Most music writers I know grew up surrounded by music, with certain songs and albums becoming forever intertwined with our childhood memories. The words and melodies are lodged right there in the old hippocampus, waiting for the moment needle hits vinyl to re-emerge, as if the last time I’d heard them—back in the 1970s—was yesterday.

And in fact, despite several decades having elapsed since the last time I’d heard this album, there wasn’t a single surprise when I put it on the turntable again last month. Every nuance of the lead vocal performances by Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, and Broadway-debuting, show-stealing ingenue Julie Andrews was long since embedded in memory, thanks to my mother playing it over and over (and over) through my childhood. When Mom passed away several years back, I held onto a handful of her old LPs that sparked memories from my childhood, including this one.

Besides the power of memory, the most fascinating part of revisiting this album has been learning things about it that I couldn’t have known back in the day. For example: I had no idea that this album was a groundbreaking release in that it’s not a recording of a performance of the Broadway show. Rather, it’s a recreation recorded in the midst of its acclaimed run, by the original cast, in a proper recording studio, accompanied by a live orchestra.

This approach—commissioning and releasing a soundtrack album while the show’s original Broadway run was still going—proved both innovative and very successful. The original studio Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady spent 15 weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts and logged a total of 480 weeks on the Billboard 200, in the process establishing a market for Broadway cast recordings. Still, probably the most astonishing thing about My Fair Lady is this: the entire 15-track, 51-minute album was recorded in a single marathon session on March 25, 1956.

My Fair Lady—Lerner & Loewe’s acclaimed musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s stage play Pygmalion—unleashed a timeless set of showtunes on the world. Harrison’s stuffed--shirt Henry Higgins is featured on lively, witty numbers like “Why Can’t The English?” and “I’m An Ordinary Man,” both of which might feel dated by 2025 standards, but expertly captured mid-20th century British attitudes about class and gender roles. Later on, the show’s heart emerges onto its sleeve for Harrison’s sentimental closing ballad “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face.”

Harrison might be the headliner on the marquee, but Andrews is the one who shines like the star she was in the process of becoming. She simply crushes every number she’s given with a winning combination of charm and dazzling vocal firepower. She’s sweet and beguiling on “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”, fierce and forceful on “Just You Wait,” and soars through a show-stopping turn on “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Even the way she steals the scene on “The Rain In Spain” seems to charm her song partner Harrison; he knows when he’s in the presence of greatness.

The ensemble numbers are terrific as well, with the standout being the effusive Cockney anthem “With A Little Bit Of Luck,” featuring Stanley Holloway, Gordon Dilworth and Rod McLennan.

Another remarkable thing about this album is that, while it includes only the briefest smatterings of spoken dialogue, Lerner’s lyrics carry so much of the load of telling the story unfolding on stage that you hardly feel like anything is missing. It’s a condensed version of the story, but all of the essential elements are present.

The original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady is one of the most lauded albums of its kind in the history of recorded music. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1977, into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2007, and into my childhood memories between 1962 and 1975 or so. Thanks, Mom.

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