Rodgers & Hammerstein Songbook

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's previous partnerships — with Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern, respectively — would have been lifetime achievements for most songwriters. But when composer Rodgers and lyricist Hammerstein came together, a window to the heavens opened and a new era in musical theater began. Ezio Pinza had already been a successful opera singer when he sang in the original production of South Pacific, his bold, booming version of "Some Enchanted Evening" making him a bigger star than ever. Rodgers & Hammerstein also helped cement the newly minted celebrity status of Julie Andrews, whose coloratura soprano leaps gazelle-like through "My Favorite Things" from her Oscar®-winning turn in the film The Sound of Music. But the team's tunes also had plenty to offer the likes of Frank Sinatra, who fills The King and I's "Hello, Young Lovers" with worldly-wise bittersweetness.

In Next Steps, the kings and queens of pop are crowned with Rodgers & Hammerstein's jewels.

The graceful melodies and sophisticated lyrics of Rodgers & Hammerstein were more than strong enough to stand up outside of their award-winning musicals, becoming pop standards for generations of song stylists. Easygoing crooner Andy Williams gets downright sorrowful playing the spurned lover in South Pacific's "This Nearly Was Mine." Barbra Streisand draws on the same show's stellar songlist, lending her million-dollar lungs to the anthem of against-all-odds positivity "A Cockeyed Optimist." And '70s pop songbird Carly Simon found a second career digging into evergreen showtunes like the original stand-by-your-man ballad, "Something Wonderful," from The King and I.

In Deep Cuts, uncover the showtune past of small-screen stars.

You'd be amazed to discover the far-flung field of stars who got their start singing in Rodgers & Hammerstein's shows. Who'd have guessed, for instance, that Jack Soo — the world-weary Sgt. Yemana on TV's Barney Miller — got his entrée into show biz delivering the comically self-deprecating "Don't Marry Me" in Flower Drum Song. Partridge Family fans will have a whole new perspective on Mama Partridge when they learn Shirley Jones's early days included a star turn in the film of Carousel — you can hear her undergoing an interrogation of the heart in "You're a Queer One, Julie Jordan." But it's no secret that one of Judy Garland's biggest movies was Meet Me In St. Louis, from which the swaying, sentimental "Boys and Girls Like You and Me" was originally cut, but thankfully reinstated for the soundtrack.

Rodgers & Hammerstein didn't just dominate American musical theater in the '40s and '50s — they owned it. Their groundbreaking work together not only brought a new level of emotional depth to musicals, but it also garnered dozens of Tony® Awards, 15 Oscars®, a couple of GRAMMY® Awards, and even a Pulitzer. Let's put it this way: you don't get your own U.S. postage stamp without making a major mark on history. So where do you start digging into all those decades of dazzling music? Not to worry — we've plundered the playbills to pile up the choice cuts from R&H's shows and films, plus unforgettable interpretations of their tunes by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Carly Simon. So settle in — it's showtime.