I always found it strange that Columbia Records didn't issue the OCR of Funny Girl; after all, Columbia was Streisand's label and she'd already released three best selling solo albums for them by the time the show opened. In addition, Columbia released two additional LPs in 1962 that Streisand appeared on - the OCR of I Can Get It For You Wholesale and the studio recording of Harold Rome's Pins and Needles.
However, the statement that appears on the Streisand Archives website about Funny Girl and Capitol Records is as follows -
Capitol invested in the show (reportedly one third of its final cost), and producer Ray Stark, in turn, negotiated a deal in which Capitol would release the original cast album. Columbia's president, Goddard Lieberson, heard the score while the show was in early development and passed on the cast album. For Capitol's use of Barbra Streisand, however, Lieberson required the right to have her record four singles from the show.
However, the statement doesn't make clear WHEN in the show's "early development" Lieberson passed on the cast album. Was it before Streisand became involved? I wonder. Streisand did record four songs from the score for Columbia in December 1963, but two of them ("Who Are You Now" and "Cornet Man") were never released. I can only assume that the "Funny Girl"/"Absent Minded Me" single satisfied the terms of this stipulation. And while its true the "Funny Girl" single sold reasonably well - only three Streisand singles cracked the Billboard top 50 during the 60s, and this was one of them - it didn't come close to selling as well as the Funny Girl OCR, which peaked at number 2 on the charts and went gold. It also won the Grammy Award for Best Cast Recording, perhaps the only time the show took an award from Hello, Dolly! that season.
But regarding the "Funny Girl" single, I'd heard the show originally had a musical number that Streisand would perform on roller skates, and that seemed the appropriate place for this long-lost title song. But it turns out that Jule Styne and Bob Merrill wrote "I Did It On Roller Skates (And I Can't Wait To Do It On Skis)" for that moment, so I'm still in the dark about where the song might have been used in the show.
That is, if it had been written for the show at all.
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