the arrangements were not the ones heard in the theatre. The first complete so-called original cast album was Marc Blitzstein's 1938 album of songs from The Cradle Will Rock although these were recorded with just piano accompaniment and not the show's orchestra. In 1984, the original recordings from Very Warm for May (1939) were discovered and issued on an LP. However, these recordings were not made with the original orchestrations. RCA Victor had made an album of the key songs from Porgy and Bess using the theatre orchestra but featuring Met opera singers Lawrence Tibbett and Helen Jepson singing the songs. Decca riposted with another album of the same highlights sung by the actual stars of the original production, although recorded five years after the premiere. When a revival was staged in 1942, Decca issued a second album of some of the secondary songs from the opera by the revival cast and later combined these two albums onto one LP and called it the "original cast recording". Decca also issued an album of songs from the all-soldier revue This Is the Army by Irving Berlin. Finally in 1943, came Decca's recording of Oklahoma!. It not only featured the original cast, but the show's original chorus, all accompanied by the same orchestra heard in the show, playing the music in the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations and conducted by the show's original conductor, Jay Blackton. The show was the biggest hit Broadway had experienced up until that time and people who could not get tickets bought the album. It would eventually sell over 1 million copies as a set of 78-rpm records, and millions more on LP and Compact Discs. Decca soon began recording every hit musical that came along including One Touch of Venus, Carmen Jones, Carousel, and Annie Get Your Gun. Soon, all the other record companies were bidding for the rights to record Broadway shows with their original casts. Capitol recorded St. Louis Woman in 1946, and RCA Victor recorded Brigadoon in 1947. Although Decca abandoned the cast album field in the mid-1950s, Capitol and Victor actively bid for recording rights. Sometimes problems arose as when RCA Victor signed on to record the 1950 musical Call Me Madam even though the show's star, Ethel Merman was then under exclusive contract to Decca Records. This resulted in two albums of the score being released: Merman with a studio cast