Julius Monk Presents Demi-Dozen
Original Cast Recording

37 West 56th Street. An address that in-the-know sophisticated New Yorkers knew very well in the mid-1950s – the resplendent reconverted townhouse of one John Wanamaker that served as the home to a delectably delicious series of cabaret entertainments presented at the Upstairs at the Downstairs by Julius Monk.
That room opened in 1958 with Demi-Dozen, another delightful Monk revue. Monk had an uncanny ability to not only cast his shows with brilliant revue performers, in this case Jean Arnold, Ceil Cabot, Jane Connell, Jack Fletcher, George Hall, and Gerry Matthews, but to find up-and-coming songwriters and in the cast of this album that included the team of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, who would soon go on to write the score to The Fantasticks. Also featured in this revue is a song by another up-and-coming team, Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh – their song for Demi-Dozen is a classic Coleman/Leigh song, “You Fascinate Me So.” But the majority of the material in Demi-Dozen is by Jones and Schmidt and their contributions are uniquely them and uniquely wonderful. The Monk revues were very much of their time, but they are still completely entertaining all these decades later.