French Label Unveils 79-Year-Old Film Soundtracks and 72-Year-Old Radio Broadcasts

Frémeaux & Associés is proud to announce the release of a new box set of two compact discs Judy Garland: Classiques et Inédits 1929-1956 [Judy Garland: Classic and Previously Unreleased Recordings 1929-1956] that contains forty Judy Garland recordings, most of which have been unavailable for up to seven decades. Culled from studio sessions and private collections from around the world, the anthology, whose tracks were trans-ferred by Grammy Award winner Jon M. Samuels in New York and remastered by Art & Son Studio in Paris , has been in preparation for over a year. It includes well-known and lesser-known Garland classics, but also collectors’ items many of which are previously unreleased, such as her screen debut at First-National—Vitaphone Pictures in 1929, 20 rare radio appearances of which 19 are new on CD, the first re-lease of a song she herself composed, and surround sound reproductions done for the set’s director, Lawrence Schulman , by the Australian sound engineer and award-winning radio host Robert Parker shortly before his death in 2004.

The two tracks that open the first CD, "Blue Butterfly" and "Hang on to a Rainbow", are both from Vitaphone discs done by the 7 ½ Frances Gumm for early talkies in 1929 – almost a decade before "Over the Rainbow"! The collection encompasses all the labels for which Garland recorded during her career, from the earliest Decca side "Stompin’ at the Savoy", to her last MGM recording Get Happy, and beyond to her Columbia and Capitol sessions. Of special interest on the first CD are "Send My Baby Back to Me", "Heartbroken", "Without a Memory", and "Go Home, Joe", all recorded in 1953. Robert Parker, well-known for extracting stereo from vintage jazz and popular recordings, transferred them from DJ vinyl 78s into surround in 2002. This is the first time any Garland studio session has been heard in surround. A regular guest on the radio during her movie heyday, Garland sometimes tried her hand at standards and novelty numbers she never performed on film or record. These coveted collectors’ items, released sparingly over the years, make up the collection’s second CD, which includes her first preserved radio appearance from 1935 wherein she belts "Broadway Rhythm", as well as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in 1938, "Goody Goodbye" in 1939, "In Spain They Say “Si-Si”" in 1940, "Daddy" in 1941, and "You and I" in 1951. Other new items to be savored are "Love’s New Sweet Song", a song Garland herself composed with husband David Rose in 1941 for a radio show, and a never-before-heard private record of her performing "Someone to Watch Over Me" for a Democratic Party dinner in 1944. “The fact that so many Garland radio performances have never been released so many decades after their broadcast is astounding” states Schulman.

The 32-page brochure in French and in English contains liner notes by Schulman, as well as a detailed discography.

Frémeaux & Associés, founded by Patrick Frémeaux and Claude Colombini, and recipient of the Grand Prix in honorem of the Charles Cros Academy , has built a catalogue over the years of some 25,000 references distributed in 32 countries. With of over 1000 awards, the label takes pride in striving to rehabilitate the sound heritage of the 20th century to make our collective memory permanently available to future generations.