the first time an entire Broadway show had been fully recorded.
A 1970 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker
D. A. Pennebaker
Donn Alan Pennebaker is an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of Direct Cinema/Cinéma vérité. Performing arts and politics are his primary subjects.-Biography:...
, Original Cast Album—Company gives a straightforward view of the making of a cast recording. It shows how the recording studio looks, how performers are arranged, and how the director behaves. The cast feels the pressure of delivering a definitive performance, with a degree of perfection beyond that ever required on stage, under a time limit imposed by the high cost of studio time.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon for cast albums to become best sellers. My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
, The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly!
Hello, Dolly! (musical)
Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....
all reached the #1 position on the Billboard magazine best-sellers chart. As popular music split away from the traditional Tin Pan Alley song stylings of Broadway and Hollywood, and Rock music became the dominant pop culture form, show albums began selling less well. Also, as radio and TV moved away from showcasing Broadway numbers the ability for a show to reach an audience beyond the traditional Broadway fans lessened.
Today few show albums even appear in the Billboard top 200, and the rare breakout hit like Wicked receives no radio airplay.
New boutique labels such as PS Classics
PS Classics
PS Classics is a record label that specializes in musical theatre and standard vocals. Founded in 2000 by Grammy-nominated freelance producer Tommy Krasker and singer/actor Philip Chaffin, their releases have been critically acclaimed for their meticulous sonic detail and high-quality packaging and...
and Ghostlight
Ghostlight
Ghostlight is a multiplatform video game publisher based in the UK, it was established as a subsidiary of Midas Interactive during 2004.-Published games:*The Plan*Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call*Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga...
release many of the cast albums of recent Broadway hits. With the recent merger of Sony Music (formerly Columbia Records) and BMG Music (formerly RCA Victor), many older editions of cast recordings are being deleted and newly remastered editions are being released.
Technical limitations
A 10-inch 78-rpm disc could hold about 3½ minutes of music per side. A 12-inch 78-rpm could last 4½ minutes. Early albums had to severely abridge selections to fit the format. With LP cast recordings, usually released as single discs, it was not rare for compromises to be made to fit the recording within the forty-to-fifty-minute time limit. For example, reprises, or minor songs might not be included.By the 1980s, the rise of the compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
with its 74-minute recording capacity (which was increased to 80 minutes in the 1990s) resulted in improvements in cast recordings, which were now usually capable of including all songs, the full overture and entr'acte, and, when appropriate, lead-in dialogue to the songs.
In recent years, some cast recordings have been recorded live, but maintaining perfect quality. This is due to theaters that contain recording studios within. What is often a vibrant stage performance, however, often does not translate as such to discs and these recordings lack the heightened sparkle that leading album producers can bring to studio made cast albums.
Alternate versions
It is often the case that many cast recordings may be made for the same show. In addition to the recording of the cast of the original production, later high-profile productions may also produce cast recordings: for example, a recording by the cast of the first London production of a show that originated on Broadway, or of the first Broadway cast of a show that originated off-BroadwayOff-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
, or of the cast of a revival produced many decades later than the original production.
For some musicals created before cast recordings became the norm, studio cast recordings are all that exist to document the original productions' orchestrations. Such studio cast recordings have been made of many early musical comedies by the Gershwins, Vincent Youmans
Vincent Youmans
Vincent Youmans was an American popular composer and Broadway producer.- Life :Vincent Millie Youmans was born in New York City on September 27, 1898 and grew-up on Central Park West on the site where the Mayflower Hotel once stood. His father, a prosperous hat manufacturer, moved the family to...
and Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership of composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Lorenz Hart...
.
Terms
Original cast: the premiere or original cast of the production (original Broadway cast; original London cast; original Toronto cast; original Australian cast, etc.). This can include revivals as well as first productions.Studio cast: assembled by a record company. In the early days the studio cast singers were often lesser known performers with good singing voices, usually joined by one fairly well known star. Mary Martin
Mary Martin
Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
made a number of studio cast recordings for Columbia in the early 1950s including Babes in Arms
Babes in Arms
Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a teen-age boy who puts on a show with his friends to avoid being sent to a work farm.- Production history:...
, Girl Crazy
Girl Crazy
Girl Crazy is a 1930 musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Ethel Merman made her stage debut in this musical production....
and Anything Goes
Anything Goes
Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
. More recent studio albums have tended to be note-complete recreations of the original orchestrations often with opera singers taking the leads such as EMI's recordings of Brigadoon and Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
.
Soundtracks: The performers who appear in Broadway shows sing the score live each night. When a Broadway cast album is made, it is recorded in a studio and produced with the home listener in mind. While it is perfectly correct to call a movie soundtrack a "cast recording" since it does have the performances of the film cast, it is wrong to call a cast recording a "soundtrack".
This term soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
came into use in the late 1940s when MGM
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...
started releasing albums of songs from their movie musicals. MGM called these "original cast" recordings stating they were "recorded directly from the soundtrack." In fact they were remixed from the original studio discs and often contained performances and dialogue that was not heard in the finished film. Although these albums sold well they were marred by a flat boxy sound, as the listening environment in a huge movie palace is far different from the acoustics of a standard living room.
