A cast recording is a recording of a stage musical that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording or OCR, as the name implies, features the voices of the show's original cast. A cast recording featuring the first cast to perform a musical in a particular venue is known, for example, as an "original Broadway cast recording" (OBCR) or an "original London cast recording" (OLCR).
Cast recordings are (usually) studio recordings rather than live recordings. The recorded song lyrics and orchestrations are nonetheless identical (or very similar) to those of the songs as performed in the theatre. Like any studio performance, the recording is an idealized rendering, without audible audience reaction.
History
The British were the first to create cast recordings, and they were also the first to create original London cast recordings of shows that had already opened on Broadway, but had not been recorded with their original Broadway cast. This led to the odd situation of having, for example, a 1928 recording of the London cast of Show Boat, but no recording with the actual 1927 Broadway cast, and a recording of the London cast of Sigmund Romberg's The Desert Song, but not of the 1926 Broadway cast - even though both of these shows are Broadway musicals, rather than British ones.
Prior to the development of original cast recordings, there had been recordings of songs from musicals, and collections of several such songs, and recordings of songs performed by cast members; but they were recordings of songs, that is, they were recorded as stand-alone show tunes rather than representations of a (more or less) complete musical.
The first American original cast recording as we know it was an early experimental LP of program transcriptions of selections from The Band Wagon, a 1931 revue starring Fred and Adele Astaire. It was not widely released.
The following year, Jack Kapp produced an album of songs from Show Boat timed to the 1932 Ziegfeld revival. This album featured Helen Morgan and Paul Robeson doing their songs from the show but used studio cast singers for the leads.
As the 1930s progressed, Liberty Music Shop in New York City made mini albums of songs from the Ethel Merman musical comedies Red Hot and Blue and Stars in Your Eyes. These were more like personality recordings, since the arrangements were not the ones heard in the theatre.
The first complete so-called original cast album was Marc Blitzstein's 1938 album of songs from The Cradle Will Rock although these were recorded with just piano accompaniment and not the show's orchestra. In 1984, the original recordings from Very Warm for May (1939) were discovered and issued on an LP. However, these recordings were not made with the original orchestrations.
RCA Victor had made an album of the key songs from Porgy and Bess using the theatre orchestra but featuring Met opera singers Lawrence Tibbett and Helen Jepson singing the songs. Decca riposted with another album of the same highlights sung by the actual stars of the original production, although recorded five years after the premiere. When a revival was staged in 1942, Decca issued a second album of some of the secondary songs from the opera by the revival cast and later combined these two albums onto one LP and called it the "original cast recording". Decca also issued an album of songs from the all-soldier revue This Is the Army by Irving Berlin.
Finally in 1943, came Decca's recording of Oklahoma!. It not only featured the original cast, but the show's original chorus, all accompanied by the same orchestra heard in the show, playing the music in the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations and conducted by the show's original conductor, Jay Blackton. The show was the biggest hit Broadway had experienced up until that time and people who could not get tickets bought the album. It would eventually sell over 1 million copies as a set of 78-rpm records, and millions more on LP and Compact Discs.
Decca soon began recording every hit musical that came along including One Touch of Venus, Carmen Jones, Carousel, and Annie Get Your Gun. Soon, all the other record companies were bidding for the rights to record Broadway shows with their original casts.
Capitol recorded St. Louis Woman in 1946, and RCA Victor recorded Brigadoon in 1947. Although Decca abandoned the cast album field in the mid-1950s, Capitol and Victor actively bid for recording rights. Sometimes problems arose as when RCA Victor signed on to record the 1950 musical Call Me Madam even though the show's star, Ethel Merman was then under exclusive contract to Decca Records. This resulted in two albums of the score being released: Merman with a studio cast on her label, while the rest of the Broadway cast made an album for RCA Victor with Dinah Shore singing the Merman role.
