Search - Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Collins, Alexis Smith :: Follies (Highlights from the 1971 Original Broadway Cast)

Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Collins, Alexis Smith
Follies (Highlights from the 1971 Original Broadway Cast)
Genres: Soundtracks, Classical, Broadway & Vocalists

Track Listings (17) - Disc #1
1. Prologue: Beautiful Girls - Original Cast Recording, Anthony, Michael [1
2. Don't Look at Me - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
3. Waiting for the Girls Upstairs - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
4. Ah, Paris!/Broadway Baby - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
5. Road You Didn't Take - Original Cast Recording,
6. In Buddy's Eyes - Original Cast Recording,
7. Who's That Woman? - Original Cast Recording,
8. I'm Still Here - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
9. Too Many Mornings - Original Cast Recording,
10. Right Girl - Original Cast Recording,
11. One More Kiss - Original Cast Recording,
12. Could I Leave You? - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
13. You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
14. God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues - Original Cast Recording,
15. Losing My Mind - Original Cast Recording, Sondheim, Stephen
16. Story of Lucy and Jessie - Original Cast Recording,
17. Live, Laugh, Love/Finale - Original Cast Recording,

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CD Details

All Artists: Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Collins, Alexis Smith
Title: Follies (Highlights from the 1971 Original Broadway Cast)
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Angel Records
Original Release Date: 1/1/1971
Re-Release Date: 11/17/1992
Album Type: Cast Recording
Genres: Soundtracks, Classical, Broadway & Vocalists
Style: Musicals
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
Other Editions: Follies: Original Broadway Cast
UPCs: 077776466620, 077776466644, 077779209446

Synopsis

Amazon.com essential recording

The scene: an abandoned theater, where a group of performers--alumni from the fictional musical revue The Weismann Follies--is holding a reunion shortly before the building is to be turned to rubble. The long-retired players relive their careers through Stephen Sondheim's brilliant pastiches of past songwriters, sometimes accompanied in song or dance by the ghosts of their previous selves. At the same time, four of the people (two married couples) are remembering their pasts and wondering whether they chose their spouses--and the course of their lives--correctly. The 1971 original cast of Follies included many former Broadway and Hollywood stars--Dorothy Collins, Gene Nelson, Alexis Smith, Mary McCarty--and the pedigree and sheer size of the cast kept the show from profitability despite a decent run (and also keep it from being frequently revived). This recording of Stephen Sondheim's legendary show has become something of a legend itself. The score included 22 songs, but because the cost of recording a two-LP set was considered prohibitive, a number of songs were omitted and others were abridged. As a result, this too-brief 58 minutes can't be considered the final statement on Follies (for more music, try the uneven but sometimes electric 1985 concert recording or the 1998 New Jersey revival), but listen to Yvonne DeCarlo sing the anthem "I'm Still Here" or Collins sing the heartbreaking "Losing My Mind" and you'll know that the original cast had a special magic that has yet to be surpassed. --David Horiuchi

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CD Reviews

Brief but fine recording of Sondheim's most accessible score

Simon Cross | RUSTINGTON, West Sussex. United Kingdom | 05/03/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I admit it. I love Follies, and have three recordings of it - this original Broadway recording, the single CD version of the 1987 London recording, and the double CD New Jersey 1998 recording. This latter recording is possibly the finest, being the most complete, and also including some extra tracks. However, it seems to be no longer available from amazon.com.So to the recording at hand. The original cast, and to an extent then, the definitive recording. Well, it would be if there were more of the music on here, but what there is just happens to be pure class. Alexis Smith and Dorothy Collins give up great performances as the two leading Follies girls. They are ably supported by their husbands, Gene Nelson and John McMartin. Standing above the rest of the supporting cast is Yvonne de Carlo (best remembered as Lily Munster) with the song written especially for her, I'm Still Here. She sings it surprisingly pacily compared to the other available recordings that I know of. As the intended artist, we must assume that this is the definitive reading.The other Follies ladies all give good performances, but as has been said by other reviewers, this cast recording is sadly incomplete.Well, OK, so what if it is? As an introduction to this great work, full of rich pastiche numbers, clever lyrics, and towards the end the heartbreaking Losing My Mind, this is a good place to start.... If you cannot find the 1998 New Jersey recording, then this is the next best thing."

SIMPLY THE BEST!

Boz | 01/23/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Okay, I know that it is truncated. I know that it is not digital. But it is the version with Sondheim's original cast, and the cohesiveness and unity of the original cannot be matched. Although I also love "Follies in Concert", it is disjointed and some of the performers do not compare favorably with the originals (with the exception of Stritch's "Broadway Baby"-that is brilliant!)Ultimately the concert version fails, but the original cast album satisfies in every way. I know to some that this statement is heresy, but I must express my true feelings."

