Masterworks Broadway has announced the balance of its summer slate of CD-Rs/DD reissues from the Sony Music archives with both releases making their debut in the digital domain.  Next week, the label will reissue for the very first time both RCA albums by vocalist and cabaret star Roslyn Kind – not only a talented artist in her own right but also the half-sister of one Barbra Streisand.  Then, on August 19, Masterworks will bring to CD-R and DD the original 1963 London Cast Recording of Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s On the Town, just in time for its Broadway revival this fall.

Masterworks describes the unusual circumstances behind Roslyn Kind’s 1968 debut album Give Me You: “On a late spring morning in 1968, seventeen-year-old Roslyn Kind graduated from high school in Brooklyn and immediately began a new job later the same day.  ‘I graduated to 'Pomp and Circumstance' in the morning,’ she recalls, ‘and that evening I was in RCA Studio B, down around 23rd Street in Manhattan, making my first recording.’  The young singer remained at RCA for two albums and a handful of singles, and now both of those albums will be available once more.

Give Me You, primarily helmed by composer and arranger Lee Holdridge, featured Kind wrapping her expressive, big pipes around an array of contemporary songs beginning with the title track by the Broadway team of Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady (Play It Again, Sam, Minnie’s Boys, Goodtime Charley) and continuing with material from Jimmy Webb (the Bacharach-esque “If You Must Leave My Life”), John Lennon and Paul McCartney (“The Fool on the Hill”), future Holdridge collaborator Neil Diamond (“A Modern-Day Version of Love”), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (“The Shape of Things to Come”) and Holdridge himself (“Who Am I?”).

Following this auspicious debut, Kind returned to RCA’s studios for 1969’s This is Roslyn Kind.  She returned to the Mann and Weil songbook with “Make Your Own Kind of Music” (which Barbra Streisand would later perform) and also surveyed tunes by the likes of The Association’s Larry Ramos (“It’s Gotta Be Real”) and Harry Nilsson (“I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City”).  Roslyn remained on RCA for a 1970 single with “Foresight” from the musical Gantry backed with Grossman and Hackady’s “Rich Is” from Minnie’s Boys, and eventually moved on to Streisand’s label, Columbia, where she recorded songs by Paul Williams and Peter Allen, among others.  She’s appeared on Saturday Night Live and The Nanny, headlined at The Plaza’s Persian Room, and returned in 1994 with another full-length LP.  Today, Kind is a draw in concert, most recently performing a hot-ticket engagement at New York’s 54 Below nightspot.

Give Me You/This is Roslyn Kind will be released exclusively for purchase via MasterworksBroadway.com on July 22 as MOD CD-Rs, as well as for digital download.  The CD-Rs will be available through Arkiv Music on August 19, plus streaming and downloads via digital service providers the same day. After the jump: details on On the Town, plus full track listings for both titles and more!

The team of Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green made their first mark on Broadway with 1944’s On the Town, directed by George Abbott and choreographed in legendary fashion by Jerome Robbins.  Though Bernstein, Comden and Green all went on to further triumphs on stage and screen (and famously in Bernstein’s case, in the concert hall), Broadway has always retained its affection for their effervescent portrait of three sailors in wartime looking for love and excitement during 24 hours of shore leave. On the Town has been revived twice on Broadway, in 1971 and 1998, and will enjoy a third revival this October.

In 1963, the musical opened at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre under the auspices of director-choreographer Joe Layton, starring American actor (and husband of…Barbra Streisand!) Elliott Gould alongside Don McKay, Carol Arthur, Andrea Jaffe and Gillian Lewis. The Original London Cast Recording of On the Town was planned for a release on CD in Sony’s short-lived Sony West End series, but was quickly withdrawn when it was discovered that the master used for the CD was actually for Columbia’s American recording starring John Reardon, Cris Alexander, Nancy Walker, and Comden and Green.  Therefore, this upcoming reissue marks its first-ever appearance post-LP.

On the Town - The Original London Cast Recording will be released exclusively for purchase via MasterworksBroadway.com on August 19 as MOD CD-Rs and digital downloads.  well as digital downloads.  The CD-R will be available through Arkiv Music on September 16, plus streaming and downloads via digital service providers the same day.

You can peruse the track listings for both titles below and pre-order, where available!

Roslyn Kind, Give Me You/This is Roslyn Kind (Masterworks Broadway, 2014)

1. Give Me You
2. The Fool on the Hill
3. Summer Tree
4. If You Must Leave My Life
5. Can I Stop the Rain?
6. It’s a Beautiful Day
7. Who Am I?
8. A Modern-Day Version of Love
9. It Was Only a Dream
10. I Own the World
11. The Shape of Things to Come
12. Taximan
13. I Only Wanna Laugh
14. Please Take Me Home
15. It’s Gotta Be Real
16. Yes, It Hurts
17. The Playground
18. Make Your Own Kind of Music
19. You Gotta Believe in Me
20. (I Guess) The Lord Must Be In New York City
21. Reflections
22. Love, At Last You Have Found Me

Tracks 1-11 from Give Me You, RCA Victor LP LSP-4138, 1968
Tracks 12-22 from This is Roslyn Kind, RCA Victor LP LSP-4256, 1969

Original London Cast Recording, On the Town (CBS SAPG 60005, 1963) (Pre-Order Link not available yet)

1. I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet/New York, New York/Miss Subways
2. Come Up to My Place
3. Carried Away
4. Lonely Town
5. I Can Cook, Too
6. Lucky to Be Me
7. Times Square
8. Nightclub Sequence (So Long Baby/I Wish I Was Dead/You Got Me)
9. Imaginary Coney Island
10. Some Other Time
11. Real Coney Island
12. Finale