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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a special focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artist who invented it. This is the second part of my recent conversation with author Thomas Hischak regarding his new book, Song of the Season — Outstanding Broadway Songs Since 1891. In this captivating book, Hischak looks back at the history of the Broadway musical, providing us with a chronicle of the musicals that debuted in each and every New York season from 1891 to 2022, and then he makes the audacious choice to identify one single song as the song of that particular season. To facilitate this discussion, I selected one or two songs from each decade covered in the book for us to talk about.

And by the end of the previous episode, which you may want to listen to before continuing with this one, we had made it into the 1930s with Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine from the musical Jubilee. As always, I have to thank the many generous patrons of this podcast who absolutely helped to make it possible, with a special shout-out today to Taryn Dar and Cheryl Hodges Selden. If you would like to support the mission of Broadway Nation, there'll be information at the end of the episode about how you, too, can become a patron. Now, we pick up with Thomas Hischak's selection for the song of the 1938-1939 Broadway season. It's a Kurt Weill song, September Song from Knickerbocker Holiday, 1938.

[1:48] Thomas Hischak: That show only ran long enough. It probably made money because Walter Houston was in it. He was a major Hollywood star, although he had done some great stage work. And as long as he was in it, it ran. So I think they probably actually made some money in it, but never revived. I shouldn't say never. An interesting setup, early New York and not historically accurate kind of fun. And it was making fun of Roosevelt. And Peter Stuyvesant was played as kind of a Roosevelt guy who's bulldozing his way through politics and getting what he wants. Sort of the villain to a certain extent. Oh, yeah. He wasn't supposed to be very likable. But once they cast Walter Houston, he was. They couldn't not make him likable.

Walter Houston was kind of like everybody's, he wasn't that old, but he was like everybody's favorite grandfather or uncle. Peter Stuyvesant ended up not being such a bad guy. And then the good guy, the young American, is going to fight him. And it came up looking a little obnoxious and it just didn't work. And there were some interesting songs in it. But for some reason, this one song, September Song, just was so far above everything else in the show and just about everything that season, according to my opinion. The lyric is by Maxwell Anderson, the only musical he ever wrote. He was a playwright. Some of his plays were in verse and he never returned. I don't know if he had a bad experience, but he was a very well-known playwright.

He writes the lyrics for this song. And Kurt Weill, he's been in America for a very short time when he writes this show. He's bringing a little bit of the European sound to his music. At the same time, he's adopting American popular music and absorbing it all. Just a brilliant composer. This song, I would say it's got to be one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard. I used the word haunting, not scary, but just unusual and enticing and strange chords in unusual ways it builds. The lyric is brilliant, very different from your usual love songs. It's an old man talking to a young woman. He's pretty much saying, stick with me. I'm old. I won't be around long. When I was younger, a lot of women flocked around me.

But now that I'm old, nobody's flocking around me. But if you stay with me these last precious years, how much you will help. But yeah, great song, great lyric. It was sung by Walter Houston. He was not a singer. They wanted him for the part. He was a star and they thought he was right for it. And ironically, because they got him, the show didn't work, but he worked. They asked, what's your range? Because we'll write some songs for you. He said, well, I'm going to be on the radio tomorrow night for a benefit thing for the depression. And I'm going to sing and you listen and say what you get. And they realized he had a very narrow range. So the song does have a narrow range, but it's not an easy song to sing.

It builds and it's romantic, but it's also sad. You know, it's about aging and the end of your life and trying to hold on to something young and beautiful because life isn't that way anymore. And it's just an amazing song.

[5:24] ♪ Musical number: "September Song" — performed by Walter Houston ♪

[8:03] David Armstrong: Let's jump to what you described as one of the controversial selections in your book, or at least a somewhat controversial song. And that's I Enjoy Being a Girl, which is from the 1958-1959 Broadway season.

