June 2012
117 posts
May 2012
128 posts
Listen
OMG Old Man River should always be an uptempo fox trot!
Spotify has 49 albums in the Golden Age of Light Music series.
I am in Muzak heaven, y’all!
Listen
You can listen along with me, and thanks to Spotify’s collaborative playlist feature, add your own favorites.
I am in a mood...
…which can only be described as “the mood of listen to dozens of covers of ‘Roxanne’ in a row.”
So far I’ve hit the version from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, which was so bad I turned it off in the middle; George Michael (from his so-bad-it’s-great American Songbook collection); Sting himself backed by a symphony, and Fall Out Boy. Who knows how long this will continue.
What’s your favorite cover of “Roxanne?”
If You Hadn't But You Did
Dolores Gray
Two on the Aisle | If You Hadn’t But You Did
Dolores Gray on the original Broadway cast recording
Music: Jule Styne
Lyrics & Book: Betty Comden and Adolph Green
One of the perfect performances in musical theater history.
Not easy for Harvard grads to say they went there →
boston.com
My life, my struggle.
How did I keep myself alive before stilltasty.com?
You have a Wii too?
Without a Wii, how could I play this?
YouTube XL →
youtube.com
Did you know there’s a version of YouTube optimized for watching on big screens? YouTube XL + my Wii = YouTube on the television = never leaving my couch again.
My dad borrowed my CD of the Wizard of Oz soundtrack.
- Dad: I'm glad I never bought that CD for myself.
- Me: What's not to love about The Wizard of Oz?
- Dad: The munchkins, for one.
Have you ever thought of writing a Dorothy Loudon biography? I really think there needs to be one written, but would it be the right time?
Great biographical writing is a very particular skill that involves quite a bit of research — both of the dealing with documents and talking to people variety — that I don’t generally relish. And then, of course, there’s the small matter of payment: sadly, no biography of Dorothy Loudon would ever sell enough to justify the time and expense to do it properly.
(Am I right in assuming all the anonymous questions about Dorothy Loudon are coming from the same person? Why are you anonymous?)
Katie Went To Haiti
Mary Martin
Cole Porter wrote two very dirty songs about women named Kate: “Kate the Great,” which was dropped from Anything Goes when Ethel Merman demurred from singing it — I believe the story goes that she was embarrassed to sing it on the night her mother was in the audience — and this song, “Katie Went to Haiti,” which Ethel Merman introduced in DuBarry Was a Lady (and Mary Martin recorded for an EP of Cole Porter songs).
I don’t think “Katie Went to Haiti” is one iota less dirty than “Kate the Great,” so perhaps in the five years since Anything Goes Merman simply got more comfortable being racy in public. Lord knows she had a reputation for being racy in private. It’s interesting that Martin, who shot to stardom with a different dirty Porter ditty, “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” later disavowed singing dirty songs, especially after she starred as the almost-nun Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
It’s worth noting that while DuBarry is mostly forgotten (save for a film version that bears little resemblance to the stage show, an Encores revival 20 years ago, and a couple of British concert productions), most of its best parts have been transplanted into other Porter pieces including Anything Goes (“Friendship”) and High Society (“Well Did You Evah!”).
One small footnote about DuBarry was a Lady: according to Wikipedia, one of the women who took on the part Merman originated later in the original Broadway run was none other than Gypsy Rose Lee. Isn’t that interesting?
