For years, “Goodnight, My Someone” was one of the standard bedtime songs I sang to my son.
Last year, someone treated my son (who was 11) to a performance of MM by a professional company, and he absolutely loved it.
I had no idea that Wilson wrote “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go”!
Pick a little, talk a little,
Pick a little, talk a little.
Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!
Talk a lot, pick a little more.
(My apologies if I’ve put that tune in your head for the rest of the day.)
I think I’m a bit to young to have seen it when it was in original release, but I do recall seeing it on TV when I was a ninth-grader and having serious hots for the librarian for several days. The “Marian the Librarian” sequence sticks in my mind the most (and might be the beginning of my inordinate fondness for any piece of music with an ostinato bass line).
You took the bait.
“Pine Cones and Holly Berries” is the actual name of the song “It’s Beginning to Look Lot Like Christmas”. “Pine Cones and Holly Berries” part is the intro which is usually discarded.
I once played Nathan Detroit in a community-theater production of G&D. He does less singing than any other major character. So who do they cast for the movie? Frank Sinatra. That’s Hollywood for ya.
After “Ya Got Trouble,” my favorite songs from The Music Man are the barbershop-quartet numbers. “Lyda Rose, I’m home again, Rose . . .”
Right. And then they had to switch some stuff around and add a song to be sure they used his voice enough. :rolleyes:
Knowing Frank, I tend to doubt the story about him turning down the Harold Hill role. I heard he was mightily pissed about being cast as Nathan Detroit rather than Sky Masterson.
Yee, thanks for the sweet memories, Longhair.
I have a tear in my eye too, about The Music Man. My Hollywood musician grandfather played in the band for the movie. He’s 28 years gone on yond, birthday coming up soon. I miss him.
Now that Well’s Fargo Wagon song is blaring in my noggin. I remember my grandfather and I singing it.
Years ago, somewhere in the midwest, I think, a community theatre group got together with their local Sweet Adelines and SPEBSQSA chapters and cast the singers as the chorus and secondary parts (like the school board and the pick-a-little ladies) in the show. They also modified the choral arrnagements into barbershop harmony. I was told (by a member of Sweet Adelines who wasn’t in the show but did get to see it) that it was a resounding success.
Just yesterday I was cleaning through my desk and came across a copy of my father’s eulogy. My brother wrote it, and it had tons of memories to sift through. One of them was that Dad used to wake us up on Sunday mornings by blaring “The Music Man” (Usually Gary, Indiana) on the stereo.
Ticked my off for certain growing up, but I found myself singing it and smiling yesterday, remembering my dad. 5 years gone, but still singing.
I have no idea of the provenance of this video, but there is an absolutely hilarious version of “The Wells Fargo Wagon” on YouTube, here.
Something about it just makes me giggle helplessly…
jayjay, that was hilarious. I loved the way they did the barbershop quartet harmony for the “cannon for the courthouse square” line and Winthrop’s verse near the end. I also thought it was interesting how they used the melodies from two other songs from “The Music Man” during the credits.
My high school humanities teacher showed the opening sequence to our class as a demonstration that rap music was nothing new or revolutionary. As the lights came back on, my classmates didn’t know whether to be more horrified by what they had just witnessed, or by the fact that I knew almost every word.
I recently had the distinct pleasure of introducing my SO (who, as a lover of theater, movies, musicals, etc, was ashamed to admit this shocking gap in her education) to The Music Man and its evil twin Victor/Victoria. Given the opportunity, she will be more than happy at any time to second my assertion that Robert Preston is a GOD.
jayjay, that was fantastic. Done with such love and joy.
Good-night ladies, good-night ladies!
I played Mayor Shinn in high school. I got chicken pox midway through the run and had to drop out of the final weekend. Grrr.
Oh, and some trivia: When The Music Man won the Tony for Best Musical, one of the shows it beat was West Side Story. This is regarded by some today, looking back with hindsight, as some kind of travesty, comparing the revolutionary jazz-influenced WSS, which was fairly controversial and not universally loved in its day but which over the years was elevated to the status of a classic, with the much more conventional American chestnut Music Man. What these people forget is that The Music Man was almost as revolutionary at the time, giving us a liar and a thief as a hero (though redeeming him at the last minute), and more than that, not only including the music-free train-patter song “Rock Island,” which had almost no precedent in mainstream American theater, but having the freaking balls to open the show with it. Of all the time-travel fantasies in the back of my mind, going back to 1957 and watching “Rock Island” with an audience seeing it for the very first time definitely ranks right up there.
Would I pick The Music Man over West Side Story as a better musical? I don’t know. It’s a toss-up. The former doesn’t stretch the boundaries as much as the latter, but is nearly perfect; the latter is more revolutionary, and probably more influential, but has some flaws. How could you possibly choose?
While checking into the authorship of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” (or whatever you want to call it…), I noticed that Meredith Willson was born in Iowa in 1902. If he was a character in his own bit of nostalgia, he would be squarely between Winthrop and Tommy, in age.
I always loved 76 Trombones, where Prof. Hill waxes ecstatic about Sousa’s band. In Wilson’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown, he wrote one song around Sousa’s Billboard March.
Pal Joey (1940)
Just a few random thoughts.
Along with his musical theater pieces Wilson wrote the Iowa Fight Song, beloved of several generations of U of I students:
What’s the word?
The word is fight, fight, fight for Iowa,
Let every loyal Iowan sing,
The word is fight, fight, fight for Iowa
‘Till the walls and rafters ring, Rah! Rah! Rah!…….
Which gives rise to a running joke:
Michigan 42-Iowa Fights
Ohio State 21 - Iowa Fights
Minnesota 35 - Iowa Fights
For me, as rousing or touching as some of the other pieces might be, the song that hit’s the nail on the head is Iowa Stubborn :
Oh, there’s nothing half way
About the Iowa way to greet ‘cha
If we greet ‘cha,
Which we may not do at all…
But we’ll give you our shirt
And a back to go with it
If your crop should happen to die.
Years ago the town put on a production of the Music Man for a summer entertainment. Every once in a while the old guys at coffee spontaneously break into the Rock Island Song patter:
Why it’s the Model T Ford
Made the trouble
Made the people wanna go
Wanna get, wanna get
Wanna get up and go
Seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve,
Fourteen, twenty-two,
Twenty-three miles
To the county seat
Yes sir, yes sir
Who’s gonna patronize
A little bitty two by four
Kinda store anymore?
Whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk,
Where do you get it?
Gone, gone, gone
With the hogshead cask
And demijohn
Gone with the sugar barrel
Pickle barrel, milk pan
Gone with the tub
And the pail and ….…
That was my part. It does turn some heads.
Dang, SG…that’s awesome. I wish I had the whole thing memorized.
(The “whaddya talk” guy is Keenan Wynn, right?)
Jayjay, thanks so much for that! A whole lotta work went into what looks like a simple thang. Smilin, gigglin’ broad, here.
Well, as much as I’d like to believe they actually recorded that themselves, listening to different versions leads me to believe the audio itself is from the 2003 Matthew Broderick version.