Ray Charles Music:

		List Price: $8.99		Label: Masterworks Salesrank: 12171 Released: October 6, 2009
		Our Price: $6.90
		Media: Audio CD

Finian's Rainbow Track Listing:
1. Overture (Instrumental)
2. This time of the year (Vocal)
3. How Are Things In Glocca Morra? (Vocal)
4. Look to the rainbow (Vocal)
5. Old devil moon (Vocal)
6. Something sort of grandish (Vocal)
7. If This Isn't Love (Vocal)
8. Necessity (Vocal)
9. That great come-and-get-it day* (Vocal)
10. When the idle poor become the idle rich (Vocal)
11. The begat (Vocal)
12. When I'm not near the girl I love (Vocal)
13. Finale - That great come-and-get-it day (Vocal)
14. How are things in Glocca Morra? (Vocal)
15. Don't pass me by (Vocal)

Finian's Rainbow Reviews:
Good but overdone
2009-11-28 - The score is delightful -- a real classic. But Ella Logan overdoes it with the Irish accent when she's singing. I'm eager to hear the new score, with Kate Baldwin singing; I thought she was terrific in the current Broadway production.

Pleasure
2005-09-16 - Tape brought back many pleasant memories; I've played it over and over again!

Correction to Todd Senzig's review on this page.
2004-02-18 - Correction to Todd Senzig's review on this page.

He contends that FINIAN'S RAINBOW was Columbia's first original cast album but this is incorrect. Their first was the 1946 revival of SHOW BOAT. In fact the original LP release number verifies this.

A gem not to be missed!
2002-10-25 - Finian's Rainbow is one of the most beautiful scores ever written for the Broadway stage. Although the book is very dated by today's standards, the score is one of the best. A great cast too. Ella Logan is wonderful as Sharon McLonergan.

It took the movie studios quite some time to take notice of Finian's Rainbow. 21 years later, in 1968, Warner Bros. released the bloated film version starring Fred Astaire (in his last musical role) as Finian and Petula Clark as Sharon. The movie, bloated as it is, is pretty good.

This original cast album was recorded for Columbia Records on April 3, 1947. Now don't let the fact that this is a 55 year old monaural recording originally released on 78-RPM records dissuade you from buying this CD. The monaural sound is very clear and clean, more than can be said of other recordings of the time on other labels. Sound quality here is fantastic. Finian's Rainbow was Columbia's first dive into show recordings, a field it would dominate for the next 30 years. Other shows had been recorded before, but this was the first for Columbia.

The white LP cover has been reproduced for this CD (versus the original pink 78 cover used for the more recent remastered & expanded CD version, which I have not heard. I have the 1960 revival recording on LP and it is good too but this is the Finian's Rainbow to start with. It is the best

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

(Would also like to see Warner Bros. release the movie soundtrack on CD, as it is very good as well.)

A WONDERFUL SCORE
2001-11-20 - When will a fully staged, complete, professional revival of this extraordinary musical be presented, hopefully on Broadway? It seems that producers are "frightened" of the racial satire inherent in the plot in which a white, republican bigot becomes, in one magical moment, an African American sharecropper. Much less worthy musicals have been revamped, redesigned, even re-written and have become hits.

The Burton Lane/E. Y. Harburg score is certainly one of the glories of the golden age of musical comedy featuring some of the most beautiful songs to ever grace a stage: "Ole Devil Moon" and "If This Isn't Love" and, especially, the perennially recorded "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?". Even the comic songs score points: "When I'm Not Near The Girl I Love..." and "The Begat."

This original cast recording, made over 60 years ago, has sound that is not the best although certainly not as bad as the original cast album of "Brigadoon," but the performers shine and until a new, complete recording is made, this one will have to do. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.