This would have been mid to late 80s, and I was in the 4th or 5th grade (I think). I think the musical was about the founding fathers of the US, and I distinctly remember a song with part of the chorus “great big beautiful world!”, and the line (sounds strange) “after that a wrestling match is getting underway”.
That’s all I remember. I even had a ten second solo, but I don’t remember my verse.
I tried googling those lyrics, with no luck.
My record with wild-ass guesses is abysmal, but could you possibly have been involved with something based on Walt Disney? The Carousel of Progress at Disney World has some of the elements you’re talking about, including a song called “A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” with lyrics including “shining at the end of every day” which might sound a bit like “a wrestling match is underway.” Part of the attraction involves preparing for a Fourth of July festival with people playing various roles, including George and Martha Washington.
Again, a WAG, and these never ever seem to work for me, but who knows?
I’m just wondering if the song was “We’ve Got A Great Big Wonderful God”.
It was in school, and I’m pretty sure about the wrestling line, which followed a couple of lines about tennis and horse racing, I think.
Could it have been written by a staff member perhaps?
Or a staff member changing the lyrics to “personalize” them? I remember my music teacher tried doing this once when the jr. high chorus was going to a competition. We had to sing some awful song about being the kids from the country (chosen by her because we would be the smallest school in the competition) and she wanted to change some of the lyrics to fit in the name of our town. These changes did not rhyme and did not fit the meter. Through passive resistance, we managed to keep the original lyrics, not that it mattered because we still came in last place.
Sounds like one of the musicals the teachers in the accelerated program at my elementary school liked to put us in every year. There was one about Thomas Edison and one about PT Barnum, and Amazon informs me they were both written by a woman named Grace Hawthorne. Maybe she’s the author of yours as well, and it looks like she has a few that might be it - does “Tall Tales and Heroes” or “How the West Was Really Won” sound right?
I don’t think it was a staff musical – I distinctly remember that the background music was from a tape or a record (I remember this because the tape had a skip or a scratch or something that was very noticeable), and included a full orchestra. I think it’s pretty unlikely the staff of my little school could have pulled that off.
I can’t find enough about these to verify – it’s possible, but just a guess without knowing more about them.
Were the lyrics: “Great, big beautiful world, waiting out there for me”?
Arond 1973-4, I heard that song in a one-reel film in a movie theater prior to a feature film. It showed several girls traveling to various destinations. They may have been flight attendants. The song played throughout the 20-minute film.
That definitely sounds like the Hawthorne musicals I mentioned. It was an orchestral score that was played off a cassette. I recall the teacher had two versions of it - one with lyrics that we used when we were learning the songs, and one without that got used during the actual shows.
Was it set up so that everyone in the class had a role, even if it was just one line? That’s how they were for me. I was in a small class, so I wound up playing four or five one-line roles in the same play, including one the teacher created for me. (There was this one song where I was the only person in the class who could get the vocal cues right, so she gave me a beret and a megaphone like an old-school Hollywood director and had me come out onstage and cue the rest of the class to start singing.)
No – from my memory, the chorus was something like:
…
Great, big,
Great big beautiful,
Great big beautiful world!
Yes to the “every kid gets a line” part. As for the rest, it might fit, but until I see lyrics or hear the music, I don’t know. I’ll try and search for Hawthorne song titles and lyrics later on.
From my rather dusty musical knowledge, here is my best attempt at the actual music for the snippet of the chorus I remember:
lyrics:
Great, big,
Great big beautiful,
Great big beautiful
world!
Notes (1 for each syllable – assume in C major):
E, C,
F, F, F-E-D,
E, E, D-E-D
C
timing (assume 4/4):
half note, half note,
quarter, quarter, eighth-eighth-quarter,
quarter, quarter, eighth-eighth-quarter,
whole note.
There used to be (and probably still is) a bunch of musicals (and plays) designed for schoolkids. They were only produced in schools and thus are hard to track down. I know our school did one, and started work on another before they dropped the idea.*
This may be something like that: something designed for students (and cheaper to buy rights for than an actual Broadway musical). I’m seeing that Grace Hawthorn did do a lot of these, but they usually had a religious theme and were more likely to be done in a church or synagogue (Grace played no favorites) than a public school.
*The only thing I remember about the second was that it was about American tourists in Paris, with a song “Pigalle isn’t Pigalle any more.” Years later, it struck me as an odd subject for a musical for kids, since the Pigalle they were singing about with such nostalgia was best known for its prostitutes. I see now that the title of this was So This is Paris. There’s a movie by the same name, but the plots are not the same.
I can’t access that link from where I’m at right now – does it have lyrics/music/song titles?
Nothing useful there except that blurb and the page itself shows that the musical was performed by a public high school choir. “Revolutionary Ideas” fits what has been presented in this thread.
There’s an LP, perhaps a trip to New York is in order. Or see if Arlington County Library can borrow it from the New York Library.
Thanks. I’ll look into it. I’d have to get hold of a record player even if I had the LP!
Psst… Ion USB turntable… LPs (or 45s or even 78s!) directly to the computer, as .wav files, easily converted to space-saving .mp3 files. One of the best damn investments I’ve ever made. “I have died and gone to LP heaven.”