My Fair Lady (Broadway cast recording) My Fair Lady (Broadway cast recording) The Broadway cast recording of the musical My Fair Lady was released as an album on April 2, 1956. The songs were composed by Frederick Loewe with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and conducted by Franz Allers, while the cast included stars Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. The album became a massive seller, topping the charts on the US "Billboard" 200 for fifteen weeks at different times in 1956 (eight consecutive weeks), 1957, 1958 and 1959. In the UK, upon its release in 1958, the album reached No.1 for 19 consecutive weeks and became
Elvis Presley / But he never meant shit to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain". The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African-American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgement and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents. Notable among African-American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost