Author: Chris Van Patten

Yes, records…

I like to browse. I like to rummage through things at most stores. You can put me in a supermarket or Home Depot and I’ll keep myself occupied for as long as necessary. But even moreso, I enjoy going through second hand stores, taking a look to see if I can find anything of interest.

For most of my life I’ve managed to collect a considerable collection of books, films and music. I’ve take an especial interest in discovering show music, and before I got my first CD player it was mostly in the form of records. Growing up in my house, my parents were a little behind the times on the music technology – it took them to 1995 to get their first CD player. Yeah, seriously. In fact, my father only got a CD player in his car for the first time in 2005. But anyway, for lack of the CD player, we did have a very nice unit that played records, cassette tapes and, get this, 8-tracks (I’ve never owned one of those). In fact, my first cast album was the original London cast recording of My Fair Lady, in all its lavish Columbia gatefold beauty, which I found in a used book store run by the local public library. I think it cost a quarter, along with several other LPs I picked up.

When I made the switch to CDs, I kept my LPs but didn’t give them as much play. It wasn’t until college that I started to get back into collecting cast recordings on LP. Looking to see what I could find in terms of releases and sleeves. It’s been a rather fun project, because going through a $.25 bin in a college town music store you’ll never what sort of surprises you’ll be in for. Add to that when I was living in New Paltz, NY (where I attended college), the two music stores would recognize when I came in and would advise me as to where I would find the most recent musical theatre records. (I think they were just grateful that someone was buying as much as I was).

Anyway, I managed to find a lot of treasures, many times 10 for a $1.00, inclusive of many recordings, some of which aren’t available on CD, such as Inner City, Illya Darling, Carousel studio cast with Robert Merrill, Patrice Munsel & Florence Henderson, and from the commonplace into the rare, a private label recording made of The Yearling, a disastrous 3 performance flop from 1965. So plain was it, there was no date, authors, labeling – nothing that would point it out that it was a show album.

I write this today because this morning I got up and left the house at 7:00 to drive to Stormville, NY with some friends of mine. Every major summer holiday they have a weekend vendor market in which you walk through an airstrip filled with booths from antiques dealers, retailers, or people just trying to unload their junk. The first time I went to this was in 2003, when elderly neighbors of mine gave me $150 to unload their truck for them and then reload it. I had the rest of the day to wander throughout. In browsing I found the original cast albums of The Unsinkable Molly Brown and High Spirits (both featuring the sublime Tammy Grimes). I immediately picked them up and much to my delight, discovered that they each contained the show’s original souvenir program as well.

I’ve been back several times since, voraciously poring through milk crate and box after milk crate and box just to see if there’s anything of use. The downside to this is that there are a lot of terrible things such as Rex Smith, The Bee Gees, countless “never heard of them” artists and such interesting things as “Do the Strip Tease” novelties. But it’s usually worth it. Last time I got a few show albums, Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall, It’s Better with a Band, The Anna Russell Album? and The Bob Newhart Button Down Album, to name a few. While today wasn’t as successful as usual, I happened upon a mint condition LP of the original Broadway cast of 1776 for a $1. It may have been the only thing I bought (my hopes to discover LPs of On the Twentieth Century, A Time for Singing, Donnybrook! and Darling of the Day weren’t assuaged, but on the other hand they haven’t dashed either. (I know I can always check ebay, but part of the fun is finding them at such incredibly low prices).

While I know I’m going to sound a lot older than my 25 years, I can’t help but think about how much is lost in the music experience with downloadable mp3s. Sure, it’s the easiest thing to go to i-tunes and enter a search query and have it on your computer right then and there, but there’s none of the gratified satisfaction that comes from the effort put in looking for something. It’s for that reason I hope that while music stores may become about as hip as the Automat, they will never fully disappear. If you’re willing to look, you never know what surprises you may find.

The Drew Carey Show – "Brotherhood of Man"

If there was anything about The Drew Carey Show I enjoyed, it was its sense of the absurd. And that would of course include the cast spontaneously breaking into song and dance (much like the opening credits for the series). Here, Drew and the entire cast, along with guest star Hal Linden take on the “Brotherhood of Man” the fool proof showstopping eleven o’clock number from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, even parodying the dialogue lead-in and lines interspersed throughout. Two notes: They are using the original 1961 arrangement and Mimi taking on the Ruth Kobart (the original Miss Jones onstage and onscreen) vocal line is an inspired choice, wouldn’t you agree?

