WOW! I just ran across the most amazing resource for Broadway show CDs. I recently ordered the CD for Oh! Calcutta! from Amazon.com, and when it arrived, it had a price tag on it...sometimes Amazon.com will buy old stock from stores and feed it into their system.

When I opened the CD, it contained a flyer saying:

We hope you enjoy this recording and that it will occupy a proud place in your library. Whether this is the first CD you've ordered from DRG, or your twentieth, we want you to know how much we appreciate your support.

Visit our website at www.drgrecords.com / e-mail: drgrecords@aol.com

So I checked out the DRG Records Web site, and I was blown away at some of the stuff they have listed. Here are some of my favorites:

Flahooley: This "tuneful, extraordinarily beautiful and delightfully imaginative musical" premiered in 1951 and was the Broadway debut of the legendary Tony Award-winner Barbara Cook. The songs are by the Oscar-winning composers E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and Sammy Fain. With a touch of Babes in Toyland, a smattering of The Wizard of Oz and a suggestion of Finian's Rainbow, it is a child's show, but never childish. This package features a full color eight-panel color folder with synopsis and liner notes from Barbara Cook.

By the Beautiful Sea: This 1954 classic makes its way to DRG's Broadway Collector Series. This amiable old-fashioned musical is a charming memento Oscar and Emmy-winner Shirley Booth at the peak of her great theatrical career.

Noel Coward at Las Vegas: Noel Coward At Las Vegas was recorded in actual performance at the Desert Inn, Las Vegas on June 27th, 1955. Piano Accompaniment & Arrangements by Peter Matz. Tracks include such classics Coward numbers: "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "If Love Were All", "Alice is at it Again", "A Room with a View", "Let's Do It", "Uncle Harry", "Loch Lomnd", "A Bar on the Piccola Marina", "World Weary", "Nina", "Matelot", "The Party's Over Now" and a medley of eight others.

Plain and Fancy: This 1955 Broadway hit related the adventures of two sophisticated New Yorkers visiting a farm near Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. Here they find a charming and picturesque Amish community...with complications both humorous and romantic.

Top Banana: In 1951, Phil Silvers starred in this Broadway musical comedy satirizing the then-champ of TV, Milton Berle -- his ego, his drive, his anything-for-a-laugh desperation. It only ran a year on Broadway, but the show was later filmed at a Los Angeles theater, with audience-reaction shots in and given a limited release.

Oh Captain!: This 1958 musical became one of the biggest hits of the season. The cast was led by Tony Randall, Jacquelyn McKeever & Susan Johnson and featured songs by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans -- the only songwriting team ever to win three Academy Awards ("Buttons and Bows," "Mona Lisa" & "Que Sera, Sera") and music for over 70 other films. Director Jose Ferrer molded a gloriously improbable story (based on the 1953 screenplay The Captain's Paradise starring Alec Guinness & Yvonne DeCarlo) into an enormously entertaining evening -- all captured on this brilliant Cast Album.

Tovarich: Two-time Oscar winning actress Vivien Leigh won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical in this adaptation of a warm, old-fashioned, sentimental fairy tale. Based on a 1933 play and subsequent 1937 film (starring Claudette Colbert & Charles Boyer), this musical also starred Jean Pierre Aumont and opened on Broadway in March 1963 and features a book by David Shaw (co-librettist of Redhead) and a score by Lee Pockriss & Anne Croswell.

Ben Franklin in Paris: DRG presents the Original Cast Recording of Ben Franklin in Paris -- which premiered at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1964. Starring the incredible Robert Preston (fresh from his groundbreaking run as The Music Man) as Benjamin Franklin, he had the opportunity to portray a bravura character, larger than life, a Renaissance man who could do anything. Written by playwright-lyricist Sidney Michaels (Dylan), with music by Mark Sandrich, Jr., the entire production was staged by the legendary Michael Kidd. The original Capitol album has been digitally remastered.

Roberta: Available for the first time on CD, Roberta is the show that launched Bob Hope on Broadway in 1933 and had Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers leaping for joy on film. Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's classic score highlights this ultrasophisticated and amusing tale of an American college football player who inherits a Parisian dress salon. Roberta was frequently revived throughout the forties and fifties. This Studio Cast Recording from 1952 features Joan Roberts, Jack Cassidy, Kaye Ballard and Portia Nelson. Highlights from this upbeat and well-known score include "I Won't Dance," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and the flirtatious 'challenge' song "Let's Begin."

The Gay Life: Based on Schnitzler's The Loves Of Anatol, this turn-of-the-century musical (from the early '60s) starred Barbara Cook, Walter Chiari & Jules Munshin and features a score by the first rate team of composer Arthur Schwartz and lyricist Howard Dietz ("Dancing in the Dark", "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan"). Popular songwriters Schwartz-Dietz' biggest hit, "That's Entertainment" from the film The Band Wagon was awarded the ASCAP Award for Most Performed Feature Film Standard in 1990. This re-issue features an eight-panel color folder with new liner notes from Barbara Cook.

And the list goes on and on...me wantey...ALL OF IT...

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