Only Broadway CD You'll Ever Need (CD, Oct-1998, RCA Victor)

Album Features
UPC:	090266325627
Format:	CD
Release Year:	1998
Record Label:	RCA Victor
Genre:	Pop Vocal, Show Vocals

Track Listing
1. Old Man River - William Warfield (from "Showboat")
2. Anything Goes - Patti LuPone (from "Anything Goes")
3. Oh What a Beautiful Mornin' - Laurence Guittard (from "Oklahoma")
4. You'll Never Walk Alone - Katherine Hilgenberg (from "Carousel")
5. There's No Business Like Show Business - Ethel Merman/Bruce Yarnell/Rufus Smith/Jerry Orbach (from "Annie Get Your Gun")
6. Almost Like Being in Love - David Brooks/Marion Bell (from "Brigadoon")
7. Luck Be a Lady - Peter Gallagher/Company (from "Guys And Dolls")
8. Shall We Dance - Yul Brynner/Constance Towers (from "The King & I")
9. America (From Jerome Robbin's Broadway) - Charlotte D'Amboise/Debbie Gravitte et. al. (Shapiro, from "West Side Story")
10. Everything's Coming up Roses - Angela Lansbury (from "Gypsy")
11. Rosie - Jason Alexander/Vanessa Williams (from "Bye Bye Birdie")
12. Consider Yourself - Michael Goodman/Bruce Prochnik/Company (from "Oliver")
13. Hello, Dolly! - Carol Channing/Company (from "Hello, Dolly!")
14. If I Were a Rich Man - Zero Mostel (from "Fiddler On The Roof")
15. Impossible Dream, The - Colm Wilkinson (from "Man Of La Mancha")
16. Money - Alan C******/The Kit Kat Girls (from "Cabaret")
17. All That Jazz - Bebe Neuwirth/Company (from "Chicago")
18. Lullaby of Broadway - Jerry Orbach/Company (from "42nd Street")
19. The Proposal / The Night Was Alive (from "Titanic") - Brian d'Arcy James/Martin Moran
20. Wheels of a Dream - Brian Stokes Mitchell/Audra McDonald (from "Ragtime The Musical")

Details
Producer:	Bill Rosenfield (Compilation)
Distributor:	BMG (distributor)
Recording Type:	Studio
Recording Mode:	Stereo
SPAR Code:	n/a

Album Notes
Includes liner notes by Bill Rosenfield.Digitally remastered by Harold Hagopian and Hsi-Ling Chang.Despite its deliberately provocative title, RCA Victor's The Only Broadway CD You'll Ever Need really claims only to "give an overview of what 'Broadway' music is about," according to compiler Bill Rosenfield. What it really does is survey the last 50 years of theater music from the point of view of the most popular songs from the genre available in the company's vaults. RCA was the last of the major labels to begin recording Broadway cast albums, not entering the field until 1947's Brigadoon (from which "Almost Like Being in Love" is included here). Even then, it had to compete with the others and didn't really emerge as an equal competitor until the 1960s. As a result, relatively few of these tracks, which are presented chronologically by each show's opening date, come from original cast recordings, being drawn rather from revival casts, TV soundtracks, and individual artist discs for the most part. Nevertheless, some major performers sing songs associated with them: Ethel Merman and "There's No Business Like Show Business," Carol Channing and "Hello, Dolly!," Zero Mostel and "If I Were a Rich Man." The set seems designed for the casual and recent fan of Broadway, who won't be upset that Cabaret's "Money" and 42nd Street's "Lullaby of Broadway" are technically movie songs or that Colm Wilkinson never sang "The Impossible Dream" on stage, and who will recognize the material from four shows that were still running on the album's release date, Titanic, Ragtime, and revivals of Chicago and Cabaret. But this is a Broadway without Andrew Lloyd Webber and with precious little Stephen Sondheim (despite RCA's extensive Sondheim holdings), which means it doesn't really address much of theater history from the mid-'60s on. Thus, even as a label sampler, The Only Broadway CD You'll Ever Need is woefully inadequate. ~ William Ruhlmann