Masterworks Premieres Lost Album By Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, Brings Rare Richard Rodgers and Ed Ames To CD

Sony’s Masterworks Broadway division has announced its spring slate, and it’s filled with surprises. The label is kicking it off with next week’s first-ever release of a shelved album from Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy recorded in 1959 and unreleased until now, and following that in May with the first-ever reissue of a “lost” Richard Rodgers score written for television. That gem, Androcles and the Lion, will be followed in June by a pair of albums from one of its stars: Ed Ames, formerly of the Ames Brothers.

In her 2013 memoir, Academy Award winner and Partridge Family matriarch Shirley Jones chronicled her rocky marriage to the debonair, troubled Broadway star Jack Cassidy. Though the couple broke up before his untimely death in 1976, Jones concluded, “Both [her companion of 36 years] Marty [Ingels] and I know the truth: I still love Jack Cassidy, and I will carry on loving him until my dying day.” In 1959, the love they shared was in full bloom. The bright young couple had recorded a pair of albums for Columbia Records in 1957 and 1959 (Speaking of Love, with Percy Faith’s orchestra; and With Love from Hollywood, with Frank DeVol’s orchestra). Also in 1957, they co-starred in a studio cast recording of Brigadoon that remains among the score’s finest renderings. In 1959, they announced a new duet album, to be entitled Marriage Type Love after the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the musical Me and Juliet. Yet for reasons that are still unclear today, the mixed and completed LP was shelved.

Now, after more than fifty years, Marriage Type Love is being unveiled on digital download and CD-R from Masterworks. The 12-song set features Marty Gold and His Orchestra backing up the on this loose concept album built around the themes of love and marriage. In addition to the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen tune “Love and Marriage” (best known to one generation as the theme song to television’s Married…with Children), the album contains showtunes and standards by Frank Loesser, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter. Marriage Type Love will be released exclusively for purchase via MasterworksBroadway.com on April 15 in a limited quantity of Manufacture-On-Demand CD-Rs as well as digital download. The CD-R gets wider release through Arkiv Music on May 13, and downloads through other digital service providers will become available the same day.

After the jump: full details on Androcles and the Lion and the Ed Ames two-fer! Plus: track listings for all titles!

Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’: Sony Masterworks Boxes “Complete Rodgers and Hammerstein”

Back on September 10, we reported on Sony Masterworks’ Broadway in a Box, a 25-CD primer on the impressive musical theatre catalogue of Columbia, RCA Victor and associated labels.  Contemplating Masterworks’ vast library, we opined, “A deluxe Rodgers and Hammerstein box could represent each of the duo’s stage musicals (save the posthumous adaptation of State Fair) with a disc from the Columbia and RCA Victor archives.”  Well, such a deluxe box set is here, much sooner than we anticipated!

On November 6, Masterworks will unveil Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Complete Broadway Musicals.  The 12-CD box set includes one recording of each of the team’s eleven musicals, including the 1957 written-for-television Cinderella, which will make its Broadway debut in a revised version this winter.  It even includes the aforementioned State Fair!  Written as a 1945 film musical, State Fair finally made its way to Broadway in 1996, and the new box set includes the cast recording which originally appeared on the DRG label.

Though the partnership of Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) ended with Hammerstein’s death in 1960, their work still represents the pinnacle of the Broadway musical, with its influence felt even today.  Both men were pioneers even before they worked together.  Rodgers had written a string of famed musicals with lyricist Lorenz Hart, including On Your Toes, Babes in Arms and Pal Joey.  The Rodgers/Hart duo yielded perhaps the greatest run of standards in popular music history; “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Blue Moon,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “I Could Write a Book” are just a few.   Hammerstein specialized in operetta, and his work with Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song, The New Moon) and Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie) was, at first blush, a far cry from Rodgers and Hart’s insouciant, jazzy musical comedies.  With composer Jerome Kern, however, Hammerstein broke new ground with 1927’s Show Boat, one of the most forward-thinking musicals of its day.  Show Boat was a sprawling, serious fusion of music, dialogue and dance, and introduced a number of standards itself, including, of course, “Old Man River.”

The Rodgers and Hart partnership went on a temporary hiatus in 1943 when Rodgers teamed Hammerstein, already accomplished as a playwright, lyricist and director.  Their first musical together was Oklahoma!  The rest is history.  That collaboration changed the face of musical theatre, perfecting the art of integrating song, dance and dialogue into a seamless whole. Rodgers and Hart had one final hurrah reteaming to write new material for a revival of their 1927 A Connecticut Yankee, but Hart died soon after, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team, was solidified. But this was a largely different Rodgers, composing sweeping, majestic, dramatic melodies for “musicals,” often a different animal than the pure musical comedies and operettas that had come before.

Exactly what shows, in which recordings, will you find on Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Complete Broadway Musicals?  Just hit the jump!

