My Fair Lady (Shelly Manne album) musical play had now been established. Manne, Previn, and Vinnegar's "My Fair Lady" had started the trend. "All tunes by Frederick Loewe. (Lyrics of the original songs were by Alan Jay Lerner.)" My Fair Lady (Shelly Manne album) My Fair Lady, recorded by "Shelly Manne & His Friends" and released in 1956 by Contemporary Records, is the first album ever made consisting entirely of jazz versions of tunes from a single Broadway musical. It was an instant hit and became one of the best-selling jazz albums of its day. Shelly Manne & his Friends* (*André Previn and Leroy Vinnegar): modern
My Fair Lady settled on the title "My Fair Lady", relating both to one of Shaw's provisional titles for "Pygmalion", "Fair Eliza", and to the final line of every verse of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down". Recalling that the Gershwins' 1925 musical "Tell Me More" had been titled "My Fair Lady" in its out-of-town tryout, and also had a musical number under that title, Lerner made a courtesy call to Ira Gershwin, alerting him to the use of the title for the Lerner and Loewe musical. Noël Coward was the first to be offered the role of Henry Higgins, but