Various - The Wiz (The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard Of Oz") (LP)

Some cast albums feel like souvenirs. The Wiz is a living room party. Released in 1975 on Atlantic, this original Broadway cast recording bottles the charge that turned a scrappy show into a phenomenon. The musical reimagines L. Frank Baum’s world through Black American music, and the record makes that vision feel bold and welcoming at once. You can hear it in the overture’s brass and rhythm, in the tight, funky pocket of the band, and in the way the chorus keeps pushing the story forward like a street parade you cannot help but follow.

The heart of it is Stephanie Mills. Her Dorothy opens with Soon As I Get Home, a quiet prayer that sets the stakes, and she closes with Home, the kind of closing number that pins you to your seat. Mills shapes every phrase with a mix of innocence and steel, and the microphone catches not just range but breath and resolve. When she leans into Home, the band swells around her and you get why the song became her signature in concert for decades.

Charlie Smalls wrote most of the score, and his tunes are generous to singers and dancers. I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday gives the Scarecrow a sweet, hopeful bounce. Slide Some Oil to Me turns the Tin Man’s creaks into a sly groove. Mean Ole Lion lets Ted Ross roar with comic bite. Mabel King tears through No Bad News with such gleeful menace you can almost see the crown topple. Dee Dee Bridgewater floats across If You Believe like a benediction. She later won a Tony for her performance, and the record backs that up. Luther Vandross slips in with Everybody Rejoice, credited here under its stage title Brand New Day. The chorus explodes, handclaps and all, and you can feel the dance break even without a stage in front of you.

Harold Wheeler’s orchestrations are the secret engine. Strings sit next to wah guitar and gospel piano without crowding each other. The horns punch in the right spots, then get out of the way. The rhythm section keeps a light funk bubbling under ballads and a deeper pocket under the uptempo numbers, so the whole thing breathes. Broadway albums sometimes flatten in translation. This one stays three dimensional. You hear room, players, and bodies moving. On an early Atlantic pressing, the bass has warmth without mud and the vocals sit clean and present. If you spot The Wiz vinyl in good shape, grab it. It is the kind of record that rewards a full side spin rather than a playlist hop.

Context matters. The Wiz opened on Broadway in 1975 and went on to win seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. That is not trivia so much as a reminder that this score landed with force in its time. The show’s blend of soul, funk, gospel, and Broadway craft did not feel like a gimmick. It felt like a door swinging open. The album carries that significance without getting preachy. Ease on Down the Road is the obvious earworm, but the set plays like a full journey, from the hush of Kansas to the gleam of the Emerald City and back to a hard earned sense of self.

It is worth noting, for anyone sorting out which version to buy, that this is not the film soundtrack with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. That later album has Quincy Jones at the helm and a different palette. The Broadway cast recording is leaner and closer to the stage pulse that made the show click. If you buy The Wiz records online, look for the original Atlantic release or a clean reissue that preserves the dynamics. The Wiz albums on vinyl turn up in the wild often enough that the hunt can be fun. I have seen copies in a Melbourne record store with that well loved sleeve patina, and I have shipped a copy to a friend who only shops vinyl records Australia portals. Either way, this is a keeper.

What lingers after the needle lifts is how human it all feels. The optimism is earned, the jokes land, and the band never phones it in. You can sit with the liner notes and trace the creative team, from director and designer Geoffrey Holder to choreographer George Faison, and sense how their work threads through what you are hearing. Or you can just drop the needle again and let Mills take you home. For a show that dared to reframe a classic, this album still sounds fresh, alive, and ready to welcome the next listener who wants to ease on down the road.