Decca Broadway
1982
Dreamgirls
About This Album
Dreamgirls, the longest running musical to open during the 1981-1982 Broadway season, was a triumph of staging for director and Tony-winning co-choreographer Michael Bennett, who kept it moving with a cinematic flow, aided by the imaginative work of scenic designer Robin Wagner and Tony-winning lighting designer Tharon Musser, who placed the action within an ever-shifting group of lighting towers that made for instant scene changes. Tony-winning librettist Tom Eyen's story concerned the upwardly mobile aspirations of African-Americans in the music business in the 1960s and early '70s; specifically, it was a fictionalized retelling of the rise and fall of the Supremes as a vehicle for examining the ways in which gritty R&B was smoothed into mainstream pop for crossover success at Motown Records. Although his treatment was heavy-handed, if anything Eyen softened the facts in his version. As had happened with the Supremes, one member of the group was shunted aside for another who was more photogenic. But Eyen's creation, Effie Melody White, was closer to Aretha Franklin than to her nominal model, Florence Ballard. And unlike Ballard, who died of a heart attack at 32 in 1976, Effie succeeded on her own.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 and 15)

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Disc 2

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