Georgie Stoll was the associate conductor and screen credits were given to George Bassman, Murray Cutter (who did "Over the Rainbow"), Ken Darby and Paul Marquardt for orchestral and vocal arrangements.

Buddy Ebsen was a Midwesterner, like Judy Garland, and pronounced the r. Although an orchestra underscores nearly the entire film, approximately the last third of the movie contains no songs.

[citation needed] Most of the songs were first heard on radio on a fifteen-minute program called MGM: Leo Is On the Air a few months prior to the film's release.

An obviously staged "backstage glimpse" at the planning and making of the film, hosted by Robert Young, and featuring Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, lyricist E.Y.

Brice, in her radio persona of Baby Snooks, was featured in a skit in which Lancelot Higgins (Hanley Stafford) tried to tell her the story of The Wizard of Oz, but was constantly interrupted and almost kept from attending the film's premiere by the toddler, who virtually forced him into taking her along.

[5] It was, instead, a U.S. Decca four-record 78 rpm studio cast album of songs from the film released in 1940, featuring Judy Garland as Dorothy but with the Ken Darby Singers in other roles.

It also used, oddly enough, dialogue which never appeared in the movie; at one point, during "The Merry Old Land of Oz", Dorothy says, "We can't go to see the Wizard like this!

In the "Munchkinland" medley, the Ken Darby Singers provided the voices of the Munchkins, but they were not altered to sound "chipmunk"-like, as in the film.

The songs "Optimistic Voices" and "The Merry Old Land of Oz", and the Tin Man's instrumental dance to "If I Only Had a Heart", were omitted from the LP release; also gone were half of the orchestral main title music, half of the "Munchkinland" medley, the entire Professor Marvel sequence, the moments during the tornado scene during which Dorothy sees people – including Miss Gulch – flying past her window, the talking apple trees scene, the appearance of the witch on the roof of the Tin Man's cottage, the poppy field sequence, the moment when the Lion reads "Surrender Dorothy" in the sky, and the scene in the Haunted Forest in which the Tin Man is mysteriously lifted into the air.

Also gone was the moment in which the Scarecrow says, "They tore my legs off, and they threw them over there", and the Tin Man answers, "Well, that's you all over", and the scene in which Dorothy's friends are scaling the cliff to get to the witch's castle, as well as many other tiny bits from the film.

Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, it was constantly reprinted and re-released (each time with different cover art), and the album eventually appeared in an expanded version on CD in 1989, released by CBS Records instead of MGM.

The 1989 release also contained the original deleted film version of "The Jitterbug", albeit without its full intro, as a bonus track.

All of the songs and music, except for the demos, were presented in the exact order that they would have been heard in the film had it not been slightly trimmed before release.

A single-disc version was also produced, containing only the vocal selections, the main title, the "Cyclone" instrumental, and the score for the final scene where Dorothy goes home.

The single-disc still contained all of the vocal outtakes, with the exception of the "Over The Rainbow" reprise, and extended versions of songs but discarded almost all of the background score.

Despite the existence of multi-track recordings, which had been made to create a more full and balanced monaural track for the film, none of the music on either release was mixed in stereo.

In 1998, when the film received a complete digital video and audio restoration, including a new stereo mix, Rhino Records released The Songs and Story of "The Wizard of Oz", which expanded the 1956 MGM album even further, taking out "The Jitterbug", adding the deleted dance music from "If I Only Had a Brain", and including additional bits of dialogue absent from previous releases.

Many other studio cast albums of the songs from the film (aside from the 1940 and 1963 ones) have appeared over the past fifty years, most of them fairly obscure and never issued on compact disc.