Opening night soundboard recording of Jennifer Holliday as Effie White performing the iconic Act I showstopper "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going". Also featuring Sheryl Lee Ralph, Loretta Devine, and Deborah Burrell as Deena Jones and the Dreams performing "Love Love You Baby."

A passage by New York Times critic Frank Rich from his review of the opening night of Dreamgirls describing this specific performance:
"It's at this point that Jennifer Holliday, the actress who plays Effie, begs Curtis to let her stay, in a song titled 'And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going.' Miss Holliday is a young woman with a broad face and an ample body. Somewhere in that body - or everywhere - is a voice that, like Effie herself, won't take no for an answer. As Miss Holliday physically tries to restrain her lover from leaving, her heart pours out in a dark and gutsy blues; then, without pause, her voice rises into a strangled cry.

Shortly after that, Curtis departs, and Miss Holliday just keeps riding wave after wave of painful music -clutching her stomach, keeling over, insisting that the scoundrel who has dumped her is 'the best man I'll ever know.' The song can end only when Mr. Bennett matches the performer's brilliance with a masterstroke of his own - and it's a good thing that Act I of 'Dreamgirls' ends soon thereafter. If the curtain didn't fall, the audience would probably cheer Jennifer Holliday until dawn.

And, with all due respect to our new star, there's plenty more to cheer. If Miss Holliday's Act I solo is one of the most powerful theatrical coups to be found in a Broadway musical since Ethel Merman sang ''Everything's Coming Up Roses'' at the end of Act I of 'Gypsy,' so 'Dreamgirls' is the same kind of breakthrough for musical stagecraft that 'Gypsy' was."
(https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/21/theater...)

Audio credit: tumblr.com/iremembersky

Photos by Martha Swope, courtesy of the NYPL

0:00 And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
4:44 Love Love You Baby