The label that would dominate the field until the late 1970s, however, was Columbia. They began by issuing an album of the 1946 revival of Show Boat followed by the original Broadway cast of Finian's Rainbow in 1947. A year later the label introduced LP records and used the format for two best sellers: Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific, both recorded and released in 1949.
A 1970 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker, Original Cast Album: Company gives a straightforward view of the making of a cast recording. It shows how the recording studio looks, how performers are arranged, and how the director behaves. The cast feels the pressure of delivering a definitive performance, with a degree of perfection beyond that ever required on stage, under a time limit imposed by the high cost of studio time.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon for cast albums to become best sellers. My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly! all reached the #1 position on the Billboard magazine best-sellers chart. As popular music split away from the traditional Tin Pan Alley song stylings of Broadway and Hollywood, and rock music became the dominant pop culture form, show albums began selling less well, albeit with exceptions like Hair, which is a rock musical and as of January 2024 is the last cast album to chart at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Also, as radio and TV moved away from showcasing Broadway numbers the ability for a show to reach an audience beyond the traditional Broadway fans lessened.
Today few show albums even appear in the Billboard top 200, and the rare breakout hit like Wicked receives no radio airplay.
New boutique labels such as PS Classics and Ghostlight release many of the cast albums of recent Broadway hits. With the recent merger of Sony Music (formerly Columbia Records) and BMG Music (formerly RCA Victor), many older editions of cast recordings are being deleted and newly remastered editions are being released.
Technical limitations
A 10-inch 78-rpm disc could hold about 3+1⁄2 minutes of music per side. A 12-inch 78-rpm could last 4+1⁄2 minutes. Early albums had to severely abridge selections to fit the format. With LP cast recordings, usually released as single discs, it was not rare for compromises to be made to fit the recording within the forty-to-fifty-minute time limit. For example, reprises, or minor songs might not be included.
By the 1980s, the rise of the compact disc with its 74-minute recording capacity (which was increased to 80 minutes in the 1990s) resulted in improvements in cast recordings, which were now usually capable of including all songs, the full overture and entr'acte, and, when appropriate, lead-in dialogue to the songs.
In recent years, some cast recordings have been recorded live, in recording studios incorporated into the theater concerned. Otherwise, live recordings tend to trade sound quality for freshness and immediacy.
Alternate versions
It is often the case that many cast recordings may be made for the same show. In addition to the recording of the cast of the original production, later high-profile productions may also produce cast recordings: for example, a recording by the cast of the first London production of a show that originated on Broadway, or of the first Broadway cast of a show that originated off-Broadway, or of the cast of a revival produced many decades later than the original production.
For some musicals created before cast recordings became the norm, studio cast recordings are all that exist to document the original productions' orchestrations. Such studio cast recordings have been made of many early musical comedies by the Gershwins (George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin), Vincent Youmans, and Rodgers and Hart.
Terms
Original cast: the premiere or original cast of the production (original Broadway cast; original London cast; original Toronto cast; original Australian cast, etc.). This can (rather confusingly) include revivals as well as first productions. Less misleading in this last case is "Revival Cast".
Studio cast: assembled by a record company. In the early days, the studio cast singers were often lesser known performers with good singing voices, usually joined by one fairly well known star. Mary Martin made a number of studio cast recordings for Columbia in the early 1950s including Babes in Arms, Girl Crazy, and Anything Goes. More recent studio albums have tended to be note-complete recreations of the original orchestrations, often with well-known singers (not infrequently from the world of opera rather than musical theatre) taking the leads: such as EMI's recordings of Brigadoon and Show Boat.
The performers who appear in Broadway shows sing the score live each night. When a Broadway cast album is made, it is (as a rule) recorded in a studio and produced with the home listener in mind (although live recordings of the original cast are not unknown). While it is strictly correct (if misleading) to call a movie soundtrack a "cast recording" since it does record the performances of the film cast, it is even more misleading, not to mention incorrect, to call any recording a "soundtrack" that has no connection with a motion picture or recorded television production.