Some early soundtrack albums were actually studio recreations of the songs, as in Capitol's album of Jane Froman
Jane Froman
Jane Froman was an American singer and actress. During her thirty-year career, Froman performed on stage, radio and television despite chronic injuries that she sustained from a 1943 plane crash...
, who provided Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward was an American actress.After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind . Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting...
's singing voice in the film, performing songs from the Froman biopic With a Song in My Heart
With a Song in My Heart (film)
With a Song in My Heart is a 1952 biographical film which tells the story of actress and singer Jane Froman, who was crippled by an airplane crash on February 22, 1943, when the Boeing 314 Pan American Clipper flying boat she was on suffered a crash landing in the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal....
. Columbia's "soundtrack" albums of Calamity Jane and Red Garters
Red Garters (film)
Red Garters is a 1954 film starring Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell, and Jack Carson. It was a musical spoof of Westerns. The director was George Marshall....
combine actual soundtrack recordings with studio re-creations.
Some soundtrack albums, such as those of Oklahoma!, Carousel
Carousel (film)
Carousel is a 1956 film adaptation of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on Ferenc Molnár's non-musical play Liliom. The 1956 Carousel film stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, and was directed by Henry King...
, or The King and I
The King and I (1956 film)
The King and I is a 1956 musical film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Walter Lang and produced by Charles Brackett and Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is based on the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical The King and I, based in turn on the book Anna and the King...
, may include performances markedly different from those heard in the films.
Many soundtrack albums of musicals contain songs, or portions of songs that were deleted before the films were released. In the case of Carousel, there are two songs on the soundtrack album which are not in the film; in the case of The King and I, there are three. Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow (film)
Finian's Rainbow is a 1968 American musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola that stars Fred Astaire and Petula Clark. The screenplay by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy is based on their 1947 stage musical of the same name.-Plot:...
and Chicago
Chicago (2002 film)
Chicago is a 2002 musical film adapted from the satirical stage musical of the same name, exploring the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Jazz-age Chicago....
each contain a song that was cut from the movie before the film was sent out to theatres.
Decca
Decca BroadwayDecca Broadway
Decca Broadway Records is an American record label specializing in musical theater recordings founded in 1999 by Decca Records and is a unit of Universal Music Group....
, known from the 1940s until the 1990s simply as Decca Records, is the label that began the trend in North America. They released 78-rpm album sets of Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
, A Connecticut Yankee, One Touch of Venus
One Touch of Venus
One Touch of Venus is a musical with music written by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash, and book by S. J. Perelman and Nash, based on the novella The Tinted Venus by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, and very loosely spoofing the Pygmalion myth. The show satirizes contemporary American suburban values,...
, Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical starring Muriel Smith in the title role, later made into a 1954 musical film; the play also ran for a season in 1991 at London's Old Vic and most recently in London's Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre in 2007. It is an updating of the Georges Bizet...
, Bloomer Girl
Bloomer Girl
Bloomer Girl was a Broadway musical that premiered on October 4, 1944. Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy wrote the book, Harold Arlen the music, and E.Y. Harburg the lyrics. Agnes de Mille was the choreographer...
, Song of Norway
Song of Norway
Song of Norway is an operetta written in 1944 by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Edvard Grieg and the book by Milton Lazarus and Homer Curran...
, Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
, Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
, Call Me Mister
Call Me Mister
Call Me Mister is a revue with sketches by Arnold Auerbach and words and music by Harold Rome. The title refers to returning soldiers who expected to be addressed as civilians instead of by their military rank....
, and Lost in the Stars
Lost in the Stars
Lost in the Stars is a musical with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and music by Kurt Weill, based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton...
. Many of these were transferred to LP in 1949/1950 although sometimes songs were abridged or left out completely. The label added more titles to their cast album library in the early 1950s: Guys and Dolls
Guys and Dolls
Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...
, The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
, Wonderful Town
Wonderful Town
Wonderful Town is a musical with a book written by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein...
, Seventh Heaven, On Your Toes
On Your Toes
On Your Toes is a musical with a book by Richard Rodgers, George Abbott, and Lorenz Hart, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. It was adapted into a film in 1939....
and Anchors Aweigh
Anchors Aweigh
"Anchors Aweigh" is the fight song of the United States Naval Academy, and strongly associated with the United States Navy, composed in 1906 by Charles A. Zimmerman with lyrics by Alfred Hart Miles. Zimmerman was at the time a Lieutenant, and had been bandmaster of the United States Naval Academy...
.
In 1949, Decca began to re-release the best-selling of these albums on LP and in the late 1950s began offer electronically enhanced for stereo editions, which sounded thin, "echoey", and hollow.
The label was out of the business of recording new cast albums by the end of the 1950s. Decca was bought by MCA and in the early 1970s many of these titles were re-released on the MCA label, all using the fake stereo masters.
