West Side Story (Original Sound Track Recording)

Very smart clean vinyl housed in a crisp clean gatefold cover.

West Side Story is the soundtrack to the 1961 film West Side Story. Released in 1961, the soundtrack spent 54 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's album charts, giving it the longest run at No. 1 of any album in history,^[2] although some lists instead credit Michael Jackson's Thriller, on the grounds that West Side Story was listed on a chart for stereo albums only at a time when many albums were recorded in mono.^[3] In 1962, it won a Grammy award for "Best Sound Track Album – Original Cast" and Johnny Richards orchestrations of the movie score (on Kenton's West Side Story) also winning a Grammy in 1962 for "Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album" further bolstering the popularity of the movie and soundtrack. In the United States, it was the best-selling album of the 1960s,^[4] certifying three times platinum by the RIAA on November 21, 1986.

Though the album was released just a few years after the release of the original broadway cast recording, it is according to Broadway Babies preferred by some to the earlier version both sentimentally, as the film succeeded in establishing the musical as a "popular masterpiece", and musically, as it contains "beefier orchestration".^[5]