"Jubilation T. Cornpone" may do nothing to further the plot or to give us a deeper understanding of a character, but you simply cannot hear this song without tapping your toes and getting caught up in the hillbilly hoopla of this guilty pleasure. It's showstopping fun and in the hands of showstopper extraordinaire Stubby Kaye, the number was the highlight of the 1956 musical Li'l Abner.
There are some things we tend to forget these days. Our past is one of them. We are so caught up in the modern musical theatre worlds of Sondheim, Wicked and The Book of Mormon that we sometimes forget the wealth of musical treasures that came in the early half of the last century. I don't mean the Rodgers and Hammerstein, post Oklahoma! era (after 1943), I mean even further back. Back to the days of operetta, silly musical comedy, and especially the musical revues that lit up the Great White Way. I am speaking of the George White's Scandals and Ziegfeld Follies installments of yesteryear. We do not speak of them much anymore. It is a shame when such a wealth of wonderful music and witty lyrics are just washed away in the gutters of Shubert Alley because we don't stop to embrace where we came from.
With the forthcoming Roundabout Theatre revival of the Cy Coleman (music), Betty Comden & Adolph Green (lyrics) musical On the Twentieth Century on the horizon for 2015, I decided to pull out the original cast recording and revel in the zaniness of this mock operetta set on board a luxury train. This musical should be produced more often than it is, but it's unique settting make it a hard show to design scenery-wise. Indeed, the original production was so tied to the cleverness and complexity of Robin Wagner's multifunctional set, that it made it hard for the show to tour. It never gained the wide popularity that it deserved.
In my opinion there is no other musical more desperately deserving of a revival than the 1970 Purlie based on the play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis. With a score like no other Broadway musical I know, Purlie sets its unique tone with its inspirational opening number "Walk Him Up the Stairs."