MCA released many of their classic shows on CD in the 1990s, going back to original master discs and tapes to generate excellent sounding (and complete) remasters of the originals. When MCA and Polygram were merged into the new Universal Music Group, a new label, Decca Broadway, was born. Decca Broadway has re-mastered and reissued virtually every cast album in the old Decca catalogue including many rare titles that had not been available in almost 50 years. Decca Broadway has also recorded recent hits including: Wicked
Wicked (musical)
Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West , a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard...
, Monty Python's Spamalot, Seussical
Seussical
is a musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty based on the books of Dr. Seuss that debuted on Broadway in 2000. The play's story is a rather complex amalgamation of many of Seuss's most famous books. After a Broadway run, the production spawned two US national tours and a UK tour...
, and Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of the controversial 1892 German play of the same title by Frank Wedekind. It features music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Set in late-19th century Germany, it concerns teenagers who are discovering the inner and outer tumult of...
. Wicked, in particular has been a big seller for the label and continues to sell well. Although they are being selective about what they record, Decca Broadway plans to continue making cast albums, including the Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
musical Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein (musical)
Young Frankenstein, officially known as The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, is a musical with a book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan and music and lyrics by Brooks. It is based on the 1974 comedy film of the same name written by Brooks and Gene Wilder and directed by Brooks, who has...
and Andrew Lippa
Andrew Lippa
Andrew Lippa is an American composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, and producer. He is a resident artist at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City.-Biography:...
's The Addams Family: A New Musical
The Addams Family (musical)
The Addams Family is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The show is based upon The Addams Family characters created by Charles Addams in his single-panel gag cartoons, which depict a ghoulish American family with an affinity for...
. Although some of the slower-selling catalog titles have been deleted, many remain available as downloads.
Capitol
CapitolCapitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
recorded St. Louis Woman
St. Louis Woman
St. Louis Woman is a musical by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer based upon the novel God Sends Sunday by African-American writer Arna Bontemps. The musical opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on March 30,1946 and ran for 113 performances...
in 1946, mainly because lyricist Johnny Mercer was one of the label's founders. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, that the label began bidding for cast album rights. Their first few choices were generally not big hits: Flahooley
Flahooley
Flahooley is a musical with a book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Sammy Fain.The allegorical tale is set in fictional Capsulanti, USA, site of the headquarters for B.G. Bigelow, Incorporated, the largest toy corporation in the world...
, Top Banana
Top Banana
Top Banana is an environmentally-themed platform game produced by Hex and Psycore for the Acorn Archimedes in 1991 and ported to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST in 1992. The chief artist and coder was Miles Visman, with supporting graphics and sound by Karel Dander, and supporting graphics by...
, Three Wishes for Jamie
Three Wishes for Jamie
Three Wishes for Jamie is a musical with a book by Charles O'Neal and Abe Burrows and music and lyrics by Ralph Blane.Based on O'Neal's 1949 novel The Three Wishes of Jamie McRuin, the fantasy focuses on the title character, a young Irishman who, when offered three wishes by the Queen of the...
, and the revival of Of Thee I Sing
Of Thee I Sing
Of Thee I Sing is a musical with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The musical lampoons American politics; the story concerns John P. Wintergreen, who runs for President of the United States on the "love" platform...
. They finally got a hit show in 1953 with Cole Porter's Can-Can
Can-Can (musical)
Can-Can is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, and a book by Abe Burrows. The story concerns the showgirls of the Montmartre dance halls during the 1890s....
, which remained in print until the end of the LP era. Recordings featuring the film casts of three Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
films (Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
, Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
, and The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
) were also released on Capitol during the 1950s, all earning RIAA gold record awards. An even bigger hit came along in 1957 with The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
, which reached the #1 spot on the Billboard charts and stayed there for 12 weeks. It was also the label's first stereo cast album. They scored another bestseller in 1964 when Barbra Streisand's label Columbia Records passed on recording Funny Girl. Capitol recorded it, and the album became a million seller. Without a TV/radio network affiliation (such as Columbia had with CBS and RCA with NBC) Capitol sometimes had to content themselves with also ran shows. The 1960s found them with recording rights to a number of minor hits: No Strings
No Strings
No Strings is a musical drama with a book by Samuel A. Taylor and words and music by Richard Rodgers, his only Broadway score written without a collaborator. The musical opened on Broadway in 1962 and ran for 580 performances...
, The Unsinkable Molly Brown
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (musical)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown is a musical with music and lyrics by Meredith Willson and book by Richard Morris. The plot is a fictionalized account of the life of Margaret Brown, who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and her wealthy miner-husband....
, and Golden Boy
Golden Boy
Golden Boy is a drama by Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced on Broadway by The Group Theatre in 1937. Odets' biggest hit was made into a 1939 film of the same name, starring William Holden in his breakthrough role, and also served as the basis for a 1964 musical.-Plot:It focuses on Joe...
but mostly they got flop shows: Sail Away
Sail Away (musical)
Sail Away is a musical with a book, music and lyrics by Noël Coward. The show was the last musical for which Coward wrote both the book and music, although he wrote the music for one last "book" musical in 1963. The story centers around brash, bold American divorcee Mimi Paragon, working as a...
