(The recording did not include most of the music written by Gershwin which had been customarily cut from productions in the United States, however.

As opposed to the complete three-hour opera, the album was two hours and nine minutes.)

The 1951 album set contained more than two-thirds of the opera, for the first time ever in the history of recording.

Columbia Masterworks assigned the album the catalog number OSL 162.

Several members of the original Broadway cast of Porgy and Bess appeared on the album.