[78-L] Leroy Anderson query

[Cary Ginell]

This is a query from my brother Richard, a writer for the Los Angeles Times and annotator of a series of Naxos CDs on the music of Leroy Anderson. If anyone can help with his question, please let me know.

Cary Ginell


Leroy Anderson recorded two different versions of "Lady In Waiting" 
 from the musical "Goldilocks" – one an extended, elaborately-worked-out 
Ballet Music, the other a shorter, more-to-the-point Waltz – on the 
same day, June 3, 1959, but chose to release only the Ballet Music on 
his album "Leroy Anderson Conducts Leroy Anderson." The Leroy Anderson 
website flatly states that the Waltz was never released. 

 


Or so the story goes.  I have just received a pink-label Decca promo 
single, "Lady In Waiting/Pyramid Dance,"  that seriously challenges 
this assumption. 

 


The "Lady In Waiting" performance on the single appears to be an 
alternate version of the Waltz that was given its "world premiere 
recording" by Leonard Slatkin on Naxos in 2008. The timing on the 
single is 2:52 – my stopwatch says  2:34 – much shorter than the 4:55 
Ballet Music version on the album. The Anderson Bio-Bibliography lists 
the timing of the Waltz as 3:26  (Slatkin's version is 3:28). The 
record number of the single is 9-30979, the master number of "Lady in 
Waiting" is 107,401.  The MCA Master book lists the album version of 
"Lady In Waiting" as 107,400.  The MCA book also has a release date for 
the single, Oct. 5, 1959, but that doesn't guarantee that it was 
actually issued.  It may have been pressed only as a promo, and then 
cancelled for commercial release.  It's possible that Anderson himself 
– a hyper-self-critical composer – made the decision to cancel the 
single. 

 


What I'm wondering is; does anyone know of a commercial, black-label 
Decca copy of this single? 

 



Richard Ginell