Tony Award winning actress Chita Rivera is considered one of the foremost accomplished performers in Broadway history. In a career spanning over seven decades, Rivera has starred in some of the most groundbreaking musicals of our time, originating roles in West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Chicago, Kiss Of The Spiderwoman and many others. Stage Door has reissued Rivera's debut solo albums Chita! (1962) and And Now I Sing! (1963). Presented in stereo sound, these remastered recordings make their debut on CD...

I'm always a little unsure of what I should be reviewing, when I'm sent re-issues of recordings on CD. Am I reviewing the content (some of which is 50+ years old, and will have been reviewed many times previously) or the quality of the new release. It's certainly one I struggled with on Stage Door's latest release - a 'twofer' of two albums by the iconic Chita Rivera Chita! and And Now I Sing!

Chita Rivera was appearing in London in the hit musical Bye Bye Birdie when Chita! was released way back in 1961. Alyn Ainsworth was the musical director on the album, a well-recognised bandleader, and a regular variety orchestrator and conductor in the UK in the '60s and '70s. The collection of mainly theatre and film songs were
all given a distinctive style - this is about as far from a 'covers' album as you can get.

The same can be said for the 1963 follow-up album included here And Now I Sing. This time, the album was recorded in New York, and featured Joe Cain as musical director. The album had a much more latin feel to it, not surprising really as is was released on the latin label Seeco.

Both albums are about as good an appreciation of Rivera's talent as you can get on a recording. She is the master of delivering a song in a way that makes you forget any other version - in a similar way to the likes of Betty Buckley and Patti LuPone. It's a very easy listening compilation, and that's not in a bad way. The arrangements are distinctive, and certainly of an age.

It's great that Stage Door are releasing some of the old classic albums on CD. I'm not sure how much 'remastering' has been done - there's still an amount of noise on these recordings, and the sound isn't what you would now expect from a digitally mastered CD, so I'm guessing that they didn't go back to the master tapes. But, it doesn't detract
too much from the enjoyment of what are two classic albums from musical theatre and cabaret history.

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Ian Gude