[8:22] Thomas Hischak: Right. There were some good songs that season. There were some better shows. Flower Drum Song is the show. It's Rodgers and Hammerstein's only musical comedy, as you could describe it. It was a very popular show then and not easily revived now, although they did a rewritten revival of it some years back, which I thought was really very good. They got rid of all the PC problems with it. Well, as you noted in the book, they also turned it into a musical play. They turned it back into a Rodgers and Hammerstein play musical instead of a comedy, which they set out to do. And yes, they really did. The score is excellent. Rodgers and Hammerstein. This is not one of their well-known shows before that score.

There's not a dud in it. That season. Oh, David, you remind me. What were the big hits that season I was competing with? Very good shows. I know. Yeah. Just a few things you might have heard of, like Gypsy. Yeah. Destry Rides Again. Juno is that season. Not a well-known show. Goldilocks. Gypsy is that big show that we would think you would have selected a song from. I have to explain at this point that I went by the Broadway season as they did it at the time. So when it came to Tony Awards, it was a different time. So Gypsy and Sound of Music competed with each other and Fiorello. But that was the next year, according to the Tonys. But anyway, this season, Gypsy is by far the outstanding show and one of the great scores of all time.

And what do I pick? But I Enjoy Being a Girl from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. I could just see people throwing things. Why? Well, Gypsy is one of the great integrated scores. Only a few of those songs have ever really traveled because they're so tied into the plot. It's such a beloved score that people have recorded everything in there. You know, those songs belong in Gypsy. You really can't put them anywhere else. And here in Flower Drum Song is a very silly, politically incorrect song. A girl singing about she just enjoys being all the feminine things because men go crazy over her. It's not what you want to hear today. But the song was perky. It was somewhat sarcastic, satirical.

And that's how they played it in the revival. It was used in hundreds and hundreds of fashion shows, pageants, parades. We wanted a perky song. This was the perky song. It's disarmingly catchy. You know, it's kind of like, oh, I hate what the song means. But then you listen to that music and it's kind of like, wow, it was the song everybody knew. Maybe not right away, but boy, once it caught on, that was the song for so many different events. And it continued that way till the women's movement finally said, we don't like that song. And nothing in Gypsy did that. And that's why I took the audacious step, pick that and not everything's coming up roses, because as great as that song is, it didn't have the impact that this little diddy did from Rodgers and Hammerstein.

[11:22] David Armstrong: Let's jump to, as you say, a song that I love the way you describe it. If anybody knows anything about music today, it's probably because of this particular song, which is, of course, Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music. And again, there were good shows that year. Once Upon a Mattress, Bye Bye Birdie, Fiorello, The Fantasticks, Off-Broadway, wonderful, wonderful scores. And The Sound of Music is a very good score, too. But everybody knows Do Re Mi. It's used in schools. It's used for jazz musicians. It's just something about it. If I went to a truck stop and went to somebody who'd never seen a play and said, do you know any of the songs in this book? And they'd say, well, I know Do Re Mi. It would be the only one.

People have trouble believing that this was written for Sound of Music. They just think it was an old school teaching song going back to way back when. And it was like, no, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote this silly little diddy where she tries to teach them how music works. And it works. And it builds. And it gets more complex. And it's a march. It starts off quietly, but turns into a vigorous march. And it's like everybody knows it. And they even know the lyrics. That's very rare. It's actually quite a brilliant song. And the idea is not original. There are songs in Europe that were used by music teachers to teach kids the notes. And there were some that were pretty popular. And Rodgers was familiar with this.

And of course, this is set in Austria. So it would make sense that it would be that kind of European, let's teach the kids how to sing song. But it ended up being much more than that. I love the way you break down the lyric and are quite critical of it. As many people have, you know, some people said it's a dummy lyric, at least the fa lyric.

