Editing Cast recording (section)

==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 tune]]s rather than representations of a (more or less) complete musical.

The first [[United States|American]] original cast recording as we know it was an early experimental [[long playing|LP]] of program transcriptions of selections from ''[[The Band Wagon (musical)|The Band Wagon]]'', a 1931 revue starring [[Fred Astaire|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 (singer)|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 Records|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 (musical)|Carousel]]'', and ''[[Annie Get Your Gun (musical)|Annie Get Your Gun]]''. Soon, all the other record companies were bidding for the rights to record Broadway shows with their original casts.

[[Capitol Records|Capitol]] recorded ''[[St. Louis Woman]]'' in 1946, and [[RCA Victor Records|RCA Victor]] recorded ''[[Brigadoon (musical)|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 Masterworks Records|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 album|LP]] records and used the format for two best sellers: ''[[Kiss Me, Kate]]'' and ''[[South Pacific (musical)|South Pacific]]'', both recorded and released in 1949.

Under the leadership of [[Columbia Masterworks Records|Columbia]]'s [[Goddard Lieberson]], the label's cast recordings came to define the genre. Columbia Masterworks produced the original cast recordings of such shows as ''[[The Pajama Game]]'', ''[[My Fair Lady]]'', ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', ''[[West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)|West Side Story]]'', ''[[Gypsy: A Musical Fable|Gypsy]]'', and ''[[Camelot (musical)|Camelot]]''. Lieberson also recorded important shows that had failed at the box office including ''[[Candide (musical)|Candide]]'' and ''[[Anyone Can Whistle]]''.  In 1956, he recorded [[Frank Loesser]]'s musical ''[[The Most Happy Fella]]'', which had so much music that it had to be released as a 3-LP set, an almost unheard of venture for an original cast album in the 1950s.

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 (musical)|Funny Girl]]'', and ''[[Hello, Dolly! (musical)|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 the [[rock musical]] [[Hair (musical)|Hair]], which as of January 2024 is the last cast album to chart at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (The cast albums for ''[[The Book of Mormon (musical)|The Book of Mormon]]'' and ''[[Hamilton (musical)|Hamilton]]'' both peaked at No. 3.) 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 (musical album)|Wicked]]'' receives no radio airplay.

New boutique labels such as [[PS Classics]] and [[Ghostlight (record label)|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.