My Fair Lady (Broadway cast recording)

The Broadway cast recording of the musical My Fair Lady was first released April 2, 1956 by Columbia Records, with songs by Lerner and Loewe, conducted by Franz Allers, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. Columbia president Goddard Lieberson provided the $375,000 needed to stage the show in return for the rights to the cast recording.

A commercial success, the album became the first LP record to sell 1 million copies. The album topped US Billboard 200 charts for fifteen weeks at different times in 1956 (eight consecutive weeks), 1957, 1958, and 1959.

After the musical transferred to London in April 1958, the album spent 19 consecutive weeks atop the UK charts, the biggest-selling album of the year. The musical's renewed success sent Andrews, Harrison, and the London cast to the recording studio in 1959 to capture the score in stereo: the London cast recording shares all the same principals as the Broadway cast.

Columbia first released the Broadway album on compact disc in 1988, followed by numerous subsequent reissues. , the original cast recording remains among the longest-charting albums in the U.S., with 480 weeks on the Billboard 200.

Chart positions

 * returned to number 1 on Billboard 200 at different times during 1957, 1958 and 1959.