Happy Birthday, Michael Jeter

Today would have been Michael Jeter’s 56th birthday. Jeter, whose career as an actor spanned from his film debut in Hair in 1979 to an Emmy award winning turn on “Evening Shade” to Mr. Noodle on “Sesame Street,” was an impressive character actor who made his mark in every medium possible. His greatest career triumph arrived in the role of terminally ill Otto Kringelein the 1989 musical Grand Hotel, a role for which he received the Drama Desk and Tony awards for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Grand Hotel, which was one of the big successes of the 1989-90 season, features some of the most profound direction that has been seen in a musical. With Tommy Tune at the helm, the show was culled from the wreckage of the 1958 out of town closer, At the Grand, with a score by Wright & Forrest of Kismet fame, as well as a book by Luther Davis. When Tune came on the scene as the show was struggling in Boston, he also brought in Maury Yeston who added a few songs and helped turn the show into a solid seamless piece. Grand Hotel ran for 1,017 performances,winning additional Tony awards for Tune’s staging and choreography, Jules Fisher’s lighting and Santo Loquasto’s costumes. (The big best musical winner was Cy Coleman’s jazz noir musical comedy City of Angels). The original cast starred David James Carroll, Liliane Montevecchi, Karen Akers, Jane Krakowski, Timothy Jerome, and of course Jeter.

Carroll was forced to leave the show early in its run when he was stricken with AIDS (further sadness came when he passed away in the recording studio, just before they were to record his numbers for the original cast album). Replacing him in the show (and eventually on the album) was Brent Barrett, with whom Jeter performed the show’s unabashedly jubilant showstopper – one of the best in the American musical theatre, “We’ll Take a Glass Together” on the Tony telecast in 1990.

Moments later, it was time for the Featured Actor in a Musical award. Jeter offered the world one of the most moving acceptance speeches seen on a Tony telecast

Jeter was diagnosed with HIV in 1997, but his tragic death in 2003 came from a epileptic episode combined with asphyxiation. The world lost one of its great talents much too soon. Just thought it would be nice to remember him on his birthday.

Quote of the Day

“It’s finishing the hat. You get completely entranced. The world disappears and you’re with your own imagination, and it’s really fun,” he says. “Starting the hat is hard. Finishing the hat is fun.”

– Stephen Sondheim on why he hasn’t retired and remains excited about work. Excerpted from Jeremy McCarter’s profile on the composer in this week’s New York Magazine.

Quote of the Day: The Theatre Blogger’s Creed

The Theatre Blogger’s Creed
From Sister SarahB, with Father Kevin:

I believe in Rodgers & Hammerstein, the almighty, creator of musical theatre heaven. I believe in Stephen Sondheim, their only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the composer and born of the Divas. He suffered under the critics, was crucified, died, and was buried. At the Tony Awards he rose again. He ascended into theatre heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Fathers. He will come again with a revival and will judge the living and the dead ticket buyers. I believe in the original cast recording, the holy revival cast recording, the Tony Award, the forgiveness of critics, the proliferation of the Divas, and the eleven o’clock number. As it was at the overture and shall be at the exit music, bliss without end. Amen.

Sondheim Responds

Stephen Sondheim responds to Susan Elliot’s New York Times piece about Broadway orchestrations in a letter to the editor:

Orchestrations: Who Writes the Songs?
Re “Off the Stage, What’s Behind the Music” by Susan Elliott [Aug. 17]:

Ms. Elliott, in her piece on Broadway orchestrators, claims that Robert Russell Bennett was responsible for the “shifting harmonies and alternating rhythms” (whatever the latter term means) of Richard Rodgers’s score for “South Pacific.”

I can assure you this is not so, and the implication that orchestrators routinely do it is misleading. True, many composers of musicals can neither read nor write music and merely hum their tunes or pound them out on the piano, forcing orchestrators to supply everything from chords to rhythms, but some of us spend long hours working out harmonies and contrapuntal lines, and Rodgers was one of them, as his distinctive harmonic styles — one for Hart, one for Hammerstein — prove.