Soundtrack albums fill a very similar function for films with music. Soundtrack and cast albums sometimes have much in common, especially when the film concerned is a motion picture version of an original stage musical, and it often makes sense for record shops to put the two genres in the same section. But the cast album of a stage musical is very specifically not a soundtrack.
In 1949, Decca began to re-release the best-selling of these albums on LP and in the late 1950s began offer electronically enhanced for stereo editions.
The label was out of the business of recording new cast albums by the end of the 1950s. Decca was bought by MCA and in the early 1970s many of these titles were re-released on the MCA label, all using the fake stereo masters.
MCA released many of their classic shows on CD in the 1990s, going back to original master discs and tapes to generate excellent sounding (and complete) remasters of the originals. When MCA and Polygram were merged into the new Universal Music Group, a new label, Decca Broadway, was born. Decca Broadway has re-mastered and reissued virtually every cast album in the old Decca catalogue including many rare titles that had not been available in almost 50 years. Decca Broadway has also recorded recent hits including: Wicked, Monty Python's Spamalot, Seussical, and Spring Awakening. It has not, however, released the London cast album of Man of La Mancha on CD, perhaps because it contains most of the dialogue from the show, and the film version is readily available on DVD. Wicked, in particular has been a big seller for the label and continues to sell well. Although they are being selective about what they record, Decca Broadway plans to continue making cast albums, including the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein and Andrew Lippa's The Addams Family: A New Musical. Although some of the slower-selling catalog titles have been deleted, many remain available as downloads.
Capitol
Capitol recorded St. Louis Woman in 1946, mainly because lyricist Johnny Mercer was one of the label's founders. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, that the label began bidding for cast album rights. Their first few choices were generally not big hits: Flahooley, Top Banana, Three Wishes for Jamie, and the revival of Of Thee I Sing. They finally got a hit show in 1953 with Cole Porter's Can-Can, which remained in print until the end of the LP era. Recordings featuring the film casts of three Rodgers and Hammerstein films (Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I) were also released on Capitol during the 1950s, all earning RIAA gold record awards. An even bigger hit came along in 1957 with The Music Man, which reached the #1 spot on the Billboard charts and stayed there for 12 weeks. It was also the label's first stereo cast album. They scored another bestseller in 1964 when Barbra Streisand's label Columbia Records passed on recording Funny Girl. Capitol recorded it, and the album became a million seller. Without a TV/radio network affiliation (such as Columbia had with CBS and RCA with NBC) Capitol sometimes had to content themselves with "also-ran" shows. The 1960s found them with recording rights to a number of minor hits: No Strings, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Golden Boy but mostly they got flop shows: Sail Away, Kwamina, The Gay Life, Skyscraper, Walking Happy, and Zorba. They did record Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut as a composer with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, but in 1971 they came under fire for refusing to record the complete score of Sondheim's Follies as a 2-LP set. The label executives complained that "cast albums don't sell" ignoring the ongoing success of Funny Girl and The Music Man and the fact that many of their shows had been outright flops. Follies was truncated to a single LP missing four songs and abridging many of the others. It would be Capitol's last original cast album.
EMI's classical division took over the Capitol Broadway cast catalogue in 1992 and reissued all 40 of the cast albums on the Broadway Angel label. The CDs were well packaged with booklets containing detailed notes and production photos. Although only a half dozen of these releases are still in print as of October 2007, most of the deleted titles have been reissued by DRG keeping the scores available for collectors.
In 2013, Universal Music Group acquired EMI and with it Angel and Capitol Broadway catalogues.
RCA Victor
RCA Victor entered the cast album field in 1947 with two hits and a miss: Brigadoon, High Button Shoes, and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro. Brigadoon was a big seller and remains in print on CD today. High Button Shoes was a hit show but the album did not do well. RCA's budget label, Camden, reissued it on LP in 1958 and Victor re-released it in 1965. At that time they also did the first LP transfer of Allegro.
