The Best of Broadway - The American Musical (PBS Series)
A companion to the fabulousPBS  series, the 21-song, 77-minuteThe Best of "Broadway: The American  Musical"provides about as good a single-disc compilation as anyone  could hope for. (There's also afive-CD version.)  What sets  it apart from so many other "best of Broadway" collections is its  breadth--because it had access to a variety of record-label vaults it  doesn't have to try to disguise gaps by using revivals or solo recordings.  Here you get all the authentic stuff, including: Paul Robeson singing "Ol'  Man River" from the first modern American musical,Show Boat; Ethel  Merman singing "You're the Top"; the title song fromOklahoma!;  Julie Andrews singing "I Could Have Danced All Night" fromMy Fair  Lady;West Side Story's "America"; Betty Buckley singing  "Memory" fromCats;Hairspray's "Good Morning Baltimore"; and  "Defying Gravity" fromWicked, the newest show discussed in the PBS  series.  And it's hard to argue with the songwriters represented: Irving  Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser,  Lerner and Loewe, Leonard Bernstein, Bock and Harnick, Kander and Ebb,  Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, among others.  Obviously, no  single-disc compilation could ever please everyone (did we really needtwoALW songs?), but as a sampler intended for people who watched  the series and want to hear more of the Great White Way,The Best of  "Broadway: The American Musical"can't be topped.--David  Horiuchi