#6: My 18 Favorite Cast Recordings

Eighteen? I was going to put together a list of my 20 favorite cast recordings, but there was a four-way tie for 19th place, and I thought a list of 22 would be ungainly. So here are 18.

I have listed them first by composer and then chronologically by opening date of the original production (on Broadway unless otherwise specified).

None of the recordings are “Original Broadway Cast Recordings” in the usual sense of the word. The reason for that, I suspect, will quickly become clear.

Jerome Kern:

1915, Very Good Eddie

1917, Leave It to Jane

1924, Sitting Pretty

George Gershwin:

1924, Sweet Little Devil

1924 (London), Primrose

1924, Lady Be Good

1925, Tell Me More

1925, Tip Toes

1926, Oh, Kay!

1930, Girl Crazy

Richard Rodgers:

1925, Dearest Enemy

1937, On Your Toes

1937, Babes In Arms

1938, The Boys From Syracuse

Con Conrad:

1926, Kitty’s Kisses

Kay Swift:

1930, Fine and Dandy

Cole Porter:

1934, Anything Goes

Noel Gay:

1937 (London), Me and My Girl

You will have noticed that all of these shows opened before 1940. I’m afraid my interest in musical theater tapers off after 1939. I mean, newer shows like Annie Get Your Gun or Guys and Dolls are fine, but give me Gershwin and Kern any day. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of recordings of pre-1940 shows, and of course no recordings of the actual casts, except in some very limited circumstances, because no one made complete cast recordings until the 1940s.

As one or two of these shows might not be familiar to you, I thought I would write something about each them: offer some interesting historical observation about the production or provide notes on the recording or share my personal impressions. But I realized that that would make for a rather long blog post. Instead I have decided to have a separate blog post for each recording.

Stay tuned!