As Dorothy Parker once said to her boyfriend, “Fare thee well.”
As Columbus announced when he knew he was bounced, “It was swell, Isabelle, swell.”
As Abelard said to Eloise, “Don’t forget to drop a line to me, please.”
As Juliet cried in her Romeo’s ear, “Romeo, why not face the fact, my dear?”
​

That is the lead-in to “Just One of Those Things,” a song written by Cole Porter for the musical Jubilee. There are many plays, musical experiences, and books that go byJubilee, but this one was a Broadway musical with book by Moss Hart and music and lyrics by Cole Porter. (Cole is the one on on the piano in the above image of Moss and Cole.) 

Let me take a moment to explain the difference between book and lyrics. In this context, book isn’t something you read at home with a lovely warm drink at your elbow. Book, in this case, means the spoken parts of a musical—the words between the songs. The lyrics are the words the actors are singing. Sometimes the book and lyrics are by the same person. In this case, they are not.

I’d originally thought to just gloss over the play Jubilee, but reading a bit about it, I cannot. Sometime before 1935, Porter and Hart decided to take their families on a world cruise, and while they were out and about, they would write a musical. 

It was the silver jubilee year of King George V of Great Britain. (George V was Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather.) And thus was born the ridiculous plot of Jubilee. We have a royal family, king, queen, prince, and princess of a fictitious country. They hear rumors of a possible insurrection. What do they do? Do they call up the army? Discover the causes of unrest in their country? No, they hightail it out of the castle and hide, in-plain-sight, as ordinary people. Except they are not ordinary people. 

The queen falls head over heels in love with a swimmer-turned-actor, a thinly disguised Johnny Weissmuller. What? You don’t know who Johnny Weissmuller was? Shame! He was the second, and most famous, person to play Tarzan in the original movies, starting in 1932. He was an Olympic gold-medal swimmer and set 67 world-records. So there! One thing he really could not do was act. But he starred in 12 Tarzan movies.)

The king starts doing rope tricks and falls for the society hostess, Eva Standing, who was apparently a thinly veiled Elsa Maxwell. Don’t feel too bad, I had to look her up, too. Elsa Maxwell was a gossip columnist, author, songwriter, and professional hostess well-known for hosting parties with royalty and the rich and famous of her day. She is credited with inventing the idea of the scavenger hunt as a party game. Okay, then.

The prince and princess also become involved with disguised iconic characters: Ginger Rogers and Noel Coward. I’m getting tired of explaining these. If you don’t know, you can follow the links. Trust me, there’s a lot more explanations to come!

By the end of the play, word comes that the insurrection wasn’t really going to happen. Oops! And everyone goes back to the palace and life returns to normalcy. What saves this from being a pile of dog poop is the wit of Moss Hart’s book and Cole Porter’s songs. 

There have not been many revivals of Jubilee. Why? Because the orchestration was lost. Yup. Lost. In 1948, the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company ordered the music for a production. En route, the orchestration was lost. Normally, this would not have been a problem, but they had been sent the originals and there were no copies. Jubilee was considered a lost show until 1985 when the New Amsterdam Theatre Company had the music reconstructed.
 
I have long maintained that Cole Porter was one of the most erudite American composers, ever. Let’s look at the opening to “Just One of Those Things” again:

​He did not write down to his audience. He expected them to know what he did, and he was no slouch.

Dorothy Parker was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of mostly male authors that drank and dined at New York’s Algonquin Hotel from 1918 into the 1930s. She wrote essays, short stories, poetry, plays, and screenplays. Sadly, she is most famous for: Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, or the slightly less objectional: Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker. My favorite of her poems is:

Dorothy Parker was also well-known for her affairs. She liked men, and she liked them a good bit younger than she was. She also married, divorced, re-married, separated, and finally reconciled to the same man through the years. When she died in 1967, she left her entire estate to the NAACP.

And what about the references in the song? 

Christopher Columbus supposedly received the financing for his trip to Asia when Queen Isabella of Castile sold her pearls. Not even remotely true. How do these rumors start?

