Fred Astaire, Paul Robeson, Zero Mostel, Audra McDonald and Others Take Center Stage Starting March 6 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Oklahoma! cast album, 1943. Courtesy Decca Broadway.

New York, NY, February 11, 2003 -- Although the nightly performances of theater stars like Al Jolson, Ethel Waters, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Alfred Drake, and many others may have disappeared in the whiff of a lowered curtain, theatre lovers today can return to the front row of legendary (and not-so-legendary) productions through a wide selection of historic original cast recordings. The development of the cast album, its role in documenting moments of theater history, and the intricacies of how such recordings are made are among the topics examined in Original Cast Recordings, an exhibition running March 6 to June 7, 2003 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center in the Vincent Astor Gallery. The materials displayed are primarily from the Library’s Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, and Music Division. Please note: Original Cast Recordings has been extended through September 6, 2003.

The Library for the Performing Arts is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free. In conjunction with the exhibition there will be two related free public programs, on April 5 and June 7, in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium.
 
The exhibition tells the story of more than 100 years of cast recordings, from the 1891 operetta Robin Hood through to the current London production Bombay Dreams. In addition to recordings in many formats, the exhibition includes photographs, posters, record company catalogs, news clippings, advertisements, and souvenir programs. A two-hour audio program features selections from 1898 to 2002, including performances by such artists as Al Jolson, Paul Robeson, Vivienne Segal, and Gwen Verdon. Also included are archival items such as a letter from composer Richard Rodgers to famed record producer Goddard Lieberson and a proof sheet for the A Chorus Line album liner notes and label. A separate section of the exhibition provides a step-by-step look at the making of the cast recording for the currently running musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. The Curator of Original Cast Recordings is Kevin Winkler, Chief of the Library for the Performing Arts’s Circulating Collections.  

Label from the Victor recording "Gems from Robin Hood," 1898. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound.

In the early part of the twentieth century, record companies did not as a regular practice issue recordings made by original cast members. It was more likely that songs from shows were issued in versions made by unconnected singing stars or in dance band arrangements. For example, the exhibition includes a Victor recording, “Gems from Robin Hood,” a medley by the Victor Light Opera Company.
 
However, in a few cases cast members became popular enough on their own or a show gained such attention that a recording was made with original performers. Among these early releases are an 1898 recording of “Oh Promise Me,” sung by Jesse Bartlett Davis, who performed the number in the original 1891 New York production of the operetta Robin Hood; “Till the Clouds Roll By” performed by Anna Wheaton in Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse‘s 1917 musical Oh Boy; and “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” a hit for Al Jolson from the 1918 musical Sinbad. Most of these early disks are paired with the original record company catalog announcing their release as well as other items documenting the productions heard on record.
 
Birth of the Original Cast Album
The cast album as it is known today evolved with a series of recordings released in the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1938 a set of songs recorded by original cast members from The Cradle Will Rock, by Marc Blitzstein, was issued on the Musicraft Records label. A few years later, Blitzstein returned to the studio with the cast of his Nofor an Answer (1941), again providing piano accompaniment.  In 1942 Decca released a set of eight songs from the Irving Berlin revue This Is the Army which featured its all-soldier cast and included the show’s original orchestra. These albums could be called the first real original cast recordings, but because the shows were not typical Broadway fare, these initial efforts are today considered part of the evolutionary process that led the cast recording to become a common article of popular culture.
 
Oklahoma!

A Connecticut Yankee, cast album, 1943. Courtesty Decca Broadway.

It was, however, with the recording of Oklahoma!, released by Decca in 1943, that the regular practice of making and issuing cast albums became established. Oklahoma! was such a sensational hit on the stage that the availability of the record to listeners in the home made the album a hugely popular and profitable item and helped forge a new category of record company product. No longer were Broadway shows represented to the rest of the country through a song released here and there or heard on the radio. Now the songs could be enjoyed in an appropriate context and with a sense of the complete production that was experienced in the theater. Original Cast Recordings includes the original Oklahoma! album, along with a supplementary set issued around six months later. The exhibition also features promotional flyers issued by Decca, news articles about the recording, and photographs of the Oklahoma! company.

For the next couple of years Decca, under the leadership of its president Jack Kapp, had the field of cast recordings to itself. But other record companies soon caught on to the trend and started bidding to issue their own releases. In 1946, Columbia Records entered the field with a revival of Show Boat, and Capitol Records recorded St. Louis Woman. RCA Victor began its cast album line with Brigadoon a year later. These sets and numerous others from the period are featured in the exhibition.

Columbia and Goddard Lieberson
As the history of the cast recording progressed into the 1950s, Decca’s leadership was challenged by other companies.  Although numerous labels developed strong catalogs of musical theater recordings, Columbia Records, guided by its president Goddard Lieberson, became one of the more vibrant forces in original cast albums, and the company thrived in the light of its successes in this area. Not only did Columbia issue landmark recordings of such shows as My Fair Lady, West Side Story, The Pajama Game, The Sound of Music, and many others, but Lieberson also invested in some productions on behalf of the label in order to gain the recording rights. A letter in the exhibition from Lieberson to Frederick Brisson, a producer of The Pajama Game, indicates that in this case the record executive had guaranteed the production a specified level of advertising support during its opening weeks.

One of Lieberson’s important legacies was a set of recordings of shows from the 1930s, for which cast albums had never been made. Lieberson engaged stars like Mary Martin, Jack Cassidy, and Portia Nelson to record Pal Joey, Girl Crazy, and The Boys from Syracuse among several others. In addition to their sales value for Columbia, the series made important and innovative scores accessible to a broad public and helped promote the shows to a new generation of audiences and potential producers. In at least one case Lieberson’s effort helped a show’s composer recall his own work. In a letter on display from Richard Rodgers to Lieberson, which Rodgers sent after first hearing the new recording of The Boys from Syracuse, the composer wrote “. . . I am eternally grateful to you for preserving some of the verses of these songs. I didn’t even recognize a couple of them and laughed like hell at myself for the intense admiration with which I listened to them.”

Damn Yankees cast albums with alternate cover versions, 1955. Courtesy RCA Victory Group, a unit of BMG Music.

Score and worksheet used by record producer Jay David Saks while making the original cast recording for the Broadway musical Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2002.

All items shown above are from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, except where noted.

th: pro