I Can Get It For You Wholesale was the first commercially released recording that Barbra Streisand appeared on — and it was released by her future recording home, Columbia Records.
Wholesale was also Barbra Streisand's first Broadway show. It opened on March 22, 1962, and Barbra was a big hit in the musical, garnering a lot of press for her portrayal of the put-upon secretary, Miss Marmelstein.
Gary Marmorstein wrote that “Columbia badly wanted Harold Rome's I Can Get It For You Wholesale. As an inducement to Rome, [Goddard] Lieberson offered to record the twenty-fifth anniversary version of his International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union show Pins and Needles.”
A week after opening, on a Sunday, the cast assembled at Columbia Record's Thirtieth Street studio to record the cast album. Columbia's president Goddard Lieberson was present at the session as the album's producer. Lieberson knew Streisand — at this point she had already auditioned for him, but Lieberson had not made up his mind to sign her to Columbia Records. He had written to Barbra's Wholesale director, Arthur Laurents: “Barbra Streisand is indeed very talented but I'm afraid she's too special for records.”
It's said that during the recording session for the Wholesale cast album, Streisand stopped in the middle of recording her big song “Miss Marmelstein” to consider a different orchestration. Lieberson took Streisand aside in the recording studio and gently told her to sing the song as written.
The original cast recording of I Can Get It For You Wholesale was restored and remastered on CD in October 1993 and part of Columbia Records' 11 Essential Barbra Streisand Releases. The master tapes were prepared for release by John Arrias, who used his proprietary C.A.P. (Complete Audio Preservation) Noise Reduction System “to eliminate hiss, distortion and noise.” Columbia also recreated the packages using the original art or printing film.
A couple of notes about this album:
- The “Overture” on the album is actually “Prologue” music. Wholesale’s true overture was not included on the album and it’s unknown if it was even recorded.
- The songs were re-sequenced for the album, and even the CD keeps the same order. The in-show order is a little different. For instance, “Eat A Little Something” is the last song in Wholesale, with “What Are They Doing To Us Now?” acting as the 11 o'clock number.
In 2022, Stage Door released a deluxe edition of the Wholesale cast recording. According to their press release, the 2-CD set was “newly mastered from a reel-to-reel tape (this has been reissued pursuant to current U.K. public domain laws, so no master tapes were available) and features new liner notes by musical theatre historian George Dansker...”
Besides the original album tracks, Stage Door's release includes demo recordings, selections by Columbia's Sy Oliver and His Orchestra, and covers of Wholesale songs by other artists.
You can order their 2-CD set here at Amazon.
