From the time Lena Horne chose not to play the role of Della, St Louis Woman has had nothing but troubles. Scanning the programs for its out of-town tryouts you find it fluctuating between two and three acts and with songs dropped, added and reassigned. Audiences and critics resisted the story and characters adapted from the novel Gods Sends Sunday by Anna Bontemps. But the score - by two of the most exciting songwriters of all time - has held the world in its thrall since it was first heard in 1946. Containing standards like "Come Rain or Come Shine" and art songs like "I Had Myself a True Love," it is one of the most consistently sublime scores to ever have been heard in a Broadway theater.
   So why have we not been hearing it these last 50 years? Every bit of original orchestrated material is lost: people have been looking for it for over 40 years in an attempt to play or record it. Surviving materials include a script, programs, an abbreviated cast recording, and some materials from Free and Easy, the 1959 blues opera for which Arlen and Mercer reworked the St. Louis Woman material and added a lot of other songs. Reconstructing a score where no piano score or orchestrations exist takes Encores! into territory that was unfathomable when the series began five years ago.
   To attempt something this massive there must be substantial funding. Through the tireless support of City Center Board members, led by Ray Lamontagne, Encores! has been fortunate in obtaining generous grants specifically earmarked for the reconstruction of this score from Anheuser-Busch,  the National Endowment for the Arts,  Newman's Own, Inc.,  and Victorinox-Swiss Army Knife Foundation.
   We began with a script and programs from the out-of-town tryouts and Broadway opening, which showed us what music had been used and the basic organization of the score. Then from the archives at the Library of Congress, Ed Jablonski, Hugh Fordin and, most especially, the Arlen Archive in Queens (special thanks to Jeanne Matalon), I was able to find enough piano/vocal material to go from the beginning to the end of the show. Some of this music was ready for rehearsal and publication but much of it was merely hand-written fragments. The only major elements of the score still missing were the overture, entr'acte, and most of the dance music.
   At this point it became crucial to determine the makeup of the orchestra and find the right people to create the orchestral arrangements. From the original cast recording we knew the approximate size and sound of the orchestra and that the original orchestrators must have used the same materials from which to orchestrate because so many of the musical figures Arlen included in his piano versions are also heard on the recording. But no actual instrumental parts or scores survive. It was our great fortune when the incomparable Ralph Burns agreed to share the expertise he has displayed in his long career writing for Broadway, film and television and join the project as orchestrator. He orchestrated the entire score except for the big dance numbers. The dance music has been arranged and orchestrated by the equally impressive composer-arranger-conductor Luther Henderson. This is a team whose combined histories cover decades of hit Broadway shows and who have worked in this same relationship as far back as Funny Girl.
   Collaborating with director Jack O'Brien to integrate the script and score and with choreographer George Faison to routine the dances, Burns and Henderson set to work in an unusual process because, normally, the orchestrations for a show happen late in rehearsals, but in this case we needed to be finished before the rehearsals even began because the Encores! schedule is so compressed. So, now that you are listening to our cast album as you read this it definitely means the hex that has been attached to this show has been lifted. Now the world will again hear this great, lost Harold Arlen score - beginning with the premiere of Ralph Burns' overture. Rob Fisher, musical director for City Center Encores! since its inception, is also a member of the Encores! Advisory Committee and conductor of the Coffee Club Orchestra.