You'll Never Walk Alone

A few songs from the second Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel, became popular songs with one, You'll Never Walk Alone, achieving great success, recorded hundreds of times, and remaining a well known song 67 years after its debut. 
After tryouts in Boston and New Haven, Carousel opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945. It ran for 890 performances between then and May 24, 1947 when it hit the road for a two year national tour which included 5 months in Chicago alone. In 1950 it opened in London's West End at the Theatre Royal and enjoyed about a year and a half of success. It was revived a few times in the 50's and 60's in New York. In 1999 Time Magazine named it the best musical of 20th century.
You'll Never Walk Alone is sung by the character Nettie Fowler who was played by Christine Johnson when it opened. The original cast did not record the musical until July 19, 1945, so it appears the first recording of the song was done by Frank Sinatra on May 1, 1945

   

On July 10, 1945 Judy Garland recorded her version.

 

Nine days later the original cast recorded the entire musical. As mentioned above, the original voice of the song was Christine Johnson.

 

Perry Como found success with it in 1952. While his recording was fairly straight foward, in 1954 The Imperials  gave it a R&B vocal group sound.

 

In 1956 Hollywood made Carousel into a movie, with Claramae Turner playing, and singing, the part of Nellie.

 

In 1957 Roy Hamilton had a hit with it and presented it with a more contemporary pop sound. 

 

In December 1957 Nina Simone made her first recordings and included an interesting instrumental take on the song.

 

Rocker Gene Vincent did his version in 1958 as did Conway Twitty, The Flamingos and Andy Williams in 1960, Johnny Preston in 1961, Doris Day in 1962, Ray Charles in '63.....none of them showing anything new to speak of.

In 1963 two great, and very different, recordings were made on opposite sides of the Atlantic. During the so-called "girl group" era Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles did a great cover of the song

 

 

while in London, Liverpool's Gerry & The Pacemakers gave it the beat group sound with the help of George Martin at EMI Studios

 

In 1965 the song hit the airwaves again with The Righteous Brothers 1960's pop treatment.

 

At the time Gerry & The Pacemakers recording was a hit, a section of the supporters that attended Liverpool Football Club matches were apt to break out into crowd renditions of popular songs of the day and their singing of You'll Never Walk Alone was noted by the media and it subsequently became the team anthem and has also been adopted by many other teams in various parts of the world.

In the nearly 50 years since the Patti LaBelle - Gerry Marsden - Righteous Brothers recordings were hits, the song has remained popular and has been recorded by many well-known singers.