Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (United Artists/MGM/Kritzerland) (3 / 5) Based on the film The Apartment, this show was the only Broadway effort of pop songwriters Burt Bacharach (music) and Hal David (lyrics), who had written such hits as “Alfie,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” As originally released, the cast recording of Promises, Promises was highly problematic. To begin with, the usually wonderful Jerry Orbach sounded under pitch as Chuck Baxter in several cuts, notably in “She Likes Basketball” and two duets, “Our Little Secret” (with Edward Winter as J. D. Sheldrake) and “A Young Pretty Girl Like You” (with A. Larry Haines as Dr. Dreyfuss). In those last two named songs, it was hard to tell who was singing farther off pitch, Orbach or his duet partners, but both cuts had some painful-to-hear moments. Also, in the original mix of the album, there was an excessive amount of reverb in the vocals, while the percussion sounded too heavy and the strings remote. The happy news is that a latter-day remastering of this recording for the Kritzerland label ameliorated most of these problems (not including the excessive reverb, which wasn’t fixable) through skillful remixing and pitch correction, greatly improving the overall listening experience. As Fran Kubelik, the young woman caught between Baxter and Sheldrake, Jill O’Hara displays a voice with a folk-singer quality that some Broadway aficionados may not appreciate, but this score is far from typical Broadway, and in fact, Bacharach has gone on record as saying that he wrote Fran’s songs with O’Hara’s sound specifically in mind. The score in general is flawed due to David’s sometimes ham-fisted lyrics, but the good work (“Half as Big as Life,” “Knowing When to Leave,” “I’Il Never Fall in Love Again,” the title song, and others) finally outweighs the bad. Note: According to the album credits, you can supposedly hear Donna McKechnie singing along with Baayork Lee and Margo Sappington in “Turkey Lurkey Time,” but the number was actually recorded by the show’s “orchestra voices.” — Michael Portantiere

Original London Cast, 1969 (United Artists/Kritzerland) (3 / 5) This recording was out of print for years, until it finally received an excellent if belated digital transfer and release by Kritzerland. The two leads, Tony Roberts and Betty Buckley, were still in the very early stages of their careers in 1969, but both went on to become established Broadway stars. Roberts is charming in Baxter’s songs, and if Buckley’s steely belt/soprano certainly won’t appeal to everyone, her performance is committed. (Buckley’s best vocal moment by far is “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” sung softly and lyrically rather than belted.) James Congdon as Sheldrake sings “Wanting Things” well, if not with quite as much voice as Edward Winters on the recording reviewed above. It’s interesting to note that the three leading performers heard on this London cast album are American, and it’s amusing that Buckley adopts a British pronunciation when she sings certain words — for example, “portrait” in “You’ll Think of Someone” and “return” in “Knowing When to Leave.” A major plus of the recording is its superb technical quality; Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations sound magnificent here, with the strings more prominent than on the OBCR, while the voices are recorded with a great deal of presence and no excess of reverb. Note: Donna McKechnie traveled to London with the show and is again credited on the cast album, but you won’t hear her singing on “Turkey Lurkey Time” track here, either. — M.P.

London Studio Cast, 1969 (Fontana Special/no CD) (2 / 5) While this studio cast album of Promises, Promises would never be chosen as anyone’s preferred recording, it has some strong points and intriguing elements that make it worth a listen. (The album never got a commercial CD transfer but is available online as a download.) Ronnie Carroll brings more of a pop crooner’s sound than a Broadway baritenor to Chuck Baxter’s songs, but he does so very pleasantly. Following in the footsteps of Jill O’Hara and Betty Buckley, Aimi MacDonald gives yet another vocally controversial performance as Fran Kubelik; her voice has a very bright, little-girl quality that some listeners will find charming, others annoying. Also, she’s pitch-shy at times, and her thick Brit accent is distracting in that she’s playing an American in a story set in NYC. On the plus side, Patricia Whitmore as Marge MacDougall is a delightful partner for Carroll on “A Fact Can Be a Beautiful Thing.” Five songs from the score are nowhere to be found here — “Grapes of Roth,” “Our Little Secret,” “Wanting Things, “A Young, Pretty Girl Like You,” and the wistful “Christmas Day” — so those are five more strikes against this recording. Among the songs that are included, three of them have had their keys transposed:  “You’ll Think of Someone,” “Whoever You Are,” and “Promises, Promises” are all slightly higher than on the original Broadway and London cast albums. Keith Roberts conducts the score with verve, in orchestrations and vocal arrangements for the “orchestra voices” that sound like the brilliant originals slightly revised in certain sections. “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” has been thrown into the overture, between “She Likes Basketball” and the title song; it’s an unnecessary addition, but fun to hear in an alternate version of one of the most excitingly written and orchestrated overtures in Broadway history. — M.P.

Broadway Cast, 2010 (Masterworks Broadway) (2 / 5) The 2010 Broadway revisal of Promises, Promises was marred by poor direction (Rob Ashford was responsible) and the ill-advised, unnecessary interpolation of two Bacharach-David hits that were not in the original score, “I Say a Little Prayer” and “A House is Not a Home.”  But the slack direction is, of course, not evident on the cast album, and the added songs are enjoyable in their own right out of context, so this recording is an agreeable listening experience overall. A stumbling block for some listeners may be the buzz-saw vibrato of Sean Hayes’s voice as heard in Chuck Baxter’s multiple songs, surely not to everyone’s taste. More pleasant to hear is Kristin Chenoweth  as Fran, even if her songs are sung in keys much lower than the soprano range in which she’s most at home. Although Tony Goldwyn is not known as a singer, he does a fine job with Sheldrake’s “Wanting Things” and his duet with Hayes, “Our Little Secret.” Katie Finneran is a comic delight as Marge MacDougall, playing off Hayes expertly in “A Fact Can Be a Beautiful Thing,” and Jonathan Tunick’s adaptations of his own original orchestrations sound pretty great.  — M.P.