Five Stars for What There IS of the Performance!

Simon Cross | 06/29/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like watching Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" -- another masterpiece truncated in the name of crass commercialism -- one cannot but feel regret that the unbutchered version will never be experienced. Many later versions have been recorded, with the full score -- but they all have the feeling of what they in essence were -- concert performances by disparate performers. This original cast gives the definitive performance of every number Capitol deigned to include: and butchered though the form of the score may be, none of the later, fuller recordings captures the complexity, regret, lushness and sarcasm that this does. All things considered, I have several of the recordings, but the others are more "archival" -- I turn to THIS recording, still, when I want to experience this brilliant musical. And as another reviewer has aptly noted, this version, much more than later ones, bears repeated hearings. In fact they make you love it all the more. So -- yes -- flaws and all -- FIVE STARS!"

Incomplete But Satisfying Nonetheless

James Morris | Jackson Heights, NY United States | 10/13/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was privileged to see Follies in its initial Broadway run three times, including the most memorable and emotional closing night I have ever spent in a Broadway theatre. Follies remains my favorite Sondheim musical (and Sondheim remains my favorite Broadway composer) even though I admit that those who consider Sweeney Todd his masterpiece certainly have good reasons for doing so. The Follies "highlight" original cast album - funny it wasn't released that way - it was released simply as "the cast album" - is a bittersweet experience; to this day, I regret as do other reviewers here that the producers could not see their way to releasing a two-disc complete recording. It's not so much the numbers that were completely left out as the songs that were butchered and cut to their bare essentials that one regrets most. I can live without "Loveland", but the loss of almost half of the lyrics to "I'm Still Here" and "Broadway Baby" are omissions that have puzzled me since the day this abortion of a cast album (as my ex-boyfriend called it at the time) was released. Although most of this has already been said, the main reason I wanted to add my two-cents was to trumpet the song that for some reason is one of the least mentioned but, for me, the most impressive. "Too Many Mornings' is, to me, both lyrically and musically the most touching, heartbreaking and emotionally potent song that Mr. Sondheim ever wrote. The sentiment behind the lyric is one that makes me literally choke up with tears and is still capable - 34 years after I first heard it - of making me break out in goose bumps. "Two many mornings, waking and pretending I reach for you, thousands of mornings, dreaming of my girl. All that time, wasted, merely passing through, time I could have spent, so content, wasting time with you..." To me, this song captured the essence of what the show was really about - the heartache of waking up one day, irreversibly older, and finding that you didn't do with your life anything that you dreamed of or idealized in your younger days. As I recall John McMartin remarking on a TV talk show just a few days after Follies ended it's Broadway run, "It's a very painful, tragic show to watch unfold, and the more I am privileged to work with this material, the more I get out of it". The deceptively simple book of this show masked the powerful emotional punch of all that it really had to say. I understood when I was 17 (which I was in 1971) that this was a melancholy and achingly poignant show; time has only deepened and expanded the emotional experience that this recording grants with every listen."

"Follies" for the ages

Byron Kolln | the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood | 11/19/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"FOLLIES is one of the grandest of Broadway musicals. The original production was a financial and critical disappointment, though quickly the musical gained a cult following thanks to the cast album that was left behind.The story concerns the reunion of the "Weismann Follies", a troupe of players who performed between the two wars, brought back together 30 years later for a get-together when the theatre they once called home is to be torn down for a parking-lot.The cast is led by veteran Hollywood stars Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins and Gene Nelson, with Broadway veteran John McMartin. Others in the incantory cast include Mary McCarty (MISS LIBERTY, CHICAGO), Fifi D'Orsay, Ethel Shutta (JENNIE), Yvonne De Carlo, Ethel Barrymore Colt and Arnold Moss. Justine Johnson and Victoria Mallory (A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC) also feature.Dorothy Collins is breathtaking in the role of Sally Durante Plummer (the role has been coveted by many Broadway diva's including Barbara Cook and Judy Kaye), and sings gorgeous versions of the show's two pivotal ballads, "In Buddy's Eyes" and "Losing My Mind". Alexis Smith plays the cynical and jaded Phyllis Rogers Stone, and sings the bitter, barb-choked "Could I Leave You?" and "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" perfectly.Justine Johnson plays the aging opera diva Heidi Schiller, and sings the heartbreaking "One More Kiss" in a duet with Victoria Mallory as the younger Heidi. Mary McCarty is a delight as the scene-stealing Stella Deems, and leads the girls in the manic 'mirror number' "Who's That Woman?". Yvonne De Carlo belts out the anthemic "I'm Still Here" for all its worth.FOLLIES is one of Stephen Sondheim's most intriguing and rewarding scores, and the original cast album is a must-own for all Broadway fans."