In 1985, Shepard staged an all-star concert to make a complete recording of Sondheim's Follies. When pre-production costs escalated, label president Jose Menendez wanted to cancel the recording. Shepard held his ground and won the battle. The 2-LP set was a bestseller and made profit within a month of release. Early in 1986 Shepard resigned and went to MCA.
Many of the older, more obscure titles were deleted in 1999–2000 but the catalogue remains active. The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor catalogues.
Columbia
Columbia's first original Broadway cast album was the 1946 revival of Show Boat, soon followed by an album of Finian's Rainbow. In 1948 Columbia introduced the Lp to the record market and soon offered LP editions of their 78-rpm sets. The first cast album recorded as an LP was Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, which was a big hit on records and was followed by the blockbuster Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. The producer of these albums was Goddard Lieberson, who brought unquestionable taste and skill to translating a Broadway show to records. He didn't just record the songs. It was his goal to make the album an enjoyable listening experience for home listeners who, quite often, had not even seen the shows. Recorded in an old converted church on 30th street in New York City, Columbia's albums had a lush, open, spacious sound. When stereo came along in the late 1950s, Lieberson used stereo placement to enhance the performances but avoided any gimmicks. As a result, Columbia's albums of Kismet, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, and Flower Drum Song remain classics in the field.
In 1956, Lieberson persuaded CBS to put up the entire capitalization for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. This ensured that Columbia got the cast album rights and that CBS held all film and TV rights to the property. The show was the biggest hit of the decade, selling out for nearly 6 years on Broadway. The original cast album reached #1 on the Billboard charts, and stayed on the charts for nine years. Because the Broadway cast had been recorded only in monaural, when the cast opened it in London Columbia re-recorded it in stereo. The label later offered the film soundtrack and a 1976 20th anniversary revival cast albums as well as recordings in French, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew.
The profits from the My Fair Lady album financed many of Columbia's subsequent original cast and classical recordings.
The label recorded Frank Loesser's near sung-through musical The Most Happy Fella, virtually complete and issued it as a 3-record set as well as a single Lp of highlights. Lieberson made sure that important scores were recorded even if the shows were not box office successes. Thanks to his foresight the original casts of Candide, Anyone Can Whistle, and Goldilocks are preserved.
In the 1980s, the label began to withdraw from the cast album field as RCA began to dominate it. Sony bought CBS records in the late 1980s and began reissuing many older cast albums on the Sony Broadway label in 1991–94 and later the Sony Columbia Broadway Masterworks labels. The few, mainly obscure flops, that Sony chose not to reissue were farmed out to DRG and other specialty labels.
The merger between Sony and BMG in 2004 has resulted in a new label called Masterworks Broadway and now that Sony has taken over the entire operation they have started allowing outside companies such as DRG to re-release many of the rarer cast albums from the combined Columbia and RCA Victor catalogues. Masterworks Broadway has also launched a new website offering the combined Victor and Columbia catalogues.
Other labels
ABC – This label was active in the cast album field in the 1960s. It was bought by MCA and is now owned by Universal Music Group.
DRG – Hugh Fordin's Discovery Record Group records Broadway cast albums and Cabaret performances. Recently the label has reissued a number of out-of-print cast albums from the Capitol, Columbia, and RCA Victor catalogues.
David Serero Records - the French baritone produced and arranged on his own label the only Broadway musical by Duke Ellington: Beggar's Holiday. Serero has since arranged and produced other recordings, including "I Wish You L.O.V.E" by Jermaine Jackson from his one-man musical called You Are Not Alone.
Fynsworth Alley – Although now defunct, the label reissued some Columbia albums and recorded some solo artists.
JAY Records - A studio and original cast recording label. JAY produces recordings of both studio and stage casts. They operate a Masterworks edition section in which top-class two-disc complete recordings of classic Broadway musical scores are produced featuring well-known opera singers and musical theatre singers. The King and I, Calamity Jane, Guys and Dolls, Annie Get Your Gun, and My Fair Lady (which won a Grammy Award) have all been produced on the Masterworks edition label.