Ah, Abelard and Eloise. Peter Abelard was born sometime about 1079 in what would become France. He was a brilliant student and philosopher. Around 1115, he met and fell in love with Heloise d’Argenteuil. They began an affair. She got pregnant and had a son who she named Astrolabe, after the scientific instrument. (Wow. That’s a name.) The couple got married. Her uncle, a powerful and wealthy church official, did not approve. He had ruffians break into Abelard’s rooms and castrate him. Abelard retired to a monastery while Heloise became a nun. Eventually, they both rose to become the Abbot and Mother Superior of their houses. They also wrote some steamy love letters back and forth to each other.  (Well, at least hers were steamy in spots. Not so sure about his.) This is an excerpt from one of her early letters to him: 

Heloise wrote some surprisingly feminist views not just for today, but especially for the 12thcentury. She had not wanted to marry Abelard, even though they had a child. She called marriage the “ultimate form of prostitution.” Wow.

And this leads me to Romeo and Juliet. I love a good Shakespearian play, but I don’t think this is one. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Baconian. I believe that Shakespeare wrote it, I just don’t think its particularly good. Sorry.
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That leads us into the song itself, which doesn’t require such thought.

It was just one of those things,
Just one of those crazy flings.
One of those bells that now and then rings,
Just one of those things. 
 
It was just one of those nights,
Just one of those fabulous flights,
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings,
Just one of those things.
 
If we’d thought a bit of the end of it
When we started painting the town,
We’d have been aware 
That our love affair 
Was too hot not to cool down.
 
So good-bye, dear and Amen,
Here’s hoping we meet now and then,
It was great fun,
But it was just one of those things.

This is the closing song in Jubilee, the princess sings it as she is going back to the palace. In fact, the princess gets the two songs that are most remembered from Jubilee, this and the lovely “Begin the Beguine.” But, that’s for another blog.
 
Both of these songs are now part of what is called the Great American Songbook. Do you have a favorite Cole Porter entry into the Songbook? There are so many to choose from, and thanks to Lady Gaga and a few others, another generation is being introduced to these wonderful songs. I’ll be playing these and a few other Cole Porter songs this week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.

Until next time!
 

​I never understood Bananarama. Three women, all singing the same thing: no harmonies, just all singing the same line. But they had their moments in the sun. (I could not find this on the Guinness site, but I also didn’t want to make an account and so could not access their full library.) But, between 1982 and 2009, Bananarama (Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, and Keren Woodward) had 28 songs reach the Top 50 on the UK Singles Chart.
“Cruel Summer” is their song about the darker side of summer. Member Sara Dallin said that the song “played on the darker side (of summer songs): it looked at the oppressive heat, the misery of wanting to be with someone as the summer ticked by. We’ve all been there!” 

Hot summer streets
And the pavements are burning
I sit around
Trying to smile but
The air is so heavy and dry
Strange voices are saying
(What did they say)
Things I can't understand
It's too close for comfort
This heat has got
Right out of hand

It's a cruel, (cruel), cruel summer
Leaving me here on my own
It's a cruel, (it's a cruel), cruel summer
Now you're gone

The city is crowded
My friends are away
And I'm on my own
It's too hot to handle
So I got to get up and go

It's a cruel, (cruel), cruel summer
Leaving me here on my own
It's a cruel, (it's a cruel), cruel summer
Now you're gone

Gonna feel only it was

(Repeat the chorus ad nauseum)

(The video is SO 1980s.)
​
The song came out in the UK in 1983 and went to #8 on the UK singles chart. However, the song was in the 1984 hit movie The Karate Kid. (I would tell you where it fits into the movie, but I don’t think I ever saw it. Sorry.) In spite of the fact that Bananarama refused to allow “Cruel Summer” to be included in the soundtrack album, the song went to #9 on the US Billboard charts. 

​In 1988, one of the three women, Siobhan Fahey (her first name is pronounced: Shiv-awn), broke away from the group and formed her own group called Shakespears Sister. (The misspelling is deliberate. Although, to be honest even Shakespeare didn’t know how to spell his name!) This was a much better group, especially when she teamed up with Marcella Detroit. Then we had harmonies! Gasp! Their song “Stay”was so much fun. But, as happens, egos got bruised and in the way. Finally, Fahey fired Detroit publicly during an acceptance speech for an award their album was receiving by wishing her “all the best for the future, all's well that ends well." Amazingly enough after that, the two did not speak for 25 years. But they have since made things up and are performing together again.

