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Ron Fassler undoubtedly agrees with John Rushton, the little tyke who insists, “Gee, it’s neat to be a newsboy,” in Working. For many of his early teenage years – roughly late 1967 to early 1973 – Fassler did that same job. Rushton never told us how he spent his earnings, but Fassler has: he attended […]

As events would have it, I heard Sammy Davis, Jr.’s recording of “The Candy Man” long before I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Listen here. I enjoyed the Anthony Newley-Leslie Bricusse song along with much of America. Despite the music industry’s rock orientation, the easy-listenin’ ditty became a number-one hit. It also got Davis […]

Billy Porter apparently agrees with Stephen Sondheim. While Sondheim was working (and struggling) with Richard Rodgers on the 1965 musical Do I Hear a Waltz? he came to the conclusion that the esteemed composer was “a man of infinite talent and limited soul.” Porter obviously appreciates that “infinite talent,” for in the last few years […]

By Peter Filichia London hasn’t made the mistake that Broadway did. For when the original Broadway cast album of Dreamgirls was recorded in 1982, ten of the twenty-eight Henry Krieger–Tom Eyen songs were missing from the LP and single CD. To be sure, when we discuss truncated musical theater recordings, we mourn Follies as the […]

Needless to say, we all savor certain scores, songs and performances on original, revival and studio cast albums. In Half a Sixpence, we love hearing Tommy Steele play that banjo in “Money to Burn.” Through Hallelujah, Baby! we see how song styles gradually changed in the first six decades of the twentieth century thanks to Jule […]