Conventional wisdom is difficult to alter, but here goes: contrary to what has been widely written, Jesus Christ Superstar was not the first concept recording of a musical to spawn a wildly successful hit show. Sorry Andrew, sorry Tim.

It may well be that JCS was the first concept album to be the basis for a hit Broadway show, but the songs that formed the core of a hugely popular international success were first heard on vinyl in 1966 and landed on stage in New York in March 1967, for a run that would last for 1,597 performances, more than four years before the biblically-based musical. That show – and feel free to start singing the title tune now – was You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Composer Clark Gesner, who had previously written songs for television’s Captain Kangaroo children’s program, wrote the songs for YAGMCB with permission from Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz. According to Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis, Gesner’s first songs, the title track and “Suppertime,” kicked off conversations about a televised animated musical revue. Those plans were superseded by what became A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, the first animated Peanuts special, with memorable musical soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi, but not a musical under any conventional definition.

Consequently, Gesner’s songs first reached the ears of listeners, predominantly young listeners and their parents, in the autumn of 1966 when the 10-track, 25-minute concept recording of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown was released on King Leo, the children’s division of MGM Records, a major label at the time Records (later issues were on Metro Records). It was billed as “an original MGM album musical” on the cover. The cast was Gesner as Linus, Barbara Minkus as Lucy, Bill Hinnant as Snoopy, and as Charlie Brown, actor-comedian-raconteur Orson Bean. Bean was had already appeared in eight Broadway shows, his most recent credit at the time being The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd.

Part of the reason the King Leo release has likely been lost to time was how quickly it was supplanted by the original cast recording – there was less than six months between the two – and as they were both released by MGM, no doubt marketing focused on the latter as soon as it was on record store shelves. Yet the 1966 concept recording is a fascinating document for fans of the musical, because it reveals how fully formed much of the score was before a stage incarnation was actually in the works. As a note for those who own the CD reissue cast recording on Decca Broadway dating to 2000 with tracks featuring Gesner and Minkus, those are from the demo entitled Peanuts in Song, which were the recordings Gesner sent to Schulz to secure his permission.

All ten of the songs on the King Leo album, including “Happiness,” “Snoopy” and “Little Known Facts” were in the show, some renamed, with the most prominent additions being “The Book Report” and “The Red Baron.” What’s most unexpected about the 1966 recording is its more varied orchestration: horns, strings and a most insistent clarinet are in evidence, no doubt replaced by the simpler piano and percussion mix of the show for financial reasons. Not unlike The Fantasticks, which kept TAGMCB from ever breaking records despite its notably long run, the show’s success was in part due to its small and economical scale.

To be fair to Rice and Lloyd Webber, their JCS concept album was for all practical purposes the complete score and libretto of their show. The YAGMCB album did not have an accompanying book and it was not through-sung, although some of the material which toggled between speech and singing were in place, as were some the introductory dialogue to the songs. The musical itself was largely written during the show’s four-week rehearsal, or, more accurately, assembled using the songs and Schulz’s strips to date, which at that point, with daily and Sunday counted, would have numbered roughly 5,875 through the end of 1966.

When Charlie Brown opened at Off-Broadway’s Theatre 80 St. Marks on March 7, 1967, only Hinnant remained from the concept recording, joined by his brother Skip as Schreoder, Bob Balaban as Linus, Karen Johnson as Patty, Reva Rose as Lucy and Gary Burghoff as Charlie Brown. The director was Joseph Hardy and the choreographer was Patricia Birch. The shift from Bean to Burghoff may have been simply a case of a successful Broadway and TV actor not wanting to commit to a small Off-Broadway show, but it also made sense because Burghoff was 15 years younger than the 37-year-old Bean; the role launched Burghoff into a  career defining role as Radar O’Reilly in the film and TV versions of M*A*S*H. Minkus could have easily played Lucy on stage, but it appears she was otherwise committed when the show opened, as one of the standbys for the role of Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of Funny Girl.

Were there other concept albums that preceded YAGMCB? Perhaps. This post isn’t meant to be the final word on the subject. But it should lay to rest the idea that Lloyd Webber and Rice were somehow the first to bring a show to the stage in this way, and certainly not the first to have enormous success as a result. After all, per David Michaelis’s book, the original production yielded 13 touring companies in the US (though more likely some of those were sit-down productions) and 15 international companies. It has been a staple of the musical theatre repertoire ever since, notably revived on Broadway, with new musical contributions by Andrew Lippa, in 1999.

