When I was a newly turned fourteen-year-old, I saw West Side Story - December of 1961. Of course, I became obsessed with it seeing it once a week thereafter for about fifteen weeks in a row. I bought the soundtrack, but also bought anything that said West Side Story - jazz versions, the B'way cast album, and whatever cover albums I could find. At some point, I came upon a wonderful-looking Warner Bros. album that had been released in 1958. The top-billed piece was a ballet score to a ballet from the co-director of the West Side Story film, Jerome Robbins. Called N.Y. Export - Op. Jazz from Ballets USA by Robert Prince. I had no idea what that was, but I bought it for the companion piece, the symphonic dances from West Side Story, a wonderful performance of that. I played that album to death. I've thought about it over the years, but have never heard the main piece again because it's never been on CD. Then I saw the actual ballet and loved it, then found a not so legal download of the album and got that. It was mono, which seemed wrong to me, so I searched everywhere online and the hundreds of copies of the album I found were all mono - my memory told me I absolutely had a stereo version because I bought no mono albums at that point, but still the overwhelming proof of mono was staring me in the face over and over again. I began to think I was just having one of the few misremembering times. I searched one last time and what I thought was another mono LP was, in fact, a commercially released reel-to-reel tape, which was - in stereo, of course, plain as day. So, I wasn't crazy after all, but in 1958 Warner Bros. was just starting to do stereo - Auntie Mame being one of those albums and John Paul Jones another. So, I'm imagining they didn't press that many stereo copies of an album that was never going to be a big seller. But I got the reel-to-reel and it's on its merry way to me now so I'll have it transferred to WAV files right away. But I also contacted my licensing guy at Rhino to talk about maybe issuing it on CD if they'd give me a good deal or at least couple it with something else, as it's only forty-two minutes. I haven't heard back from him, but I can't imagine their keeping any kind of regular hours there and who knows if they're doing any business at all. But it would be a kick to release it on CD.