Kapp – an MCA label now owned by Universal. Their most famous Broadway album is the 1965 original cast recording of Man of La Mancha, starring Richard Kiley and Joan Diener. It remains a bestselling classic to this day and is currently available from Decca Broadway Records.
Original Cast - Founded by Bruce and Doris Yeko in 1975, this label specialises in recordings of obscure theatrical productions that would not otherwise get the chance to be commercially recorded. The label's output has included original cast and studio cast albums of notorious Broadway flops, recordings of lesser-known off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows, and the commercial release of privately made theatre-related recordings (such as composer's demos) .
Polydor – Part of the Polygram group that includes London (U.S. label for British Decca), Deutsche Grammophon and Philips. Polydor released a few show CDs under license from John Yap's TER label in UK but these were quickly deleted. Polydor also released many of the cast recordings from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals through the Really Useful Records label. Polygram merged with MCA to form Universal Music Group, and many of the cast recordings that Polydor has released are released in the US on the Decca Broadway label.
Geffen - Although Geffen is a pop label, it released the cast recordings for five shows of which David Geffen was an investor. It released the original off-Broadway cast recording and the film soundtrack of Little Shop of Horrors, the original Broadway cast recordings of Dreamgirls, Les Misérables, and Cats. Geffen also released the London cast recordings of Cats and Miss Saigon in the USA. Now almost all of the Geffen cast albums are released through the Decca Broadway label.
SimG Records is an independent studio and original cast recording label dedicated to the promotion of new musical theatre. It is owned solely by London-based director/producer Simon Greiff in 2009. In 2014, SimG Records releases were nominated for seven Broadway World Album Awards. Original Cast Recordings include: Love Birds, Soho Cinders, Sleeping Arrangements, Ushers: The Front of House Musical, and A Spoonful of Sherman. Studio Cast Recordings include: Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs.
Stage Door Records - A UK-based reissue label that specialise in London and Broadway cast recordings and vocal albums, most never available on CD format before. Highlights from the Stage Door catalogue include the Original London cast albums of Colette and Mutiny! - both released on CD for the first time. Other cast albums include Napoleon, The Far Pavilions, Beautiful And Damned, and Out Of The Blue. Stage Door have also released best selling vocal albums on Twiggy, Anthony Newley, and Steve Barton.
Varèse Sarabande – Established as a label for movie scores, they did branch out into cast albums in the 1990s recording a number of Broadway and off-Broadway shows. The label has re-organized and is now focused on film scores only. Many of the Broadway shows have been deleted.
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its US label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, Jack Kapp and Milton Rackmil, who later became American Decca's president too. In 1937, anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca, and the link between the UK and US Decca label was broken for several decades. The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre.
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 22, 1889, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1991, its recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels: Epic Records, and former longtime rivals, RCA Records and Arista Records as the latter two were originally owned by BMG before its 2008 relaunch after Sony's acquisition alongside other BMG labels.
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.
MGM Records was a record label founded by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946 for the purpose of releasing soundtrack recordings of their musical films. It transitioned into a pop music label that continued into the 1970s. The company also released soundtrack albums of the music for some of their non-musical films as well, and on rare occasions, cast albums of off-Broadway musicals such as The Fantasticks and the 1954 revival of The Threepenny Opera. In one instance, MGM Records released the highly successful soundtrack album of a film made by another studio, Columbia Pictures's Born Free (1966).
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Berber fighters, against French colonial rule in Morocco. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of Arabia aiding native guerrillas. Many tales romanticizing Saharan North Africa were in vogue, including Beau Geste and The Son of the Sheik.
The New Moon is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta. Set in 1792, shortly before the French Revolution, the story centers on a young French aristocrat in disguise, who has fled his country and falls in love with the daughter of a prominent New Orleans planter.
