Around the end of the 19th century, the success of 'music halls' in Britain, (and Vaudeville in North America), lured investors into backing  musical theater productions - an amalgam of popular music, story and dance.  Over a century later, the formula still works, selling sheet music, recordings and performance rights, spilling over into movie adaptations and studio-made 'cast (re)recordings'. In 1943, Decca recorded the full score of the wildly successful 'musical play', using the cast - who were still performing nightly on stage.  The release, (on multiple 78 rpm shellac discs, as was the practice before vinyl), was an instant hit, introducing the epic Rodgers and Hammerstein creation to a huge audience of people who would likely never experience a stage performance.

(Not too) Fast Forward a decade, or so, to 1955 and the making of the iconic movie.  We now have 6 track, high resolution sound as part of the revolutionary Todd-AO film process.  The film version introduced a completely new cast of performers and musicians, with a couple of the original tunes cut, but essentially the same wonderful musical score. Stereo was not yet widely available, so Capitol initially released only a mono version of the film soundtrack. 1959 saw the first release of a stereo LP version, created from the original Todd-AO multichannel audio sources.

Oklahoma! is still being staged today. A good story with good tunes, it clearly has a lot of staying power! Over the years, numerous artists have covered tunes from the score. The two recorded versions presented below give an interesting look at how much things can change, but still stay pretty much the same, ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it").  Both CD booklets have lots of interesting historical tidbits.  Rodgers and Hammerstein continued their dominance of 'musicals' with a string of blockbuster productions right up until Hammerstein's death in 1960. Many others have followed since, creating a whole new genre of popular music - well written, well arranged and performed, (albeit requiring big $$ to  produce).  The tunes in these stage and movie 'musicals' are not just  'incidental music'.  The 'score is the core' of the production.