​Back to “Cruel Summer.” It was covered in 1998 by a band called Ace of Base. Ace of Base is the 3rdmost successful band to come out of Sweden, following ABBA and Roxette. But, Ace of Base becomes somewhat problematic when you Google Ace of Baseand up come neo-Nazis. (BTW, I Googled ABBA and Roxette in connection with neo-Nazis and got nothing.) It turns out that one of the four members of Ace of Base was a neo-Nazi in his youth. (In the picture, it’s not the one you’d expect. It’s the one on the left.) He swearsthat he hasn’t had anything to do with any of that for over 30 years. Yup. That’s what he says. There are a lot of theoriesout there about Nazi symbolism in their music as well as some articles that trace his financial dealings. 

I do not know. But, it does color how I look at them and listen to their music.

The song continues to be covered. In 2015, the Finnish extreme metal band, Children of Bodom, did something that could be called a cover. Miss Krystle covered it in 2016. (Boy, is she fascinating! She may get a later blog all her own!) And just this year (2019), Kari Kimmel brought “Cruel Summer” full circle when it was a part of the teaser trailer for the second season of Cobra Kai, the sort-of sequel to the Karate Kid movie on YouTube.

What is your favorite Bananarama song? What is your feeling on the Ace of Base controversy? Do you remember Shakespears Sister?  Let me know in the comment below. I’ll be playing some of the songs mentioned above this week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.
Until next time!

Way back when the world was young (and so was I), in 1962, there was a company called Bradmatic. Bradmatic was based in Birmingham, UK, and they developed this thing called a Mellotron. Originally, the Mellotron was seen as a way to store and retrieve sound effects but was quickly adapted for use as a musical instrument. 

With the Mellotron, we have a piano-style keyboard. Each key is attached to a strip of magnetic tape, like they used to use to record sounds and music. (We’re talking pre-digital, remember.) Each piece of tape could have three different sounds recorded on it, and you could select which of the three by turning a knob. If you pressed one key you might get the sound of a barking dog, another the sound of retreating footsteps—that kind of thing. 
​
Then, someone got the idea to record musical instruments playing each note, and the Mellotron was born! (How does this relate to “Nights in White Satin?” Patience, young grasshopper, all will be made clear.)
We move forward in time to 1967. One of the people who worked at the Bradmatic factory was a young man named Mike Pinder. Mike, in fact, set up his own Mellotron with the instrumentation that he wanted. Mike was the keyboardist for an R&B band called The Moody Blues.  They had put out an album with one small hit in the UK, but the rest of the songs, mostly covers of other bands’ songs, really hadn’t gone anywhere. The lead singer/guitarist left to go do other things.
​

​But the band found a replacement in Justin Hayward. He helped the band solidify the idea to only record their own music, leaving covers and R&B behind. The idea of a concept album began to grow. The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album had just come out, and they liked the idea of continuous music. They wanted to record a suite of songs that were about one day in the life of an ordinary man. Justin already had a few songs that he’d written that they thought they could use. However, the time period from dawn to noon proved to be difficult for them to write about. As professional musicians, they really didn’t have much experience with that time of day. They also liked the idea of not needing to talk between songs at performances. None of them were comfortable talking—they didn’t feel they could pull off “cheeky” like The Beatles. With this idea, the music could speak for itself. Thus, was Days of Future Passed born.

One night, sitting on some new sheets, Justin was thinking about his previous love and the breakup and the new relationship he was starting. He pulled out his 12-string guitar and quickly wrote the song “Nights in White Satin.”

The next day, he took the song to the band and played through it. They were not impressed. Then, Mike Pinder asked Justin to play it again, this time adding an accompaniment on the Mellotron. Magic happened.
The band had gotten an advance from their record company, Decca, and Decca wanted results. The company had recently put out their own version of stereo equipment. Thus far, this was only popular among the classical music lovers. Decca wanted to bring in a new audience. So, they called in The Moody Blues and told them that they were going to record Dvorak’s 9th Symphony. The idea was that the band would record a rock version of each movement, and then an actual orchestra would record the movement as Dvorak had written it. The boys in the band smiled, nodded their heads, went to a pub,and decided to record their own music. They still wanted the orchestra, though.

The boys contacted Peter Knight, the conductor of the London Festival Orchestra who was supposed to be recording Dvorak. Instead, for five days, he would get the tracks that the band had recorded that day, write and arrange the music for the orchestra, and then record. The only time that the orchestra and the band were in the same studio was for the song “Nights in White Satin.”

