Reprise F-2017 (Album)
Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre Presents
Kiss Me Kate
Also issued as a stereo album, Reprise FS-2017
Issued November 1963 – 33 rpm LP
Side 1:
(Overture, by Orchestra & Another Op'nin', Another Show, by The Hi-Lo's)
Why Can’t You Behave?
with Orchestra conducted by Morris Stoloff
Matrix No. 2145 * Recorded 5th July 1963
(We Open in Venice, by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.)
(So in Love, by Johnny Prophet)
(I Hate Men, by Phyllis McGuire)
(Too Darn Hot, by Sammy Davis Jr.)
Side 2:
(Were Thine That Special Face, by Johnny Prophet)
(Where Is the Life That Late I Led?, by Lou Monte)
(Wunderbar, by Dinah Shore and Johnny Prophet)
(Always True to You in My Fashion, by Keely Smith)
(Bianca, by Dean Martin)
(So in Love [Reprise], by Frank Sinatra and Keely Smith)
NOTES
This album was Disc 3 of the Box Set ‘Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre’, but it was also sold separately.
The set’s four discs feature songs from popular Broadway musicals: ‘Finian's Rainbow’ (Disc 1), ‘Guys And Dolls’
(Disc 2), ‘Kiss Me Kate’ (Disc 3), and ‘South Pacific’ (Disc 4).
In the first few months after the release of the albums in November 1963, they were only available to readers of Curtis Publishing Company magazines – who could purchase them through mail order. An article in Billboard magazine explained: ‘Reprise Records is using Curtis Publishing Company to sell its much-heralded four-album repertory theater series. Ads for the "South Pacific," "Kiss Me Kate," "Finian's Rainbow" and "Guys and Dolls" albums are scheduled for the Saturday Evening Post, Holiday magazine and Ladies' Home Journal and will run through February. The first ads have already appeared in the Post. The ads are two full pages (...) A mail-order coupon enables readers to select any or all of the albums (…) According to the label, the albums will be offered to dealers some time next year’ (Billboard, November 30, 1963). Scans of the magazine ads and the mail-order coupon can be found on Sinatrafamily.com.
It was not before November 1964 that the separate discs and the box set could be purchased in record stores. The first reviews of (the retail versions of) the albums appeared in newspapers on November 8, 1964 (The Los Angeles Times,
The Daily Oklahoman).
According to Jim Marshall’s Jo Stafford Discography, the orchestra accompanying Ms Stafford in ‘Why Can’t You Behave?’ was ‘the Billy May Orchestra’. The album’s cover, however, tells us that ‘Why Can’t You Behave?’ was only ‘arranged by Billy May’, while the orchestra was ‘conducted by Morris Stoloff’.