Books or Articles on Cast Recordings

[whatdoesntkillme]

Posted: 11/2/16 at 9:27pm

I'm doing a research paper on the history and evolution of Broadway cast recordings in relation to other American popular music. Does anyone know any sources I should be sure to check out? Thanks in advance!

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 11/2/16 at 9:42pm

Don't think it would be a reputable scholarly source but Peter Filichia in his blogs for Masterworks Broadway gives a wealth of information. 

Peter Filichia on Masterworks Broadway

[Mildred Plotka]

Posted: 11/3/16 at 10:42am

We really need a definitive book on the subject.  Perhaps Filichia will write one.   I find the liner notes to many of the remasters to be the best source (Filichia has written many, as has Ken Mandelbaum).  A lot of the information out there is 3 pages in this book, 2 pages in that.  Try taking a look at Ethan Mordden's books.  His "Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940's" has a chapter on cast recordings.  I second checking out the Masterworks site.  There is some great stuff there.  The candid shots of the recording shots are also a treat.  There's good scholarly information out there, but it requires a lot of digging.  I have been obsessed with cast recordings for 20+ years, and still feel like I have much more to learn on the subject.  If you're on a time crunch, you may want to pick a broader musical theatre topic.  

[whatdoesntkillme]

Posted: 11/3/16 at 5:30pm

Thanks for this! 

I found a listing for a chapter called "Evolution of the Original Cast Album" in The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, so I'll certainly check that out. Also checking with my professor and the music librarian on campus, of course, but I figured my fellow BWW nerds would have some good ideas! It's a final paper for a class, so I have some time before the semester ends in a little over a month. 

Let me know if you find/think of any more, please! 

[Roland von Berlin]

Posted: 11/4/16 at 12:53am

Ethan Mordden's recent history of the musical, Anything Goes, ends with an extremely long discographical essay that is essentially a history of cast (and studio-cast) recordings. It starts with The Beggar's Opera and Gilbert and Sullivan and quickly moves to the American musical, charting the first 78 singles of original-cast performers, the first American attempts at albums (with a few original-cast members), Show Boat in 1932 and Blackbirds in 1933. He says The Cradle Will Rock isn't really the first cast album because the show was orchestrated and the album used only piano, as in the theatre. (For some reason he thinks Cradle should only be heard with the original scoring, though the only recording that uses it is very hard to find.)

Mordden also goes into the first sort-of cast albums in the 1930s--for instance, the RCA Victor Porgy and Bess using two white opera singers but the orchestra, chorus, and conductor from the Broadway premiere. Then the emergence of the true cast albums in the 1940s. He says This is the Army was the first and Oklahoma! the second. And so on up to the present day. He also compares discs of, say, Carousel, to show how different they can be in how they present the show. I think he does the same thing with A Little Night Music.