Decca executives were impatiently awaiting their Dvorak album. When they heard what had been recorded, they were not amused. One voice from the wilderness of the US liked what he heard. FM radio was starting to become popular, particularly among the college crowd. It took years, but by 1972, “Nights in White Satin” was #5 in the US. The album remained on the Billboard charts for over two years.

Days of Future Passed, the album that gave us “Nights in White Satin” is generally considered to be the beginning of the prog, or progressive, rock movement. The Mellotron became the instrument of choice for many early bands, like King Crimson and Genesis. The Beatles recorded “Strawberry Fields” using the instrument, even though their producer, George Martin, hated it, saying that it “was as if a Neanderthal piano had impregnated an electronic keyboard.” They continued to use it on The White Album and Magical Mystery Tour. 

Eventually, the Mellotron was put aside as synthesizers were able to do more and more. Production of the Mellotron stopped in 1986. But by the 1990s, bands were recording with what older models they could find. In 2007, production of a new model began.

The other movement that began as a result of Days of Future Passedwas the use of classical instruments in rock. Now, we are not even aware of the rich orchestrations that can accompany our favorite pop/rock act. Joining The Moody Blues in playing with a full orchestra have been: (to name only a very few) S&M (Symphony and Metallica) in 1999, Symphonic Livewith Yes in 2001, and even KISS in 2003.

What are your feelings on the combination of rock and classical? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I’ll be playing some of Days of Future Passedas well as some other rock/symphony pairings this week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.

Until next time!

​I am disabled. This is not an easy statement to make. The amount of physical therapy that I’ve done is beginning to rival the amount of psychological therapy I’ve done. I have walked with a cane off and on since my late 20s. I’ve used the wheelchairs at the grocery and Target for years, and now have a wheelchair of my own. I’ve had four surgeries over the past two years to try and keep the use of my hands for things like playing the piano, knitting, crocheting, and typing blogs. Last year, I did all of my High Tea Carolers’ gigs sitting on a portable stool. I have osteoarthritis. Just wear and tear of my joints. All of them. You combine that with fibromyalgia and movement becomes difficult.

When you go shopping and are in a wheelchair, the tendency is for people to overlook you. If I ask a question, I have had the clerks talk to whoever is pushing the chair and not me! So, you can imagine how difficult it can be to perform in a wheelchair. And, yet, on 8 June 2019, Ali Stroker won a Tony  award for her role as Ado Annie in the revival of Oklahoma! 
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Ali has been in a wheelchair since the age of 2 due to injuries sustained in a car crash. While she is the first Broadway performer who is disabled, she is not the first to perform from a wheelchair. That honor, as best I can tell, goes to Marjorie Lawrence in 1941.

Marjorie was a Wagnerian operatic soprano. This means that she had a huge voice with a broad range. She was the first singer to ride a horse into the “flames” at the end of Gotterdammerung as Wagner had intended. She was renowned for her physicality. But in 1941, she was hit with polio, which left her unable to stand or walk. However, this did not stop her. She continued to perform for another six years. She left the stage in 1947 to devote herself to teaching. 
​
Margorie sang some concerts from a chair or from her wheelchair. Usually, for her operatic performances, she would be placed on the stage, sitting on a rock, perhaps, and remain there for the rest of that scene. Rather static, but then, a lot of opera at that time was rather static.

​In July of 2009, soprano Joyce DiDonato was singing Rosina in the Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House in London when, during the first act, she tripped. Thinking that she had just twisted her ankle, she continued singing. As the act progressed, her ankle began to swell. She had it wrapped and began to lean on furniture and then a stick. Taken to the hospital after the opera, she found out that she had broken her leg. Because of the nature of the break, she was told not to put any weight on the leg for several weeks. But the show must go on. Subsequent performances of the opera had Joyce performing from a wheelchair. Sometimes she propelled herself about the stage and sometimes she was pushed by other members of the cast.

As recently as 2016, Russian soprano Anna Virovlansky was scheduled to make her debut at the Leipzig Opera in Lucia di Lammermoorwhen she pulled two ligaments in her leg. She sang from a wheelchair while the director, in the made-up silent role of Lucia’s dead mother, pushed her about the stage. 

