PR: Call Me Madam

[cinemediapromo]

MASTERWORKS BROADWAY TO RELEASE
CALL ME MADAM

MASTERWORKS BROADWAY continues to make good on its promise to open its vaults with more classic cast recordings previously unavailable in the CD era with Call Me Madam (Dinah Shore and the Original Broadway Company, 1950), available as a download through all major digital service providers and as disc-on-demand with the original cover art, via Arkivmusic.com and Amazon.com.

Call Me Madam is a pure adrenalin shot of circa-1950 zeitgeist, a screwball comedy pulled from the headlines with impeccable timing. The show was conceived as a vehicle for Ethel Merman, at that moment arguably the biggest star in Broadway musicals, and reunited her with Irving Berlin, composer/lyricist of her blockbuster 1946 hit Annie Get Your Gun. A red-hot ticket when it opened on October 12, 1950 at the Imperial Theatre, Call Me Madam proved to be the blockbuster Merman and Berlin hoped for. They were in the very best of hands: George Abbott directed, Jerome Robbins choreographed and the casting was supervised by Abbott’s new young assistant, Harold Prince. The cast included an Oscar-winning leading man (Paul Lukas), the bright new presence of Russell Nype as Mrs. Adams’s lovelorn attaché and – as Merman’s underutilized understudy – the young Elaine Stritch. The capitalization for the entire show came from NBC and its record division, RCA Victor. Unfortunately a big problem loomed as Merman was under contract to Decca Records who refused to release her to star in what was sure to be a hit record. Ultimately, RCA Victor turned to one of its hottest singers, Dinah Shore, to step into Merman’s shoes for the original cast recording. It rose to No. 6 on the Billboard album chart but by the late 1950s, it had been deleted from the catalog. The recording got an LP reissue in 1977 but it disappeared again until this Masterworks Broadway release on August 14th, and is the first and only authorized CD version of RCA Victor’s Call Me Madam digitally remastered from the original tapes.

Masterworks Broadway is a label of Sony Masterworks. For email updates and information on Masterworks Broadway please visit www.masterworksbroadway.com.

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[jayinchelsea]

I have a copy of the vinyl recording from years ago, and Dinah Shore, without the power of the mighty Merm pipes, still managed to turn in a very engaging vocal performance. Shore never appeared in a Broadway show, as far as I know, and this is the one chance to hear her sing a great Broadway score. It' s also fun to hear to hear the actual original cast, including Paul Lukas, who sings the romantic lead very credibly.

The Berlin score is so good you should have the Merman studio recording as well as this one!

[frontrowcentre2]

If you get this new CD of the OCR and combine it with selected tracks from Merman's album (on Decca Broadway) you can create a composite original cast album. I amde one myself years ago for sue on my radio program.

I am featuring several of the Dinah Shore tracks on the program this weekend (Sunday August 12, repeated Saturday August 18.)

One curiosity...the album used Paul Lukas (as Cosmo) as a narrator setting up the songs and explaining the plot. This happens only on Side One...by the 2nd half of the LP he virtually vanishes and the format changes to a standard songs-only format.

Even so - and forgiving teh strange new Overture RCA created for the album - it is good to have this album finally reissued taken from the master tapes. The bogus British CD releases (on Flare and Prisim) were dubbed from scratchy Lp copies.)