Yellow Sound Label will digitally release a studio cast album of the unproduced Martin Charnin-Keith Levenson musical Winchell August 29. Proceeds will benefit the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, which has been a part of Levenson's ongoing fight with Parkinson's disease.
Get a first listen to Jason Robert Brown as Walter Winchell and Kate Baldwin singing "Real Good Guy to Know" from the score below.
The musical, centered on the infamous gossip columnist of the first half of the 20th century, Winchell had been planned to open on Broadway in 1991, only for a scandal with its producers wrecking those plans. The upcoming album is the first time the score has been recorded, and for many, the first time the material has been heard. Winchell did ultimately get the Broadway musical treatment a decade later, as the inspiration for J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, the Marvin Hamlisch-Craig Carnelia-John Guare musical due to make an NYC return in November via MasterVoices.
Also featured on the album are Roger Daltrey, Sally Struthers, Chip Zien, F. Murray Abraham, Julia Murney, Billy Idol, Michael Cerveris, Darlene Love, Kristin Duerr, Adrian Zmed, Jon Cryer, Claudia Schneider, Steven Mercurio, Jackie Turner, Alice Cooper, and Angelina Carballo. The ensemble comprises laudia Schneider, Jesse Janet Richards, Claire Howland Kenny, Giulianna Augello, Neal Mayer, Larry Kleiber, Peter Cormican, Angela Rose DeAngelis, Peter Green, David Josefsberg, Mallory King, Mark Megill, Dominque Plaisant, Tom Rocco, David Quinn, Lisa Spielman, Jonathan Marc Sherman, and Joy Donze.
Charnin is best remembered as the lyricist and original director of perennial musical favorite Annie. He also penned lyrics to Hot Spot, Two By Two, I Remember Mama, and The First. Levenson is an arranger, orchestrator, music director, conductor, and composer, whose work includes the musical Star-Crossed, a collaboration with Jeanine Tesori. He also conducted the 2018 symphony orchestra tour of The Who's Tommy, which was ultimately recorded as Tommy Orchestral.