So step aside, Jesus Christ (Superstar). Just as he was anointed in the Schulz drawing that introduced the 1966 album, the musical theatre concept album crown belongs to Charlie Brown.

The complete 1966 recording can be heard here:

For those unfamiliar with my lifelong affection for the Peanuts comics, you can read about it in my post, A Man Named Charlie Brown, from 2013.

As theatre buffs know, there are two major musicals drawn from Joseph Moncure March’s The Wild Party, which debuted in New York within months of one another: the Michael John LaChiusa-George C. Wolfe version which played on Broadway in the spring of 2000, and Andrew Lippa’s version, which played Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club from February to April of that year. Drawn from the same source material, they inevitably have many roles in common.

Julia Murney as Queen and Taye Diggs as Black in Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party at Manhattan Theatre Club

One of the many roles shared by both shows is “Black,” first played by Taye Diggs in Lippa’s retelling of the story (and by Yancey Arias in the LaChiusa-Wolfe version). So there was significant pushback earlier this month when the Yale Dramatic Association, widely known as the Dramat, announced the cast for their fall production of the Lippa’s Wild Party, where the character is specifically identified as black. A white woman had been cast as Black.

The Dramat should not be confused with the Yale Repertory Theatre. The Rep is a professional company that also includes the work of Yale School of Drama graduate students onstage and off. The Dramat is an undergraduate club which actually predates the Rep by more than 50 years. While there is a great deal of undergraduate theatre at Yale, with many of the residential colleges each fostering their own dramatic groups, the Dramat, so far as student-run theatre at Yale goes, is perceived as the major player school-wide.

As reported by Joey Ye writing in the Yale Daily News, approximately 75 students auditioned for the Dramat’s Wild Party, with only nine students of color trying out. Two students of color were cast. While the Dramat’s club leaders indicated that they had done outreach to the performing communities of color at Yale, their efforts had limited success. Ye quoted the student producer saying that the Dramat had decided to proceed with the show, with a white female student as Black, after the director “re-visioned the entire show with the people we had in the room.”

Ye noted that the Dramat has only produced two works by artists of color in its history, one earlier this year and one in 1995. While that doesn’t speak to roles specifically requiring performers of color, or productions which may have cast students of color in roles traditionally played by white performers, it suggests, as students did in Ye’s initial report, that the Dramat has not historically been perceived as a group that embraced students of color.

On Tuesday, Ye reported again for the Yale Daily News about The Wild Party, writing that the Dramat had made the decision to reopen auditions and to recast the role of Black. Two other roles will also be recast, because two students chose to leave the production as a result of the uproar.

In a statement on the Dramat’s website, the student leaders of the group wrote, in part:

We also know that the circumstances surrounding casting represent a much larger problem, extending beyond this particular production and the Dramat as an organization. There are serious, systemic challenges to meaningful progress toward diversity and inclusion. Over the past week, members of the community have raised questions about effective forms of outreach, the audition room environment, the balance between pre-professional and educational programs, and the dispensing of information about auditions and opportunities for those outside of the theater community. These are difficult questions, and each merits its own in-depth discussion, which we are committed to pursuing in collaboration with the larger Yale community, as we all strive for a better, more inclusive space.

The standard contracts provided to student productions, as well as amateur and professional companies, typically contains language about making no changes to the gender or race of characters without prior permission from the licensing house on behalf of the authors. Drew Cohen, president of Music Theatre International, which represents The Wild Party, responded to an inquiry from Arts Integrity as to whether the company had played a role in the Dramat’s decision. While citing MTI’s policy of confidentiality regarding its customer communications, Cohen noted, “I do not know what prompted the group to hold new auditions.”

Contacted separately, author Andrew Lippa responded:

“I have had no hand in the casting at Yale (other than being the playwright!). I applaud these student producers’ efforts to recast their production per the character description in the script. I have always, and will always, support and defend the rights of living dramatic writers (and all plays still protected by copyright) in all casting decisions.

“I look forward to seeing (and celebrating) these students and their production of my show.”

The Yale Dramat has announced that their spring ’17 show will be Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915.  The original cast at Soho Rep in 2012 included three black actors and three white actors, in Sibblies’s backstage exploration of racial roles in the creation of a play drawn from African history.

Update, September 22, 11:45 am: This post has been edited to more clearly reflect Lippa’s intent that the role of Black in his version is to be played by a black actor, as it has been in its original production and in the Encores Off-Center concert.

This post will be updated should there be significant further developments.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.