I’m wanting to get the OCR for the Broadway cast. At the show itself, the souvenir person said that the London OCR was the only one and that there was no Broadway OCR. But in looking through some Amazon and eBay auctions, a number of the offerings are marked on the CD “A Decca Broadway Original Cast Album” but are manufactured in Australia. Nothing in any of the auction descriptions I can find give the names of any performers so I can’t verify against my program or Playbill. Anyone know the Straight Dope on these? Does an OCR for the Broadway cast exist?
There is no Original Broadway Cast (OBC) recording. None. No plans to release it.
The “Decca Broadway Original Cast Album” is the Ooriginal London Cast (OLC) in an incorrectly labelled slipcase. Decca is notorious for putting out cast CDS with inaccurate information. The OLC of Song & Dance had a big yellow sticker stating "Includes the Hit Song “Unexcpect Song.” Guess again. That was on the OBC.
Louise Pitre, the star of the Broadway show, released a CD “All My Life Has Led to This” that includes two songs from Mamma Mia! and “Bravo! Tu Es Gagne”–“The Winner Takes it All” in French (she is from Quebec). I had a lovely talk with her after Broadway on Broadway September 9, 2001 about the show and the CD. She is a very lovely person.
Thank you kindly for the information. I’m sorry there won’t be an OBC as, although I don’t think everyone from the original cast was still appearing when I saw the show (last Friday) I would very much like to have as close to what I heard as I can get. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll enjoy the OLC on its way from Amazon!
There are currently German and Japanese versions of the show running, and a Dutch one is in the works. All are expected to have cast CDS.
Bjorn Ulvaeus originally wanted the songs to all be done in English but the Japanese, who are the biggest ABBA fans on the planet, will not do English shows, and Joop van der Ende, the biggest theatre producer in mainland Europe, offered an obscene amount of money to do the show in the language of the various countries in Europe. So Bjorn relented.
“Decca Broadway” is the name of the record label which specialised in showtunes and musical theatre recorded in various locations, not a description of where it was recorded.