Recording Broadway: A Life in Cast Albums

by Thomas Z. Shepard, Gayden Wren, John Kander (Foreword by)

Overview

“Grammy Award–winning producer Shepard throws open the door to the recording booth in his exuberant and fine-grained debut memoir.... Broadway aficionados will find plenty to enjoy.” - Publishers Weekly

RECORDING BROADWAY: A LIFE IN CAST ALBUMS of the making of fifty-plus years’ worth of show albums, featuring up-close-and-personal stories of his work with pretty much everyone who was anyone on Broadway, including Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein (“truly awesome but very complicated”), Sheldon Harnick (“as warm and decent as he was talented”), Barbara Cook (“one of my favorites”), Placido Domingo, Gregory Hines, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury (“so gifted and so easy to be with and to work with”), Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim (“a genius, and very easily bruised”), Barbra Streisand (“as professional at 24 as any veteran I’ve ever worked with”), Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many more.

Alongside this unforgettable saga is the tale of Shepard’s childhood as a small-in-stature piano prodigy from East Orange, New Jersey, and his emergence into the world as a recording producer of, first, classical music and then Broadway cast recordings. Told with verve in Shepard’s inimitable voice— a striking combination of Broadway glitz and classical-music elegance—his journey makes for a uniquely compelling story, whether or not you’re among the millions of musical lovers around the world for whom his recordings are a vital link to Broadway at its best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493081257
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/19/2024
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	117,372
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

THOMAS Z. SHEPARD is the twelve-time Grammy-winning producer of the cast albums for such shows as Ain’t Misbehavin’, Annie, La Cage aux Folles, Chicago, Company, Crazy for You, Dames at Sea, Follies in Concert, 42nd Street, Jelly’s Last Jam, The King and I, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, A Little Night Music, Marry Me a Little, Me and My Girl, Merrily We Roll Along, No No Nanette, Pacific Overtures, Porgy and Bess, The Secret Garden, 1776, Song and Dance, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Victor/ Victoria, Zorba, and many, many more. In a sixty-year career that has included stints as the lead Broadway producer at Columbia Records, RCA, and MCA, he’s left a mark on Broadway that will never be erased, working with some of the biggest names to have graced the Great White Way.

GAYDEN WREN is the former entertainment editor for The New York Times Syndicate and a director of Off-Off Broadway and regional theater. He is also the author of the critical work A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 2001) and eight plays, including A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol (1994) and Very Truly Yours, Gilbert &

Sullivan (1997).

Editorial Reviews

09/30/2024

Grammy Award–winning producer Shepard throws open the door to the recording booth in his exuberant and fine-grained debut memoir. Teaming up with journalist Wren (A Most Ingenious Paradox), Shepard traces his obsession with recorded sound from his New Jersey childhood (his grandfather bought him a phonograph when he was three years old) through a career spent making studio and original cast recordings of such Broadway musicals as 1776, Company, Sweeney Todd, and Chicago. Interwoven throughout are insights into such technological innovations as the 1948 introduction of the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing record, the addition of sound effects and other atmospheric touches to recordings, and the rocky transition to digital recording in the 1980s and ’90s. Shepard and Wren delve into the nitty-gritty of making a Broadway cast recording with genuine affection, though the minutiae sometimes detract from more colorful and accessible anecdotes about working with Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Barbra Streisand, Elaine Stritch, and other stars (at 24, Streisand had “as canny an ear as any veteran I’d ever worked with,” recalls Shepard of a recording session where she correctly identified the take on which the orchestra had played best). Broadway aficionados will find plenty to enjoy. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly