
ABOUT
THE DISC & RECORDINGS:
This
is the third and last of Judy's Decca cast albums. What makes
this album even more special is the care with which
Decca took to emulate the performances in the film The Harvey
Girls (1946).
Most of the film's cast was involved, including Kenny Baker and
the wonderful Virginia O'Brien. The arrangements were identical
to
those used
in the film because Decca brought in MGM's Musical
Director Lennie Hayton and Vocal Arranger Kay Thompson to repeat the work they had done for the
soundtrack prerecordings.
Judy recorded a couple of different versions of "On
The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe" for this Decca
cast album. On May 15, 1945, Judy and the "Kay Thompson
Chorus" recorded
a two-part version of the song. Part 1 was the "choral intro"
and Part 2 was Judy's intro through the end of the song.
Judy sang "What A Lovely Trip" as in the film. It ended
as it does in the film with Judy and the chorus repeating
the song title 3 times. This Part 2 was considered unusable,
so Judy came back re-recorded this section on September
10, 1945. This re-recorded version beging with Judy singing
"What A Lovely Day" and ends without the repeated tag on
the song's title line. When the cast album was released,
only Judy's re-recorded Part 2 from 09-10-1945 was included.
Part-one of the song remained unreleased until it was discovered
and included in the 1994 CD boxed set "Judy
Garland - The Complete Decca Masters (plus)."
However, and just to make things confusing, when Decca began to re-release
Judy's songs on LP in the 50s, they used the original, rejected version
of Part 2 (from 05-15-1945). The originally
released (on this 78) September 10, 1945 version remained
unreleased on American LP until 1984 when Decca included it on the
LP "From
The Decca Vaults" (MCA-907).
On
July 7, 1945 while on her honeymoon with Vincente Minnelli
in New York City, Judy also recorded a more 40's style version
of "Atchison" with The Merry
Macs for release as a single.
"March Of The Doagies" was recorded on May 15, 1945
but was never released by Decca because it was taken out
of the film so therefore
it was taken out of the Decca cast album. It also had it's
LP premiere in 1984 on
"From The Decca Vaults" (MCA-907).
Decca released these Harvey recordings on LP with Meet
Me In St. Louis in 1959 on Decca DL
8498 and then
in 1978 on the MCA owned AEI label, AEI
3101.
In 1996, MCA added the Girl
Crazy songs and "March Of The Doagies",
and released the CD version of the LP (using the LP artwork)
as "The
Complete Decca Original Cast
Recordings"
(MCAD-11491). However,
that CD release finally "reinstates" (so to speak) the original
09-10-45 version of "Atchison", coupled with the "Kay
Thomson Chorus" intro as first released on the 1994 boxed
set.
Photo above at right: Inside
cover of the album features MGM publicity
photos.
Photo above at left: The Decca Cast Album LP.
Album cover image, image from the inside of the album, and image of the LP cover
from
the
collection
of
Scott Brogan.
Album insert image at left from the collection of Eric Hemphill.
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