Ease On Down! Motown Unveils Lost Diana Ross Album For Digital Release
On the eve of NBC’s new production of The Wiz next week, Motown/UMe have dug into the vaults to release a lost album of songs from the Broadway musical by Diana Ross.
The pairing, of course, is no mistake: the 1975 Tony Award-winning “super soul musical” was adapted into a film in 1978, with Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell and original cast member Ted Ross as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion, respectively. Produced by Motown and directed by Sidney Lumet, with a young Joel Schumacher adapting the show into a screenplay and Quincy Jones as musical director (the first time Jackson and Jones would work together), the film was a commercial and critical disappointment but has since achieved cult classic status.
What fans may not know is that this initial underperformance curtailed the 1979 release of a new Diana Ross album where she performed the songs from the show in their entirety. Produced by Ross, Suzanne de Passe and Lee Holdridge, who’d arranged Diana’s chart-topping “Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To),” the album would be entirely scrapped in favor of a new collaboration with Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson on The Boss.
Diana Ross Sings Songs from The Wiz features beloved songs from the musical including “Ease On Down the Road,” “You Can’t Win,” “Home,” the Luther Vandross-penned “Everybody Rejoice,” and Ashford and Simpson’s “Is This What Feeling Gets? (Dorothy’s Theme)” as well as “Wonder Wonder Why,” a song cut from Charlie Smalls’ original Broadway score and unused until a revival in 1984.
Produced by UMe’s usual Supreme dream team of Andy Skurow, George Solomon and Harry Weinger (who also pen an essay in the set’s booklet, which will feature unseen photos of Miss Ross), Diana Ross Sings Songs from The Wiz will be available to all digital retailers on November 27.
Diana Ross, Diana Ross Sings Songs from The Wiz (Motown/UMe, 2015 – intended for release 1979) (Amazon U.S.)
- The Feeling We Once Had
- He’s the Wizard
- Soon as I Get Home
- Trio Medley: You Can’t Win/Slide Some Oil/[I’m A] Mean Ole Lion
- Ease On Down the Road
- Be a Lion
- So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard
- Is This What Feeling Gets? [Dorothy’s Theme]
- Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News
- Wonder Wonder Why
- A Brand New Day (Everybody Rejoice)
- Believe in Yourself
- Home
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5 thoughts on “Ease On Down! Motown Unveils Lost Diana Ross Album For Digital Release”
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Was really excited to read this until I went to Amazon and discovered it was a digital-only release. 🙁
I won’t buy lossy MP3 or AAC downloads. With Universal having shut down Hip-O Select, Universal must find an outlet to release Motown archival product either on CD or lossless download to American consumers.
I’m aware that Universal licenses some Motown archival tracks to the Uk label “ACE” for CD release, but those are strictly 1962-64 recordings by more obscure artists.
In the US, this is available in a lossless format (16-bit, 44.1k FLAC) on ponomusic.com
If digital release is the only way these will be made available, I can live with that. That said, this is an interesting curiosity piece and being a Ross/Supremes collector I am glad to have it. There are a few nice tracks but it is not something that will get repeated playing. Keep them coming! BTW, I burn to printable CD and create a disc case insert and keep digital booklets on a flash drive. This works for me. Sometimes content triumphs disdain for format.
Thanks for alerting me to this, so at least I can enjoy as part of my Apple Music unlimited streaming subscription.