The Broadway musical Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! was about a wealthy woman who sponsors the tour of a ballet company so that she can dance in it. The woman was played by comedienne
Nancy Walker, and the show boasted such theater talents as director George Abbott and choreographer Jerome Robbins. The score was by
Hugh Martin, who, with partner
Ralph Blane, had succeeded in Hollywood with such films as Meet Me in St. Louis. He contributed a few good songs in the then-popular swing style, notably the comic numbers for
Walker "I'm the First Girl in the Second Row" and "I'm Tired of Texas." The show opened in New York on January 28, 1948, for a modest run of 188 performances, but due to a looming strike by the musicians' union, the cast album had to be recorded more than a month earlier, which meant that it did not reflect changes in the cast and the song list made during out-of-town tryouts. "I'm Not So Bright," sung by
Harold Lang on the album, was given to Loren Welch on-stage. Welch was also singing "Tiny Room" by the time the show reached Broadway, instead of
Bill Shirley, heard on the album but no longer with the cast by January. Virginia Gorski and Don Liberto, who sang "The Little Boy Blues" on-stage, had been preceded by
Martin and cast member
Sandra Deel on the record, and
Deel also replaced them on record for "Shauny O'Shay." That's how much things can change on the road to Broadway. Another problem of the recording era was the album's time limitations, necessitating the truncation of the score to eight numbers. [In 2004, Decca Broadway issued a new version of the album with bonus tracks that introduced two numbers recorded at the sessions that originally were cut from both the album and the show: the lively "Let's Do a Ballet" and "Horrible, Horrible Love." Also included were alternate takes of "Gotta Dance" and "Shauny O'Shay" that, a sleeve note revealed, accidentally had been substituted for the master takes in reissues of the material after 1948.] ~ William Ruhlmann