, Kwamina
Kwamina (musical)
Kwamina is a musical which originally debuted on Broadway on October 23, 1961 at the 54th Street Theatre, and ran for 32 performances, ending on November 18, 1961...
, The Gay Life
The Gay Life
The Gay Life is a musical with a book by Fay and Michael Kanin, lyrics by Howard Dietz, and music by Arthur Schwartz.Based on a cycle of seven short plays by Arthur Schnitzler, published in 1893 and first staged in 1910, The Gay Life focuses on womanizing playboy Anatol Von Huber...
, Skyscraper
Skyscraper (musical)
Skyscraper is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and music by Jimmy Van Heusen.Based on the 1945 Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, it focuses on an antiques dealer who is determined to save her midtown Manhattan brownstone from the bulldozer. The girders of a new skyscraper are...
, Walking Happy
Walking Happy
Walking Happy is a musical with music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by Roger O. Hirson and Ketti Frings. The story is based on the play Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse...
, Zorba. They did record Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut as a composer with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart....
, but in 1971 they came under fire for refusing to record the complete score of Sondheim's Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
as a 2-LP set. The label executives complained that "cast albums don't sell" ignoring the ongoing success of Funny Girl and The Music Man and the fact that many of their shows had been outright flops. Follies was truncated to a single LP missing four songs and abridging many of the others. It would be Capitol's last original cast album.
EMI's classical division took over the Capitol Broadway cast catalogue in 1992 and reissued all 40 of the cast albums on the Broadway Angel label. The CDs were well packaged with booklets containing detailed notes and production photos. Although only a half dozen of these releases are still in print as of October 2007, most of the deleted titles have been reissued by DRG keeping the scores available for collectors.
Broadway Angel has recorded some recent shows such as: Crazy for You
Crazy for You
Crazy for You is a musical with a book by Ken Ludwig, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. Billed as "The New Gershwin Musical Comedy", it is largely based on the songwriting team’s 1930 musical, Girl Crazy, but interpolates songs from several other productions as well...
, Passion
Passion (musical)
Passion is a musical adapted from Ettore Scola's film Passione d'Amore . The book is by James Lapine, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Central subjects include obsession, beauty, power, manipulation, passion, illness, and love...
, The Color Purple
The Color Purple (musical)
The Color Purple is a Broadway musical based upon the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It features music and lyrics written by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, with a book by Marsha Norman. It ran on Broadway in 2005 and has been touring throughout the US...
and Curtains
Curtains (musical)
Curtains is a musical with a book by Rupert Holmes, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander, with additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes....
, the 1994 Broadway revival of Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
, as well as the Bernadette Peters revivals of Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
and Gypsy.
RCA Victor
RCA Victor entered the cast album field in 1947 with two hits and a miss: Brigadoon, High Button ShoesHigh Button Shoes
High Button Shoes is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by George Abbott and Stephen Longstreet. It was based on the semi-autobiographical 1946 novel The Sisters Liked Them Handsome by Longstreet...
, and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro
Allegro (musical)
Allegro is a musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II , their third collaboration for the stage. Opening on Broadway on October 10, 1947, the musical centers on the life of Joseph Taylor, Jr.—Joe follows in the footsteps of his father as a doctor, but is tempted by fortune and fame at...
. Brigadoon was a big seller and remains in print on CD today. High Button Shoes was a hit show but the album did not do well. RCA's budget label, Camden, reissued it on LP in 1958 and Victor re-released it in 1965. At that time they also did the first LP transfer of Allegro.
As the LP era dawned, Victor competed with Columbia for cast album rights. Their first LP release was Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam
Call Me Madam
Call Me Madam is a musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.A satire on politics and foreign affairs that spoofs America's penchant for lending billions of dollars to needy countries, it centers on Sally Adams, a well-meaning but ill-informed...
but because the star Ethel Merman was under contract to Decca, she was replaced on Victor's album by Dinah Shore. The album was a failure and was out of print until Red Seal reissued it in 1977. Victor did better with Paint Your Wagon, and Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees is a musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League...
, but had their share of flops: Seventeen, Make a Wish, Hazel Flagg
Hazel Flagg
Hazel Flagg is a musical with a book by Ben Hecht, lyrics by Bob Hilliard, and music by Jule Styne. The musical is based on the 1937 screwball comedy film Nothing Sacred...
, and Pipe Dream
Pipe Dream (musical)
Pipe Dream is the seventh stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; it premiered on Broadway on November 30, 1955. The work is based on John Steinbeck's short novel Sweet Thursday—Steinbeck wrote the novel, a sequel to Cannery Row, in the hope of having it adapted into...
, along with minor hits Me and Juliet
Me and Juliet
Me and Juliet is a musical comedy by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and their sixth stage collaboration. The work tells a story of romance backstage at a long-running musical: assistant stage manager Larry woos chorus girl Jeanie behind the back of her electrician boyfriend, Bob...
