Several factors contributed to the delay in getting GRAND HOTEL - The Musical recorded.
First the music publishing was delayed: The musical was originally written in 1958 and tried out as AT THE GRAND. When Tommy Tune took it one he wanted a lot of changes and when Wright & Forrest balked he brought in Maury Yeston to write new songs and re-write some of the surviving Wright/Forrest songs.
When the songs were published Maury Yeston's were in one book while the Wright/Forrest songs were published separately and they put some of the songs back to the way they had been written and not the way they were performed. They also were reluctant to allow the revised score to be recorded. By the time the issue was resolved the major labels had lost interest, assuming that GRAND HOTEL was destined to close soon and anyways it was considered a dance show.
After the Tony awards the show took a major upswing at the box office helped no doubt by Michael Jeeter's number which led off the broadcast. The show began selling out and fans began returning to see it again and again and to marvel at the staging and performances.
And the fans began clamouring for a cast album. It began to look as if GRAND HOTEL would not be recorded until it opened in London. Especially when the producers of GUYS AND DOLLS wanted the Martin Beck and it looked like GRAND HOTEL would be forced out. In the end it did move to the Gershwin (hardly the best theatre for this show) and it ran there another three months. The cast album was hurriedly put together and done in one day in April 1992, just weeks before the show played its final performance.
They planned to have David Carroll come in early t track his songs (he was in failing health at the time) but he collapsed and died in the studio before he could record anything.
It made for a bittersweet reunion for many of the OC member, several of whom had long left the show, and that contributed to the excitement you can hear on the CD.
You can also hear a number of wrong notes and sloppy transitions, not typical of the care RCA usually puts into its cast albums. (The label also did not bother with any kind of notes and merely reprinted the synopsis of scenes from the playbill!)
The recording could have been better. I think it would have benefitted from being done the way THE SECRET GARDEN or the 1994 DAMN YANKEES! were done with more dialogue linking the songs.
The CD came out in June 1992, 2 months after the show closed. And when it closed Variety listed it as a (financial) hit having played 1,019 performances.
Cast albums are NOT "soundtracks."
Live theatre does not use a "soundtrack." If it did, it wouldn't be live theatre!
I host a weekly one-hour radio program featuring cast album selections as well as songs by cabaret, jazz and theatre artists. The program, FRONT ROW CENTRE is heard Sundays 9 to 10 am and also Saturdays from 8 to 9 am (eastern times) on www.proudfm.com
