Note: The information on this site was taken in roughly equal measure from Matt Kingston's Cast Recording Resource Guide and David Levy's Cast Recordings FAQ, neither of which is being maintained by its author anymore. The following was the introduction to the CRRG.
(with minimal necessary edits by Mike Benedetto)
This annotated bibliography and research guide on cast recordings was begun as a final project for L623 Information in the Humanities, taught by Dr. Joyce Taylor during Summer Session II, 1998, at the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science.
Cast recordings are the audio record left behind by a production of a musical - preserving the music and lyrics (and sometimes the dialogue) of the musical and the performance of its cast. These recordings can be the result of the original staging or a subsequent staging of a show, or they may result from a film or television soundtrack or concert or a studio recording of the music. While many people tend to prefer and defend the inherent superiority of original cast recordings, revival cast and studio and concert recordings can sometimes improve on the original recording - especially when these newer recordings preserve parts of the score that haven't been previously recorded.
This cast recording resource guide covers print and online resources for researching and locating cast recordings. It is intended for use by collectors of cast recordings and people who are interested in becoming more informed about different recordings before purchasing them. It is published on the World Wide Web (http://www.castalbums.org) so that the public may view and use it.
As I've worked on this project, I've been asked by some of my fellow students, "Why would people research cast recordings? Can't they just go to a record store and buy them?" I find it often necessary to explain to people that there are serious collectors of cast recordings. Just as serious baseball card collectors conduct research on the prices and availability of the cards they collect, collectors of cast recordings perform similar research.
There are many reasons to research cast recordings. Firstly, many cast recordings have now gone out-of-print. Unless you happen to own a copy of the recording, the only way to find out information about them (their record label and serial number, their casts, the songs they contained) is to consult a reference work. These reference works can also point out which recordings are out-of-print or hard-to-find, so that when we see them in a used record store we will know that we should snap them up immediately. Also, some reference works provide prices for cast recordings, so that collectors will know fair prices to sell and buy recordings at.
With the multitude of recordings that exist for some musicals (original casts, film and television soundtracks, studio and revival recordings), it can often be difficult for collectors to decide which recording(s) to purchase. Collectors can consult print and online resources which review cast recordings and make recommendations on which recordings are the best. These kinds of recommendations are alwayssubjective however, so the more information a resource can offer about different recordings (who's in the cast, which songs are included, the length of the recording, whether the recording is in mono or stereo or was digitally recorded) can help the collector to decide which recordings of a show they'd like to add to their collection.
I followed up this local research by consulting Books in Print, Amazon.Com, a large internet bookstore; and the web pages of Borders and Barnes and Nobles, two national chain bookstores which feature onlinebook searching.
To locate online resources, I began by searching Yahoo!, a World Wide Web indexing service. I followed links from site to site, collecting addresses for the sites I thought were useful. I later went back to these sites and created annotations for the citations. As a member of CastRecL, a mailing list devoted to discussing cast recordings; I was able to solicit addresses of sites to include.
To continue the development of this guide, I will be mainly paying attention to the feedback I receive from browsers. I will add print and online resources that are submitted by browsers. I will also continue to search for print and online resources myself to add to the guide.
Last updated 6/21/2001. Send comments to Mike Benedetto.