All tagged Flower Drum Song
Summer is such a popular time for weddings, everyone betting the bank on happiness and receiving gifts for trying. I’m not a fan of weddings and I often find myself drifting into distraction when I’m at one. At a recent wedding, during all the pomp and circumstance and the ongoing blah blah blah, I of course had to entertain myself somehow to keep from nodding off. So, I got to thinking about showtunes about getting married and decided to make a list of them. My one rule: any song that made the list had to include the words “married” or “marriage” in its title in some form. Here is what I came up with…
I must be hungry today, as all I can seem to think about are showtunes that make references to food. It started out with "Food, Glorious Food" from Oliver! and escalated into a full-on party in my head of songs that celebrate eating. This got me thinking: could I assemble an entire meal using references to songs from musicals. Won't you join me for dinner and see what I came up with?
Rodgers and Hammerstein are considered major groundbreakers in the world of musical theatre, having established the formula by which musicals are created and judged. The scores of their musicals have become major contributions to the American Songbook, and even a second-rate Rodgers and Hammerstein song can outshine many a first-rate song in another musical.
We love to celebrate the classic Broadway scores! We revel in a joyously wonderful flop score! There is, however, one area of the Broadway musical that we seldom address: the musicals that were neither calamitous flops, but neither were they runaway hits. They were around for maybe a season and change (250-500 performances), maybe made some money or came close to breaking even (in a day where that was possible). I refer to these as the “also rans” of Broadway. Today’s blog is a celebration of the scores from these middling musicals that have much to recommend in the way of great music.