[13:10] Thomas Hischak: Yeah. But I think your point is much more germane, which is that it's supposed to be improvised in the moment. She's making this up on the spot as a character, very smart dramatist, then wrote a song that sounds like somebody is making it up on the spot. You have to remember this is a nun or a nun to be. She is not going to use Cole Porter rhymes. All right. She's not going to use smart things. She loves nature. She loves simple things of life. She's already saying my favorite things. We kind of know where she is. Yeah. In the play, she sings that song before she sings Do Re Mi. There she is. You could almost feel the improvisational aspect of it. Other people say, well, Hammerstein just threw that and he was going to go back and fix.

He was very ill when he wrote this song. It was probably a real effort to do that score. I'm sure he was like, oh, my God, what's law? I mean, we're going to do you know, I'll get back to that later. A note to follow. So you could take it either way. But it's a song we take for granted, like it's always been there, but it hasn't. It's like 76 Trombones. Everything goes back to Sousa. You know, it's like, no, it's 1956 or seven. I think it's just kind of there and it's part of our culture. To me, that's more significant than any of the brilliant songs in Gypsy.

[14:26] Thomas Hischak: Rittman's contribution to this song.

[14:46] Thomas Hischak: Yeah, you do. You say Rodgers felt so hemmed in by having to return to a scale that he turned to dance arranger Trudy Rittman to help him.

[14:54] Thomas Hischak: That's right. Rittman was some kind of genius who fully understood dance and music. She came up with the embellishments that Maria magically creates using the scale for an actual tune.

[15:05] Thomas Hischak: Now children, once you have these notes in your head, you can sing a million different tunes by mixing them up like this.

[15:12] Thomas Hischak: So do la fa mi do re.

[15:20] Thomas Hischak: Now you do it.

[15:21] Thomas Hischak: So do la fa mi do re.

[15:28] Thomas Hischak: So do la ti do re do.

[15:35] Thomas Hischak: So do la ti do re do.

[15:41] Thomas Hischak: Now let's put it all together.

[15:43] Thomas Hischak: So do la fa mi do re.

[15:51] Thomas Hischak: So do la ti do re do.

[15:59] Thomas Hischak: But it doesn't mean anything.

[16:01] Thomas Hischak: So we put in words, one word for every note.

[16:06] Thomas Hischak: When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything.

[16:20] Thomas Hischak: Together.

[16:22] Thomas Hischak: When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything.

[16:36] Thomas Hischak: Do a deer, a female deer.

[16:40] Thomas Hischak: Re, a tropical good sign.

[16:44] Thomas Hischak: Mi, a name I call myself.

[16:49] Thomas Hischak: Because, let's face it, you've got a song where each one of the notes has got to be featured and then you can do different things.

[16:55] Thomas Hischak: Think how brilliantly those notes are rearranged by the time they're doing, you know, fa, fa, fa, mi, so, so.

[17:02] Thomas Hischak: That will bring us back to do.

[17:07] Thomas Hischak: Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do, mi, mi, mi, so, so, fa, mi, so, so, re, fa, fa, la, ti, ti, do, mi, mi, mi, so, so, re, fa, fa, la, ti, ti.

[17:27] Thomas Hischak: When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything.

[17:41] Thomas Hischak: She was amazing. She composed most of Uncle Tom's Cabin Sequence and the king and I kind of turned it over to her and said, well, it's a dance, so you kind of, you know, but she was evidently a formidable type person because he said he kind of bossed everybody, but he was afraid of her.

[17:57] David Armstrong: I love that.

[17:58] Thomas Hischak: Yeah. She's one of my heroes, actually. There's a whole story there about her.

[18:02] Thomas Hischak: I don't even begin to know yet.

[18:04] Thomas Hischak: Yeah. I think her niece is coming out with a book about her, which I'm very excited about.

[18:08] David Armstrong: Oh, wonderful.

[18:09] Thomas Hischak: Yeah.

[18:10] Thomas Hischak: Yeah.

[18:11] Thomas Hischak: I can't wait to hear it.

[18:12] David Armstrong: Don't go away.

[18:18] David Armstrong: Thomas and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[18:23] Thomas Hischak: Do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do.