For those who, like me, write detailed piano copy, the orchestrator’s chief task is to give the dry monochromatic texture of the piano color and atmosphere, which indeed may involve adding additional lines, but the notion that orchestrators do much of the composing for composers who know what they’re doing is inaccurate.

Like everybody else, as Ms. Elliott reports, I deplore the downsizing of orchestras, but I understand the economics. If I had thought for one minute that Roundabout, a nonprofit company, could afford 11 players for the revival of “Sunday in the Park With George,” I’d have asked for them. After reading in Ms. Elliott’s article that Todd Haimes, the company’s artistic director, would have given them to me, I’ll know better the next time we work together (which, I hasten to add, I hope will be soon).

As for Jason Carr, who won the Drama Desk Award for his deft reduction of Michael Starobin’s thrilling 11-player orchestration to an ensemble of five, I’m happy for him, but the atmosphere and most of the extra instrumental lines and decorations were still Michael’s. Six-elevenths of the award, at the very least, belong to him.

Stephen Sondheim
New York
The writer wrote the music and lyrics for “Sunday in the Park With George.”

BroadwaySpace

I’m a bit of an internet whore, I’m not going to lie. My first experience with a social networking site was in college when all my friends were on Friendster (anyone?) I was also on Facebook when it was still officially “The Facebook.” and caved and got a MySpace account. I haven’t accessed the first in years, find the latter user-unfriendly and by default, Facebook has become the site I access most. However, I just discovered the social networking website for theatre fans BroadwaySpace.com this evening. I think I had seen it once previous, but paid no attention to it as I figured it was more for the younger theatre fans, but you know, is one more going to hurt?

Here’s where you can find me there….

Exciting News! – aka ‘It’s About Time!’

It’s taken years. Lots of interest on my part has gone unheeded. My mother has dismissed it because she would rather stay local, going anywhere too far from the home like that was too much for her. This from a woman who is already planning a trip to the Philippines to witness the birth of her first grandchild. My father was more indifferent, he really couldn’t care less about it unless it was directly related to one of his two favorite interests: The USMC and firefighting, two careers of which he is incredibly proud.

Well, folks, get out your snowsuits and wool caps because we be having a snow ball fight in the seventh depth tonight! Yes. My parents are going to see their very first Broadway show this fall, the acclaimed Lincoln Center Theatre revival of South Pacific. They’ve actually seen a couple of productions in NY, both off-off Broadway (which to your average John Smith would make them seem a bit theatre-savvy but they’re really not) but this will be the very first on the Main Stem.

For years, I asked to see shows for the usual birthday and Christmas presents. My mother would usually laugh it off, saying no way. And unlike the usual surprises you can get from a mother, mine was pretty much a woman of her word. She much preferred seeing community and high school productions saying she can have a good time anywhere, so long as it’s cheap. I think that was the moment I learned to arch my eyebrow.

Anyway, my overwhelming enthusiasm for this crystalline revival got my father interested. Now my father LOVES South Pacific, almost as much as he worships the grass Julie Andrews twirls on. He may not be a big musical theatre person, but those are two movie musicals he greatly appreciates (an extension goes out to all other Rodgers and Hammerstein shows in the process). Anyway, he was taken aback at the expense but for once the urge to see the show itself outweighed the expense (he was also encouraged yesterday by a golfing buddy who told him he got his tickets already for February). He asked me to look into it. And here we are.

Much to the excitement of the idle poor here, I am incredibly enthused to be going with them (don’t you love it when someone else offers to pay for your theatre?) It’s very exciting to be with a person seeing their first Broadway show. I have been a part of the privilege several times, most recently with my good friend Lauren when I got comps for The Lion King. I took her to see her second show Spring Awakening too. There is great joy in sharing the live theatre experience, an inexplicable intimacy of watching a person take in the grandeur and scope and aesthetic in a Broadway house. Here are my parents, my 67 year old mother and 68 year old father are going to venturing down to the Beaumont for an evening of joyous musical theatre. Who could ask for anything more? Wait, I can. I want them to start going more regularly.

Everyone always remembers their first 😉