Lullaby of Broadway: Classic Columbia, RCA Victor Cast Albums Collected in “Broadway in a Box”

Curtain up!  Tomorrow, Sony’s Masterworks Broadway division will release Broadway in a Box: The Essential Broadway Musicals Collection, a 25-disc collection formatted similarly to the “Complete Albums” box sets arriving from sister label Legacy Recordings.  This impressive collection brings together the original cast recordings for 25 musicals recorded for Columbia Records, Arista Records and RCA Victor between 1949 (South Pacific) and 1987 (Into the Woods and a revival of Anything Goes).

Columbia Records’ commitment to the American musical began in 1946 when the label recorded the Broadway revival cast of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat; Columbia’s first cast recording of an original musical followed just one year later with Burton Lane and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s score to Finian’s Rainbow.  Although it was rival Decca Records that is generally credited with inventing the modern cast recording format with 1943’s Oklahoma!, Columbia established supremacy in the area thanks to the unwavering support of label head Goddard Lieberson.  Lieberson personally produced records of many of the most influential musicals of all time, from Finian’s through A Chorus Line in 1975.  One of Columbia’s closest competitors was RCA Victor, with that label beginning its stellar run of cast albums also in 1947, with Brigadoon, High Button Shoes, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro.  When Columbia’s parent Sony merged with BMG in 2004, the deal unified arguably the two most important labels for Broadway theatre music.  Sony BMG ceased to be an ongoing concern in 2008 when Sony bought BMG’s 50-percent stake in the company, forming today’s Sony Music Entertainment and retaining all of the music acquired from BMG.

As all of the cast recordings contained in Broadway in a Box are currently in print from Masterworks Broadway, the box may be best as an introductory sampler for young fans and collectors, or for those who might not have purchased these recordings on CD before.  Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein are the most represented composers/lyricists on the box, with five recordings: RCA Victor’s 1965 Carousel revival starring original Billy Bigelow John Raitt; RCA’s 1964 The King and I revival starring Darren McGavin and Risë Stevens; RCA’s 1979 Oklahoma! with Laurence Guittard and Christine Andreas;  Columbia’s 1959 The Sound of Music starring Mary Martin; and Columbia’s 1949 South Pacific with Martin and Ezio Pinza.  The words of lyricist Hammerstein appear a sixth time via RCA’s 1966 Show Boat revival, with Barbara Cook.

Stephen Sondheim isn’t far behind his mentor Hammerstein with five shows included, too.  The reigning musical theatre master makes appearances via Columbia’s 1957 West Side Story (co-written with Leonard Bernstein, featuring Larry Kert, Carol Lawrence and Chita Rivera), 1959 Gypsy (co-written with Jule Styne, starring Ethel Merman and Jack Klugman), and 1970 Company (Dean Jones, Elaine Stritch), as well as RCA Victor’s 1979 Sweeney Todd (alas, the single-disc highlights version only, starring Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou) and 1987 Into the Woods (Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason).

After the jump: what else is in the set?  Which stars will you hear?  We have a full album listing and order link for you!

Review: Two By Richard Rodgers, “On Your Toes” (1952) and “Carousel” (1955)

June is busting out all over, and so is the music of Richard Rodgers. Then again, the work of the composer (1902-1979) is always busting out all over. Even in 2010, Rodgers had the third most-covered song of the year, according to ASCAP. The song was “My Funny Valentine,” with lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and it was written in 1937, proving that Richard Rodgers’ music is, indeed, timeless.  Masterworks Broadway, drawing from Sony Music Entertainment’s Columbia and RCA Victor vaults, has been a leading light in bringing classic theatre titles into the digital age, as downloads and CDs on demand. The past month has brought two titles composed by Rodgers, and they couldn’t be more different.

Rodgers’ partnership with Hart is characterized by the insouciant, jazz-inflected musical comedies they created, which produced perhaps the greatest run of standards in musical history: “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Blue Moon,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “I Could Write a Book” are just a few. One of those titles, 1936’s On Your Toes, received its first recording in 1952 from Columbia Records, and that title has arrived in digital splendor. The Rodgers and Hart partnership went on a temporary hiatus in 1943 when Rodgers teamed with Oscar Hammerstein II, a playwright, lyricist and innovator of the operetta form, to write Oklahoma!.  That collaboration changed the face of musical theatre, perfecting the art of integrating song, dance and dialogue into a seamless whole.  Rodgers and Hart had one final hurrah reteaming to write new material for a revival of their 1927 A Connecticut Yankee, but Hart died soon after, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team, was born. But this was a largely different Rodgers, composing sweeping, majestic, dramatic melodies for “musicals,” often a different animal than “musical comedies.” In 1955, RCA Victor brought out the most complete recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel, and that, too, has just received the Masterworks treatment.

Should fans of On Your Toes and Carousel invest in these new reissues, both of which are studio cast recordings making their first-ever digital/CD(-R) debuts? Hit the jump to find out!