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There’s a scene in D.A. Pennebaker’s “Original Cast Album: Company” that unites all Elaine Stritch fans. Of course, younger audiences know her Emmy-winning turn as Jack Donaghy’s sharp-tongued mother in “30 Rock,” and Broadway fans will never forget her Tony-winning one woman show “Elaine Stritch at Liberty,” the film version of which incidentally united her with Pennebaker decades later.

But it is her increasingly desperate attempts to record the most famous number of her career, the 11 o’clock number “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” that Pennebaker captured and edited so sensationally, that shows a rare peek behind the curtain at the ferocious talent at her most vulnerable.

Less Broadway-inclined cinephiles may be unfamiliar with “Original Cast Album: Company.” The documentary legend, who died over the weekend at the age of 94, was known as a groundbreaking figure in the evolution of documentary filmmaking, helming...

Company. Sweeney Todd. Merril We Roll Along. 42Nd Street. La Cage Aux Folles. Those original cast recordings and so many others were produced by the 12 time Grammy Award winning producer who revolutionized how a cast album gets produced, Thomas Z. Shepard. A protege of the great Goddard Lieberson, Thomas walked into Columbia's studios in 1960 and helped bring so many of our favorite original cast recordings to life.

Record producer Thomas Z. Shepard has won twelve Grammy awards for producing the original cast albums of shows like VictorVictoria, Ain't Misbehavin' and La Cage Aux Folles. He is best known for his many collaborations with Stephen Sondheim on such albums as Company, Sweeney Todd, Follies In Concert, Sunday in the Park With George, Merrily We Roll Along, A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures.

In The Jonathan Channel's new special series 'For The Record' Thomas Z. Shepard and Julian Fleisher explore the making of five seminal Broadway cast albums. Listeners will hear how these albums were made, and what it was like working with some of Broadway's biggest stars. Plus we'll answer the question everyone is dying to ask what exactly does a record producer do, anyway...