Call Me Madam is a Broadway musical written by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.
Columbia Masterworks was a record label started in 1924 by Columbia Records. In 1980, it was separated from the Columbia label and renamed CBS Masterworks. In 1990, it was revived as Sony Classical after its sale to the Sony Corporation.
Porgy and Bess, the opera by George Gershwin, has been recorded by a variety of artists since it was completed in 1935, including renditions by jazz instrumentalists and vocalists, in addition to operatic treatments.
The Red Mill is an operetta written by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Henry Blossom. The farcical story concerns two American vaudevillians who wreak havoc at an inn in the Netherlands, interfering with two marriages; but all ends well. The musical premiered on Broadway on September 24, 1906, at the Knickerbocker Theatre and ran for 274 performances, starring comedians Fred Stone and David C. Montgomery. It also had a London run and toured extensively, and in 1945 had a long-running Broadway revival. The Red Mill includes the famous songs "Every Day is Lady's Day with Me", "The Streets of New York", "You Never Can Tell About a Woman", and "Because You're You".
Decca Broadway is an American record label specializing in musical theater recordings founded in 1999 by Decca Records and is a unit of Universal Music Group. Decca Broadway issued both new original cast albums as well as reissues of classic musical theater performances from the catalogues of record labels Universal Music and predecessor companies acquired over the years including Decca which pioneered the release of original cast albums. Decca Broadway was absorbed into UMG's Verve Records in 2013. Verve Label Group relaunched the Decca Broadway label in 2019.
Masterworks Broadway is a record label created by the consolidation of Sony Music Entertainment's Broadway theatre music divisions, Columbia Broadway Masterworks and RCA Victor Records' Broadway series.
"It's a Lovely Day Today" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for his successful musical Call Me Madam (1950) when it was introduced by Russell Nype and Galina Talva. The musical was adapted as a movie in 1953 and the song "It's a Lovely Day Today" was performed by Donald O'Connor and Vera-Ellen.
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl LPs of popular and classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line. Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents to $2.98. In the UK Pickwick Records' Top of the Pops record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Irving Berlin's White Christmas was an LP album of songs by Rosemary Clooney from the movie White Christmas, released by Columbia Records in 1954. The album was also released as a set of four 78-rpm records at the same time.
Manhattan Tower is a composition written by Gordon Jenkins in the 1940s and first issued to the public in 1946 as a two-disc 78-rpm set on the Decca label, DA-438. It was considered quite innovative for its time and was quite warmly received by critics and the public alike. Jenkins also performed the suite in its entirety on the very time-conscious Toast of the Town, hosted by Ed Sullivan, on February 26, 1950. An expanded 90-minute live musical dramatization, featuring Peter Marshall and Helen O'Connell, was presented as an NBC Saturday Spectacular on October 27, 1956.
A studio recording is any recording made in a studio, as opposed to a live recording, which is usually made in a concert venue or a theatre, with an audience attending the performance.
A spoken word album is a recording of spoken material, a predecessor of the contemporary audiobook genre. Rather than featuring music or songs, the content of spoken word albums include political speeches, dramatic readings of historical documents, dialogue from a film soundtrack, dramatized versions of literary classics, stories for children, comedic material, and instructional recordings. The Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album has been awarded annually since 1959.
The discography of Sergio Franchi, the Italian-American tenor (1926–1990), consists of a total of thirty-five albums: Two live albums, and thirty-three studio albums. The studio albums are further identified as collaborations, and nine are compilation albums. The Live category included an LP album (1965) and a CD album of selected songs extracted from Franchi's twenty-four Live TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. This discography also includes thirty single and EP albums recorded or released in various venues.
The Broadway cast recording of the musical My Fair Lady was first released April 2, 1956 by Columbia Records, with songs by Lerner and Loewe, conducted by Franz Allers, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. Columbia president Goddard Lieberson provided the $375,000 needed to stage the show in return for the rights to the cast recording.
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