, Happy Hunting
Happy Hunting
Happy Hunting is a 1956 musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, lyrics by Matt Dubey, and music by Harold Karr. The plot focuses on wealthy Philadelphia Main Line widow Liz Livingstone and her efforts to find a royal husband for her daughter Beth.-Plot:Liz Livingston and her...
, New Girl in Town
New Girl in Town
New Girl in Town is a musical with a book by George Abbott and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill based on Eugene O'Neill's 1921 gloomy play Anna Christie, about a prostitute who tries to live down her past. New Girl, unlike O'Neill's play, focuses on the jealousy of the character Marthy and on...
, Jamaica
Jamaica (musical)
Jamaica is a musical with a book by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Harold Arlen. Harburg was blacklisted in Hollywood at the time of the writing of the musical...
, Redhead
Redhead (musical)
Redhead is a musical with music composed by Albert Hague and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who with her brother, Herbert, along with Sidney Sheldon and David Shaw wrote the book/libretto...
, Take Me Along
Take Me Along
Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...
, Do Re Mi
Do Re Mi (musical)
Do Re Mi is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a book by Garson Kanin, who also directed the original 1960 Broadway production. The plot centers on a minor-league con man who decides to go straight by going into the business of juke boxes and music...
, Wildcat
Wildcat (musical)
Wildcat is a musical with a book by N. Richard Nash, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, and music by Cy Coleman.The original production opened on Broadway in 1960, starring a 48-year-old Lucille Ball in her only Broadway show.-Background and production:...
, and Milk and Honey
Milk and Honey (musical)
Milk and Honey is a musical with a book by Don Appell and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The story centers on a busload of lonely American widows hoping to catch husbands while touring Israel and is set against the background of the country's fight for recognition as an independent nation...
.
In the 1960s, Victor did better with the Tony award winners How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert, based on Shepherd Mead's 1952 book of the same name....
, Hello, Dolly!
Hello, Dolly! (musical)
Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....
, and Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...
. They hit the top of the charts with Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
in 1968. During this time it also released five of the cast albums from the Music Theatre of Lincoln Center revivals, The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
with Patricia Munsel, Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
with Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook is an American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s after starring in the original Broadway musicals Candide and The Music Man among others, winning a Tony Award for the latter...
, Constance Towers
Constance Towers
-Early life:Towers was born in Whitefish, Montana, the daughter of Ardath L. and Harry J. Towers. According to her official Web site, a contract from Paramount Pictures was offered to her at age 11 but was declined...
, Stephen Douglass
Stephen Douglass
Stephen Douglass is an American actor-singer.Born Stephen Fitch in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Douglass has had a distinguished theatrical career and has appeared occasionally on television. He was the last performer to play Billy Bigelow in the original Broadway production of Carousel and he created the...
, David Wayne
David Wayne
David Wayne was an American actor with a career spanning nearly 50 years.-Early life and career:...
and William Warfield
William Warfield
William Caesar Warfield , was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.-Early life and career:Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town...
, Kismet
Kismet (musical)
Kismet is a musical with lyrics and musical adaptation by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Alexander Borodin, and a book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis, based on Kismet, the 1911 play by Edward Knoblock...
with Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake
Alfred Drake was an American actor and singer.-Biography:Born as Alfred Capurro in New York City, the son of parents emigrated from Recco, Genoa, Drake began his Broadway career while still a student at Brooklyn College...
, Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
with Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
, Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
with John Raitt
John Raitt
John Emmett Raitt was an American actor and singer best known for his performances in musical theater.-Early years:...
and The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
with Rise Stevens
Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens is a retired American operatic mezzo-soprano.-Professional life:Stevens studied at New York's Juilliard School for three years. She went to Vienna, where she was trained by Marie Gutheil-Schoder and Herbert Graf. She made her début as Mignon in Prague in 1936 and stayed there until...
and Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and his portrayal in the film A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his son overhears...
.
In 1976, Thomas Z. Shepard
Thomas Z. Shepard
Thomas Z. Shepard is a prolific record producer who is best known for his recordings of Broadway musicals, including the works of Stephen Sondheim...
left Columbia Records for RCA's Classical division and under his guidance RCA Red Seal eclipsed Columbia as the dominant label for cast albums. Shepard recorded Sondheim's scores for Pacific Overtures
Pacific Overtures
Pacific Overtures is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a libretto by John Weidman, and additional material by Hugh Wheeler. The musical is set in 1853 Japan and follows the difficult Westernization of Japan, through the lives of two friends caught in the change...
, Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as then antagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls and he was later introduced as an antihero in the broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptation...
, Sunday in the Park With George
Sunday in the Park with George
Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...
and Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along (musical)
Merrily We Roll Along is a musical with a book by George Furth and lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart....
, the 1977 Broadway revival recording of The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
, as well as the hits Ain't Misbehavin', 42nd Street
42nd Street (musical)
42nd Street is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin, and music by Harry Warren. The 1980 Broadway production, directed by an ailing Gower Champion and orchestrated by Philip J. Lang, won the Tony Award for Best Musical and became a long-running hit...
, and La Cage aux Folles.
