This single disc Deluxe Collectors' Edition of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying [Original Cast] [Bonus Tracks] (2003) features the Original Broadway Cast. The audio has been improved, thanks to the thorough sonic overhaul and 24-bit/96 khz digital remastering by Joe M. Samuels. The 1962 recording has likewise been significantly augmented with nearly half-an-hour of supplementary materials. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a musical comedy with few peers. The stage presentation was adapted from a novel by Shepard Mead. The author's intimate knowledge of corporate politics stemmed from Mead's concurrent experiences working as an advertising executive at the luminous firm of Benton & Bowles. The storyline recounts the exploits of J. Pierpont Finch, a highly motivated window washer. His rags-to-riches saga at the headquarters of the World Wide Wickets Company is detailed under the superb direction and script supervision of Abe Burrows, as well as the auspices of the equally luminous
Frank Loesser, on what turned out to be the latter's final stage endeavor. After initially balking, the composer was eventually persuaded to accept what would become his last outing on the Great White Way.
Robert Morse leads with a riveting depiction of the over-ambitious Finch, scoring the actor one of the seven Tony Awards that the play garnered. Other notable cast inclusions are crooner
Rudy Vallee, portraying company president J.B. Biggsley, and the affable Charles Nelson Reilly, whose recreation of Bud Frump -- Biggsley's insufferable and otherwise excruciating nephew -- earned him a Tony as well. In terms of classic show tunes, "I Believe in You" and "Brotherhood of Man" are among the songs that crossed over into other genres. Both are among the zeniths in this volume, with examples from a pair of respective jazz legends.
J.J. Johnson's rendering of "I Believe in You" is from his Broadway Express (1965) platter. This interpretation of "Brotherhood of Man" -- which was the highlight of
Woody Herman's
Feelin' So Blue (1976) album -- comes from the bandleaders' 40th Anniversary Carnegie Hall Concert (1976). Other extras of note are the
Walter Cronkite-narrated interview clips gleaned from the
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying [New Broadway Cast] (1995) CD. Equally as entertaining and illuminating are the sound bites from
Morse and Reilly documented specifically for this project in April of 2002. ~ Lindsay Planer