The best book EVAR!

My fabulous husband gave me a copy of The Theatermania Guide to Musical Theater Recordings, which on the surface may sound a bit like a phone book.

But it is so much fun!

The back cover says:

Reviews of more than 1,000 recordings of more than 600 shows, including information on composers, lyricists, and principal cast members, plot outlines, notes on outstanding songs, record labels, and individual ratings from five stars (superlative) to zero stars (not recommended).

They include all the cast recordings made for a particular show, usually pointing out which is the best one. From famous shows to not-so-famous shows (i.e. ones I had never heard of before, such as Juno) are listed, including lots of interesting details -- for example, whether there is dialogue recorded, who did the orchestrations, if there were changes versus the production. It's like catnip for a cast recording fan!

Plus scattered through the alphabetical listings are "Top Ten All-time Favorite Lists" -- of playwrights, singers, composers (such as Barbara Cook, John Raitt, Kristin Chenoweth, Fred Ebb, and many more)

For example the book lists playwright/librettist (he wrote the book for Kiss Of The Spider Woman) Terrence McNally's Top Ten choices as follows:

1. The Pajama Game (good choice!)
2. A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To The Forum
3. Gypsy
4. My Fair Lady
5. Show Boat
6. Annie Get Your Gun
7. The King and I
8. Guys and Dolls
9. The Music Man
10. Porgy and Bess

I had bought the cast recording of I Had A Ball, a 1962 musical comedy starring Richard Kiley, Karen Morrow, and Buddy Hackett purely on spec -- it looked intriguing.

Listening to Karen Morrow belt out "Almost" and "I Had A Ball" was amazing so I was wondering if she had done anything recently. A quick glance at my new book and I discovered that Karen Morrow is on the Miss Spectacular cast recording, Jerry Herman's latest piece.

I had seen it in stores but didn't pick it up. After reading, "...there's also a love song, 'No Other Music,' that's one of Herman's finest ballads; happily, it gets a perfect reading by the great Karen Morrow." I decided I’m definitely going to go out and pick it up!

Technorati tags: Broadway | Music | Movie Musicals | Musicals | Blog | Blogs | Theater | Theatre | Entertainment