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Sweet Charity Cast Album in Some NYC Stores Now, Prior to Wide Release
By Kenneth Jones
27 Jun 2005
The new DRG Records cast album of Broadway's 2005 production of Sweet Charity has been popping in Manhattan record stores such as Tower, as well as in the lobby of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. It gets a wide national release July 12.
The 24-track disc, produced by Hugh Fordin, boasts six bonus tracks. The revival cast album includes the score of the 1966 musical comedy by composer Cy Coleman and lyricist Dorothy Fields, plus the 2005 production's interpolation, Coleman and Fields' "A Good Impression" (a fresh song for Denis O'Hare as Oscar).
Only one of the bonus tracks — "Big Spender," as performed by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman — has been previously released.
For fans, the most exciting of the bonus tracks is "a brand new Cy Coleman discovery," according to DRG. In preparation for the current production, Coleman sang for the creative team a previously unused verse he had written music and lyrics to for "Where Am I Going?"
The verse, running about 90 seconds, is not heard in the new production, but it's recorded here by the show's Tony Award-nominated Charity, Christina Applegate. (It's in a different key than "Where Am I Going?," so it doesn't precisely fit the song — one reason why it's in the bonus section.)
Since Coleman did not provide a written form of the melody for the verse when he played it for the creative team, and due to his untimely death shortly after, in autumn 2004, "it took the efforts of the Cy Coleman office to search through his archives to find the music that would match the lyrics," according to DRG. The verse, previously unrecorded, is presented "as sort of an encore to the Sweet Charity score."
The remaining four bonus tracks are from the original demo of the score to Sweet Charity, recorded by the composer singing to his own piano accompaniment in 1963 — three years before the show opened on Broadway.
On that demo, Coleman sings another ultimately unused song, "Gimme a Rain Check," from a deleted scene early in Act II, in which Charity and Oscar go to a bar. The sequence was replaced by "The Rhythm of Life," according to DRG.
The other Coleman-sung demo songs on the new cast album are "I'm the Bravest Individual," "Baby, Dream Your Dream" and "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This."
Sweet Charity's new orchestrations are by Don Sebesky. Don York is music director. Additional music and vocal arrangements are by Michael Rafter. Additional dance arrangements are by Jim Abbott. Music coordinator is John Miller.
Sweet Charity, directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Wayne Cilento, continues at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Broadway. It was nominated for three 2005 Tony Awards in the categories of Best Musical Revival, Best Choreography (Wayne Cilento) and Best Leading Actress in a Musical (Christina Applegate).
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