Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat 32-minute recording of the musical with 19 tracks was issued in the US on Scepter Records in 1971. It was a reissue of the 1969 Decca UK album, capitalising on the success of 1970's "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the US. It featured Daltrey as Joseph, Rice as Pharaoh, William S. Lloyd Webber on the Hammond organ, Alan Doggett conducting, and the Colet Court choir as the chorus. Lloyd Webber and Rice used the popularity of their subsequent musical, the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar", to promote "Joseph", which was advertised in America as a "follow-up" to "Superstar". The rock opera's
Andrew Lloyd Webber commissioned Lloyd Webber and Rice to write a piece for the school's choir. Doggett requested a "pop cantata" along the lines of Herbert Chappell's "The Daniel Jazz" (1963) and Michael Hurd's "Jonah-Man Jazz" (1966), both of which had been published by Novello and were based on the Old Testament. The request for the new piece came with a 100-guinea advance from Novello. This resulted in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph, in which Lloyd Webber and Rice humorously pastiched a number of pop-music styles such as Elvis-style rock'n'roll, Calypso and country music.