What is the single biggest issue with singing from a wheelchair? I would say that it is support. It is difficult to get the proper foundation while in a wheelchair. It just requires a little more concentration and finding the right posture. Difficult, but not impossible.

What makes Ali so special? Well, she has won a Tony award. And she not only sang and acted, but she danced. All at once. You go, girl!

Do you have any wheelchair experiences? Have you ever performed through a disability? I’d love to hear your stories. I’ll be playing some of Ali’s songs as well as some of the other arias that have been sung from a chair on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.

Until next time!

I bet that most of us have thought that we have a good novel/play/musical in us if we only had the time to sit down and write it. But how many of us actually do it? Well, in the mid-1960s, Sherman Edwards decided that he’d had enough of his regular job, (which was writing pop songs), got up, and quit to go write a Broadway musical. He gave us the wonderful 1776.

Sherman Edwards was born on 4 April 1919. Wow, just barely over 100 years ago. In college, he majored in history. While he was in college, he got extra money by playing jazz on the piano at various venues. After serving his country in the military during WWII, he taught high school history, still playing the piano at night. After a bit, he realized that he was making more money playing the piano than he was teaching history. He went on to play with some of the greats of swing: Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey.

Eventually, he found himself writing songs in the Brill Building in New York City (what remained of Tin Pan Alley), churning out hits by the numbers. Among his pop hits are the nauseating “See You in September.” But he also wrote a few for Elvis. The problem with writing for Elvis was that you were forced to take a sizeable pay-cut in order for the King to record your song. 

One day, we are told, Edwards stood up mid-song, announced that he was leaving to write a Broadway musical, left the Brill building, and never looked back.
​
I don’t have the exact date for this. So, we don’t know how long he struggled with his musical, trying to get the music and the lyrics just right, trying to get backers, producers and all the rest. While Edwards wrote the music and the lyrics, the book—or the spoken parts—were rewritten by Peter Stone, a well-respected screen- and playwriter.

1776 is the story of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.The whole thing takes place between 8 May and 4 July 1776. And since Edwards taught high school history, he naturally got all the history right in his musical. 

Sorry. He didn’t. 

But a lot of that was because of the necessity of paring down the Congress of 50 people to something more manageable on stage. He played with the timeline and the characters quite a bit. For example: John Adams in the play is a combination of John and his cousin Sam. Also, at the time of the signing of the Declaration, John was well-liked. It wasn’t until while he was President that people found him to be obnoxious. (A running gag has to do with Adams “being obnoxious and disliked, you know it’s true.”) However, there are some wonderful bits that are direct quotes from the historical people. In particular, the letters that are sung between John and Abigail Adams contain quotes from letters the two wrote each other. They get a little steamy by 18thcentury standards. 
​
1776 opened on Broadway on 16 March 1969 and closed after 1217 performances. It won a Tony award for best musical. It even garnered the attention of then-President Nixon. He liked the musical, but didn’t like one song: “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.” He felt that song put the conservatives in government in a bad light, and because he was buddies with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers, that song was cut from the movie version. (If you watch the DVD, it has been returned.) 

The movie came out in 1972, with most of the Broadway cast reprising their roles for it. That is very unusual, but delightful. (Jack Warner had been badly burned when he cast Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, thinking that the young Julie Andrews wasn’t up to carrying a movie.) Whenever I think of John Adams, I always hear William Daniels.  (He was also the voice of KITT in the original Knight Rider series.) And Howard Da Silva was perfect as Benjamin Franklin.

The musical has the honor of having the longest stretch without music of any musical out there: a 30- minute stretch in Act 1, Scene 3. But there is so much that is going on, you don’t even notice. It is the only time that Broadway musicians are allowed to leave the orchestra pit during performances.

I would like to tell you about the wonderful things that Sherman Edwards did after writing 1776. I would like to, but I can’t. He died on 30 March 1981 at the age of 61. I’m sure that he did things, but none of them seem to have been of any note. 

But he hit the mark with 1776. It was revived in 1997 (with Brent Spiner—Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation—as John Adams)  and again in 2016. It is a delightful musical that I watch every July 4th. You still have time to find a copy!

I’ll be playing songs from the musical all week on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out. And if you have a favorite song from the musical or for this time of year, please let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

Until next time!