Quote Originally Posted by marv2 View Post
Ever imagine how much "valuable" memorabilia ended up in the pile of rumble of the old Donovan Building?
There are so many examples of rare and artistic performances by not just singers but actors and musical stars that were never captured on video. I suppose it must have been much more expensive prior to the 80s to capture things on film, but it's still amazing that there aren't at least audio recordings of some of the greatest theatrical performances or live recordings of so many singers.

One example from theatre is what many view as the greatest performance on stage that influenced whole generations of actors, Laurette Taylor in "The Glass Menagerie." That performance is often highlighted as what inspired so many actors to become actors. Yet the only thing which remains of it are a few minutes of an audio recording for a special record which was made at the time. No one ever bothered to record the whole thing.

There are lots of examples of this from musicals as well. Ethel Merman's "Gypsy," Carol Channing's "Hello Dolly!," Angela Lansbury's "Mame," I don't think any of these shows were ever preserved on film or video except for the Original Cast albums. And it's pretty much agreed to that the movie versions of these shows [[all with different leads) suffered greatly in comparison.

As for Motown, we learned via the excellent Hip-O set that the few live recordings of Tammi Terrell came out in that release, there's no live recordings of The Marvelettes beyond what's already come out according to our friendly archivists, and even though there's evidently a recording of Martha and the Vandellas at the Copa, we've never been able to hear it!

Of course, I always say the worst thing for a collector to hear is that there's "no more" yet to be released so I'd rather hope to hear Martha's Copa show rather than know there's nothing still there as is the case with The Marvelettes. At least then we still have hope!