In 1985, Shepard staged an all-star concert to make a complete recording of Sondheim's Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
. When pre-production costs escalated, label president Jose Menendez
Jose Menendez
Texas State Representative, District 124, Jose Menendez - born Jose Antonio Menendez in San Juan, Texas.Rep. Menendez has been a member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2001. Prior to his service in the State House, Rep...
wanted to cancel the recording. Shepard held his ground and won the battle. The 2 LP set was a bestseller and made profit within a month of release. Early in 1986 Shepard resigned and went to MCA.
With the rise of compact discs in the late 1980s, RCA was bought out by BMG. At this time Bill Rosenfield used RCA Victor to re-release the label's vast catalogue of show albums on CD and to record new shows including: Into The Woods
Into the Woods
Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...
, Jerome Robbins' Broadway
Jerome Robbins' Broadway
Jerome Robbins' Broadway is an anthology comprising musical numbers from earlier shows that were either directed or choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Robbins won his fifth Tony Award for direction of the show....
, Grand Hotel
Grand Hotel (musical)
Grand Hotel is a musical with a book by Luther Davis and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, with additional lyrics and music by Maury Yeston....
, Kiss of the Spider Woman
Kiss of the Spider Woman (musical)
Kiss of the Spider Woman is a musical with music by John Kander and Fred Ebb, with the book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the Manuel Puig novel El Beso de la Mujer Araña...
, Titanic
Titanic (musical)
Titanic is a musical with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Peter Stone that opened on Broadway in 1997. It won five Tony Awards including the award for Best Musical...
, Steel Pier
Steel Pier (musical)
Steel Pier is a musical written by the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb from the original book by David Thompson.-Productions:Directed by Scott Ellis with choreography by Susan Stroman, it opened on Broadway on April 24, 1997 and closed on June 28, 1997, running for 76 performances...
, Ragtime
Ragtime (musical)
Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
, Fosse
Fosse
Fosse is a three-act musical revue showcasing the choreography of Bob Fosse. After 21 previews, the original Broadway production, conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr...
, The Full Monty
The Full Monty (musical)
The Full Monty is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally and score by David Yazbek.In this Americanized musical stage version adapted from the 1997 British film of the same name, six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers, low on both cash and prospects, decide to present a strip act at a local club...
, Thoroughly Modern Millie
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Thoroughly Modern Millie is a 1967 American musical film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews. The screenplay by Richard Morris focuses on a naive young woman who finds herself in the midst of a series of madcap adventures when she sets her sights on marrying her wealthy boss.The...
, Urinetown
Urinetown
Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...
, and Avenue Q
Avenue Q
Avenue Q is a musical in two acts, conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics. The book was written by Jeff Whitty and the show was directed by Jason Moore and produced by Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, and Jeffrey Seller...
. During this time RCA Victor also released the cast recordings for the Broadway revivals of Anything Goes
Anything Goes
Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
(1987), Guys and Dolls (1992), Chicago
Chicago (musical)
Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
(1996), Candide (1997), Cabaret
Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....
(1998), The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
(1998), You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts...
(1999), and Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...
(2002).
Many of the older, more obscure titles were deleted in 1999/2000 but the catalogue remains active. The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor cataogs.
Columbia
ColumbiaColumbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
's first original Broadway cast album was the 1946 revival of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
, soon followed by an album of Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow
Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The 1947 Broadway production ran for 725 performances. Several revivals and a 1968 film version followed. A Broadway revival ran from October 8, 2009 until January 17, 2010...
. In 1948 Columbia introduced the Lp to the record market and soon offered LP editions of their 78-rpm sets. The first cast album recorded as an LP was Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...
, which was a big hit on records and was followed by the blockbuster Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
. The producer of these albums was Goddard Lieberson, who brought unquestionable taste and skill to translating a Broadway show to records. He didn't just record the songs. It was his goal to make the album an enjoyable listening experience for home listeners who, quite often, had not even seen the shows. Recorded in an old converted church on 30th street in New York City, Columbia's albums had a lush, open, spacious sound. When stereo came along in the late 1950s, Lieberson used stereo placement to enhance the performances but avoided any gimmicks. As a result Columbia's albums of Kismet
Kismet (musical)
Kismet is a musical with lyrics and musical adaptation by Robert Wright and George Forrest, adapted from the music of Alexander Borodin, and a book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis, based on Kismet, the 1911 play by Edward Knoblock...
, The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game is a musical based on the novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell. It features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven-and-a-half cents raise are going unheeded...
, Bells Are Ringing
Bells Are Ringing (musical)
Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at an answering service and the characters that she meets there. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Green's answering...
, and Flower Drum Song
Flower Drum Song
Flower Drum Song was the eighth stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. The piece opened in 1958 on Broadway and was afterwards presented in the West End and on tour...
remain classics in the field.
In 1956, Lieberson persuaded CBS to put up the entire capitalization for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
. This ensured that Columbia got the cast album rights and that CBS held all film and TV rights to the property. The show was the biggest hit of the decade, selling out for nearly 6 years on Broadway. The original cast album reached #1 on the Billboard charts, and stayed on the charts for nine years. Because the Broadway cast had been recorded only in monaural, when the cast opened it in London Columbia re-recorded it in stereo. The label later offered the film soundtrack and a 1976 20th anniversary revival cast albums as well as recordings in French, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew.
The profits from the My Fair Lady album financed many of Columbia's subsequent original cast and classical recordings.
The label recorded Frank Loesser's near sung-through musical The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
, virtually complete and issued it as a 3-record set as well as a single Lp of highlights. Lieberson made sure that important scores were recorded even if the shows were not box office successes. Thanks to his foresight the original casts of Candide, Anyone Can Whistle
Anyone Can Whistle
Anyone Can Whistle is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The story concerns a corrupt mayoress, an idealistic nurse, a man who may be a doctor, and various officials, patients and townspeople, all fighting to save a bankrupt town...
, and Goldilocks are preserved.
Columbia recorded as many hits as they did flops - Gypsy, The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
, Bye Bye Birdie, Camelot
Camelot (musical)
Camelot is a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe . It is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White tetralogy novel The Once and Future King....
, Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
, Mame, 1776
1776 (musical)
1776 is a musical with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone. The story is based on the events surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence...
, Cabaret
Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....
, West Side Story
West Side Story
West Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...
, Company
Company (musical)
Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
, A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
, and Annie
Annie (musical)
Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years with a blonde Annie as the poster...
.
In the 1980s, the label began to withdraw from the cast album field as RCA began to dominate it. Sony bought CBS records in the late 1980s and began reissuing many older cast albums on the Sony Broadway label in 1991-94 and later the Sony Columbia Broadway Masterworks labels. The few, mainly obscure flops, that Sony chose not to reissue were farmed out to DRG and other specialty labels.
The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor catalogs. Masterworks Broadway has also launched a new website (www.masterworksbroadway.com) offering the combined Victor and Columbia catalogs.
Other labels
ABC – This label was active in the cast album field in the 1960s. It was bought by MCA and is now owned by Universal Music Group.Disney Records - This label, owned by Disney, has recorded cast albums for the musical adaptations of their films Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (musical)
Beauty and the Beast is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice and a book by Linda Woolverton, based on the 1991 Disney film of the same name. Seven new songs were written for the stage musical...
, The Lion King
The Lion King (musical)
The Lion King is a musical based on the 1994 Disney animated film of the same name with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice along with the musical score created by Hans Zimmer with choral arrangements by Lebo M. Directed by Julie Taymor, the musical features actors in animal costumes as well...
, Tarzan
Tarzan (musical)
Tarzan: The Musical is based on the Disney film of the same name and the story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Music and lyrics are written by Phil Collins, with a book by David Henry Hwang.-Production:...
, Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (musical)
Mary Poppins is a Walt Disney Theatrical musical based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P. L. Travers and the Disney 1964 film. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre...
, and more recently, The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (musical)
The Little Mermaid is a stage musical produced by Disney Theatrical, based on the animated 1989 Disney film of the same name and the classic story of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen...
.
DRG – Hugh Fordin's Discovery Record Group records Broadway cast albums and Cabaret performances. Recently the label has reissued a number of out-of-print cast albums from the Capitol, Columbia and RCA Victor catalogues.
Fynsworth Alley – Although now defunct, the label reissued some Columbia albums and recorded some solo artists.
JAY Records - A studio and original cast recording label. JAY produces recordings of both studio and stage casts. They operate a Masterworks edition section in which top-class two-disc complete recordings of classic Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical scores are produced featuring well-known opera singers and musical theatre singers. The King and I, Calamity Jane, Guys and Dolls, Annie Get Your Gun and My Fair Lady (which won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
) have all been produced on the Masterworks edition label.
Kapp – an MCA label now owned by Universal. Their most famous Broadway album is the 1965 original cast recording of Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...
, starring Richard Kiley and Joan Diener
Joan Diener
Joan Diener was an American theatre actress and singer with a three-and-a-half-octave range.Born in Columbus, Ohio, Diener majored in psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and moonlighted as an actress while still a student...
. It remains a bestselling classic to this day and is currently available from Decca Broadway Records.
Original Cast
Original Cast (record label)
Original Cast Records is a record label based in Georgetown, Connecticut, that specialises in obscure theatre recordings, primarily cast albums from little-known Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway and other stage productions, but also theatre-related film scores, cabaret, concert and solo...
- Founded by Bruce and Doris Yeko in 1975, this label specialises in recordings of obscure theatrical productions that would not otherwise get the chance to be commercially recorded. The label's output has included original cast and studio cast albums of notorious Broadway flops, recordings of lesser-known off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows, and the commercial release of privately-made theatre-related recordings (such as composer's demos) .
Polydor – Part of the Polygram group that includes London (U.S. label for British Decca), Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
and Philips
Philips Classics Records
Philips Classics Records was started in the 1980s as the new classics record label for Philips Records. It was successful with artists including Alfred Brendel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St...
. Polydor released a few show CDs under license from John Yap's TER label in UK but these were quickly deleted. Polydor also released many of the cast recordings from the Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
musicals through the Really Useful Records label. Polygram merged with MCA to form Universal Music Group, and many of the cast recordings that Polydor has released are released in the US on the Decca Broadway label.
