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List Price: $13.98 | | Label: Drg
Salesrank: 39721
Released: June 8, 2004 |
| Our Price: $10.53 |
| Used Price: $6.00 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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No Strings (1962 Original Broadway Cast) Track Listing:
1. The Sweetest Sounds
2. How Sad
3. Loads of Love
4. The Man Who Has Everything
5. Be My Host
6. La-La-La
7. You Don't Tell Me
8. Love Makes the World Go
9. Nobody Told Me
10. Look No Further
11. Maine
12. An Orthodox Fool
13. Eager Beaver
14. No Strings
15. Finale: The Sweetest Sounds (Reprise)
No Strings (1962 Original Broadway Cast) Reviews:
Liked CD 
2008-06-30 - I found the CD to be in good condition, and enjoyed listening to the music.
Where's the story?
2008-05-26 - My musical comedy experience, aside from recordings, has been limited to movie translations (which often distort the real thing), community theater and dinner theater productions, and an occasional touring company. Therefore, I rely on the music to tell me the story. The music of "No Strings" does not. And, reading the accompanying notes and the professional reviews when the show first opened, it seems there was not much story anyway.
Listening to it simply as music, three numbers do stand out--"The Sweetest Sounds," "Nobody Told Me," and "No Strings." Any one of these can stand on its own. But the rest of the score needs a reason to be sung.
Needless to say, both Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley sing beautifully. Controversy about which was the star is useless; both of them are necessary.
Much has been written about Rodgers' and director Joe Layton's use of the "orchestra" on stage and as part of the action. Maybe that worked if you were actually seeing the show. But on recording, the orchestrations intrude on the vocals and sometimes overpower them. Orchestrations shoul accompany, not take center stage.
Still, "No Strings" is groundbreaking in many ways, and this recording is a valuable part of musical comedy history
Finally re-released! 
2007-03-26 - How nice to have No Strings available on CD again! A friend and I had searched for it several years ago to no avail. I certainly thought it would be issued at Richard Rodgers' centennial, since it was a milestone of sorts in his career. But it is here now and all is well.
I like the "big band" kind of arrangement to this score (no strings), and I have always enjoyed Diahann Carroll. My favorite pieces here are Sweetest Sounds and No Strings, but I had forgotten some of the smaller pieces that remind the listener of the story line.
Having grown up with parents who bought (and played -- a lot) every cast album of every show they saw (and they saw some on Broadway and almost all that came to Philadelphia to try out), knowing the story line was a big part of the listening experience. And the album notes are here! There were many times that I could not remember whether or not I had actually seen a musical, I got to know the music and had imagined the story (as told in the album notes) so well.
Enjoyable!
Richard Rodgers' best post-Hammerstein score. 
2006-09-14 - Despite some weak lyrics here and there, the score is the finest of Rodgers in the post-Hammerstein era.
Capitol did a first-rate production of the original cast album and it remained in print for more than 20 years. Now, it has been brought back by DRG in a crisp sounding transfer. You'll have little trouble following the story as most of the songs are laundrey lists that give examples to support their titles, but the best tracks are provide enjoyable listening experiences: "The Sweetest Sounds" is the best known number (it was later interpolated into the DIsney remake of CINDERELLA where surprisingly it worked quite well!) Other gems: Maine, Look No Further, Nobody Told Me and the title song. In fact there is not a song here that one would label a dog.
DRG's reissue lacks the extensive bachground notes that Broadway Angel had in their 1993 CD edition. But the recording was and still is one well worth owning.
"No Strings" a two-ballad wonder 
2006-08-24 - I bought this album out of loyalty to two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for this show, the title tune and the opening and closing song, "The Sweetest Sounds." Both are
great. There are also some OK songs--"Look No Further," for example. I don't know what happened to other reviewers--earwax in their iPods?-- but take their idea of "No Strings" as a great Rodgers score with a BIG grain of salt. Most of the other songs are completely forgetable (following Hammerstein's death Rodgers may have thought he could compose the noodly sort of lyrics that his partner was cranking out toward the end of HIS career, but Mr. Rodgers was, in this case, wrong. Some of Hammerstein's later simplicity actually gets by ["My Favorite Things" from "SofM" is an example], but Rodgers' own "comic" or light lyrics STINK). Richard Kiley was starred over Diahann Carroll in the original, but hers is the bigger contribution, at least to the music here.
