Worst Slide Story

Totally off-topic but thoroughly amusing: Worst Slide Story.

Road Trip

I’m heading to NYC for a few days with my son. We plan to see a Broadway show (of course), do some of the touristy things, and eat fun and exotic foods. I’m also going to drag him to the New York Public Library so I can spend time with the Billy Rose Theatre Collection. I’m hoping to find the name of at least one duo from the minstrel or vaudeville era or to find examples of people singing duets in the shows. When I return, I’m also planning to visit the Harvard Theatre Collection in the Houghton Library. They have programs from both minstrel and vaudeville shows. Ideally I would love to find descriptions of how the duos performed, but absent that, I may be able to make some extrapolations if I know what songs, what shows, what theaters, and so on. Actually I think I have a good how idea how the vaudeville acts performed from listening to numerous recordings of duets in the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Duets in Broadway shows of the 1940s and 50s

I promised this a while back. Go here for a list of the duets from the most popular of the Broadway shows of the 1940s and 50s. 

An explanation about which shows are in my list: The Internet Broadway Database reports over 150 musicals that opened on Broadway between 1950 and 1959, including revues and revivals. I have chosen only the ones that had significant runs after opening, were revived during the 1950s, or had a film adaptation during the 1950s or later. Certain less successful shows are included because the composer and/or lyricist are important figures in American music, such as Leonard Bernstein, or in American musical theater. The list is not meant to be comprehensive but rather representative of what Americans were hearing and seeing on stage and in the theater during the 1950s.

Making the connection between American musical theater and duos

Muttering to myself…

• Vocal duets are inherently dramatic. Two voices suggests two people. The voices interact, even if they sing in unison. That interaction defines the dramatic elements and adds a layer to the interpretation of the text. 
• Duets can be found throughout opera and other forms of musical drama but less so in other forms of vocal art music, such as lied or chanson. Duets in American popular music are directly connected, historically and paradigmatically, to musical theater. This is due in part to the fact that popular music in America, at least until the advent of rock and roll, was intertwined with musical theater–Broadway, revues, variety, vaudeville, minstrelsy.
• Musical theater, for a long time, provided the model (as well as the material) for the musical and rhetorical structure of duets. For example, voices in alternation suggest a dialogue. If the same text is sung by both, then two viewpoints (possibly in opposition) exist. The point at which the voices join implies a connection or a reconciliation.

Pick Yourself Up

President Obama’s inauguration speech included a number of important historical and literary references or allusions, from the New Testament to Abraham Lincoln to George Washington to Dr. Martin Luther King. My personal favorite, though, was to Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. Obama’s line, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America,” is a sly reference to the song”Pick Yourself Up” in Swing Time, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

I wonder if his mother sang that line to him (“pick yourself, dust yourself off, and start all over again”) every time he fell or got hurt or didn’t succeed at something or had some kind of setback, as my mother did to me. All these years later, I still find myself using these lines as a mantra to get through difficult times. There are many other lines my mother would sing to us, as if all of life’s instructions could be conveyed through the hooks of songs from musical theater.

That may be the real power in America’s Broadway shows–the didactic and instructive potential through memorable textual and melodic lines.

YouTube Playlist

Click on the Videos link on the right to connect to the YouTube playlists that I am creating. Or go straight to my playlist page on YouTube.

Musicals in the 1950s

South Pacific	1949	Music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; book by Rodgers, Hammerstein and Joshua Logan
Guys and Dolls	1950	Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser; book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
The King and I	1951	Music by Richard Rodgers; books and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Paint Your Wagon	1951	Music by Frederick Loewe; books and lyrics by Alan J. Lerner
Kiss Me Kate	1948	Music and lyrics by Cole Porter
Pal Joey	Original 1940; revival 1952	Music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
Can-Can	1953	Music and lyrics by Cole Porter; book by Abe Burrows
Kismet	1953	Music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest; adapted from music by Alexander Borodin; book by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis
Wonderful Town	1953	Music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green; book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov
Fanny	1954	Music and lyrics by Harold Rome; book by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan
The Pajama Game	1954	Music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell
Damn Yankees	1955	Music by Richard Adler; lyrics by Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop
Bells Are Ringing	1956	Music by Jule Styne; lyrics and book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green
Candide	1956	Music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim, and Leonard Bernstein; book by Lillian Hellman and Hugh Weeler
Li’l Abner	1956	Music by Gene De Paul; lyrics by Johnny Mercer; book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank
My Fair Lady	1956	Music by Frederick Loewe; lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner
Brigadoon	Original 1947; revival 1957	Music by Frederick Loewe; lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner
Carousel	Original 1945; revival 1957	Music by Richard Rodgers; books and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Music Man	1957	Book, lyrics, and music by Meredith Willson
West Side Story	1957	Music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by Arthur Laurents
Gypsy	1959	Music by Jule Styne; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by Arthur Laurents
Little Mary Sunshine	1959	Music, lyrics, and book by Rick Besoyan
The Sound of Music	1959	Music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; book by Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, and Maria Augusta Trapp