Geffen
Geffen Records
Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-Beginnings:...
- Although Geffen is a pop label, it released the cast recordings for five shows of which David Geffen
David Geffen
David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...
was an investor. It released the original off-Broadway cast recording and the film soundtrack of Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors (musical)
Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman...
, the original Broadway cast recordings of Dreamgirls and Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
, and the original Broadway cast recording of Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
. Geffen also released the London cast recordings of Cats and Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...
in the USA. Now almost all of the Geffen cast albums are released through the Decca Broadway label.
PS Classic – In a few short years PS Classics has built an impressive catalogue of cast albums including Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens is a 1975 documentary film by Albert and David Maysles, with Susan Froemke, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer. The film depicts the everyday lives of two reclusive socialites, a mother and daughter both named Edith Beale, who lived at Grey Gardens, a decrepit mansion at 3 West End Road in...
, A Year with Frog and Toad
A Year with Frog and Toad
A Year With Frog and Toad is a musical written by brothers Robert and Willie Reale , based on the Frog and Toad children's stories written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel...
and the revivals of 110 In the Shade
110 in the Shade
110 in the Shade is a musical with a book by N. Richard Nash, lyrics by Tom Jones, and music by Harvey Schmidt.Based on Nash's 1954 play The Rainmaker, it focuses on Lizzie Curry, a spinster living on a ranch in the American southwest, and her relationships with local sheriff File, a cautious...
, Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...
, Company
Company (musical)
Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
, Assassins
Assassins (musical)
Assassins is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States...
, and Nine
Nine (musical)
Nine is a musical with a book by Arthur Kopit, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. The story is based on Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film 8½...
.
Sh-k-Boom and Ghostlight – Both are owned by Kurt Deutsch and Sherie Rene Scott
Sherie Rene Scott
Sherie Rene Scott is an American actress, singer and writer. She is a co-founder of Grammy winning Sh-K-Boom Records and Ghostlight Records and has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and plays appears on numerous solo and original cast recordings.-Life and career:Scott was...
with Ghostlight having recently become a dominant player in the cast album field. They have released albums of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (musical)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it is based on the film of the same name...
, Legally Blonde: The Musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a one act musical comedy conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin and additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley...
, Vanities
Vanities
Vanities is a comedy-drama stage production written by Jack Heifner. The story centers on the lives and friendship of three Texas cheerleaders starting from high school.-Production history:Vanities had one of the longest Off-Broadway runs on record...
, The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...
, Everyday Rapture
Everyday Rapture
Everyday Rapture is a musical with a book written by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan and music by various composers. It ran Off-Broadway in 2009 and opened on Broadway in 2010...
, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (musical)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (musical)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a musical with a book by Jeffrey Lane and music and lyrics by David Yazbek. The musical tells the tale of a group of women in late 20th-century Madrid whose relationships with men lead to a tumultuous 48 hours of love, confusion and passion...
, The Book of Mormon (musical) and the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes
Anything Goes
Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
.
Stage Door Records
Stage Door Records
Stage Door Records is a UK based label founded in 2007 that specialise in cast recordings and vocalist albums from stars of stage and screen. The label has issued a number of cast albums on CD for the first time, including Mutiny! and Colette...
- A UK based reissue label that specialise in London and Broadway cast recordings and vocal albums, most never available on CD format before. Highlights from the Stage Door catalogue include the Original London cast albums of Colette and Mutiny! - both released on CD for the first time. Other cast albums include Napoleon, The Far Pavilions, Beautiful And Damned and Out Of The Blue. Stage Door have also released best selling vocal albums on Twiggy
Twiggy
Lesley Lawson née Hornby known as Twiggy is an English model, actress, and singer. In the early-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree....
, Anthony Newley
Anthony Newley
Anthony George Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock and roll and stage and screen acting.-Early life:...
and the late Steve Barton
Steve Barton
Steve Barton was an American actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, stage director and teacher.- Biography :Steven Neal Barton was born on June 26, 1954, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, United States, the youngest of three children of Tom and Mary Barton...
.
Varese-Sarabande – Established as a label for movie scores, they did branch out into cast albums in the 1990s recording a number of Broadway and off-Broadway shows. The label has re-organized and is now focused on film scores only. Many of the Broadway shows have been deleted.
Cast Album database
An online database has been created to catalogue every foreign and domestic original cast album known to exist. The website (http://castalbums.org/) allows members to indicate not only which albums they own but which particular edition. For example the entry for the original cast album of Oklahoma!Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
lists every release from the first 78-rpm set to Decca Broadway
Decca Broadway
Decca Broadway Records is an American record label specializing in musical theater recordings founded in 1999 by Decca Records and is a unit of Universal Music Group....
's recent CD edition. (http://castalbums.org/recordings/3714)
See also
- Broadway theatreBroadway theatreBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
- Goddard LiebersonGoddard LiebersonGoddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and from 1973 to 1975. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle....
- List of musicals
- Musical theatreMusical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...