[18:41] Thomas Hischak: So now we're going to jump just seven years from Do, re, mi to Aquarius.

[18:50] David Armstrong: What a jump.

[18:51] Thomas Hischak: Wow. Amazing. Aquarius from here.

[18:54] Thomas Hischak: First rock musical on Broadway. First time the sound of rock and roll was there. It had been parodied in Bye Bye Birdie and a couple other songs here and there popped up and tried to be rock and roll. Here was an entire score. Not every song was a rock and roll number, but it was a rock and roll score.

[19:11] Thomas Hischak: Aquarius is not pure rock. It's closer to a gospel number in its repetition, the way it builds and everything. It doesn't have the hard beat of a rock number, which a lot of the other songs do.

[19:23] Thomas Hischak: When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.

[19:43] Thomas Hischak: This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

[19:48] Thomas Hischak: The age of Aquarius.

[19:53] Thomas Hischak: Aquarius.

[19:59] Thomas Hischak: Aquarius.

[20:04] Thomas Hischak: I picked it of all the songs from here because I thought anything from here is going to be significant because it's going to be kind of guiding the way to the future. But I picked this one. It was very, very popular, but so were some of the other songs. But I liked the kind of hypnotizing quality of it, the mysterious quality. The lyrics being about constellations and the planets and a little Eastern philosophy thrown in there. But it's just a great song. And it's a song that's catchy. It's a song that builds, which is what I really like. It's not a repetitive chant. It actually builds in its sound and the way it's arranged and everything.

[20:42] Thomas Hischak: The song was not the opening number for the show. It was buried somewhere in the middle of the second act. And Hare went through many changes when it came to Broadway. Songs moved around and script changes. The nude scene was added for Broadway. It was never in the off-Broadway one. This was considered a better song than it was placed in. And so they moved it from the second act to the opening of the show. And it is a wonderful opening. It just sets up everything for the musical. And it became popular. It's not a long song if you want to just sing it through. You have to repeat it and build and choreography or movement. So when the Fifth Dimension wanted to record it, they found it was just so short. So then they mashed it up with another song, which is generally known as Let the Sun Shine In. And that duo recording, whatever you want to call it, there must be a name for that, was a huge success. And that's how most people knew Aquarius.

[21:41] Thomas Hischak: The Fifth Dimension was a vocal group. They weren't rock and roll. Their sound was similar to what you got on Broadway, although it wasn't as mystical. And that recording, Let the Sun Shine In and Aquarius, was heard everywhere. Everybody knew those two songs because of it. I think it was the number one song in the world that year.

[21:59] David Armstrong: Really? Oh, my.

[22:01] Thomas Hischak: Yeah. Hare's been revived with different slants. I've seen many productions over the years. Certain things change. Some things are a little dated because it is 1967, 68. But not this song. This song is timeless. I really feel that way. Again, I enjoyed reading your list of who else recorded the song. Of course, the Fifth Dimension is the one that everybody knows. But I was surprised to hear that Andy Williams and the Osmond Brothers recorded it.

[22:30] Thomas Hischak: And I bet they wore sweaters when they did it.

[22:33] David Armstrong: I'm sure they did.

[22:34] Thomas Hischak: All right, we're going to now jump. You know, it's not that big a jump, but in a way it seems, I don't know why it feels like a big jump to me. We're going to jump to Chicago and all that jazz.

[22:44] David Armstrong: Well, it is a jump.

[22:45] Thomas Hischak: It happens to be a jump backwards. That whole show is a pastiche musical of the 1920s. It's a brilliant pastiche. Some of the songs are not just 20s. They're very specific patterns, somewhat after a particular song sung by a particular person, which the 1975 season most didn't know those old singers. When Barney comes out and sings Mr. Cellophane, it's patterned just the way Bert Williams came out and sang I'm Nobody or Nobody is the name of the song. Kind of this wistful, self-degrading kind of thing. And did people get the connection? No, but they enjoyed Mr. Cellophane. That was the really brilliant thing about Chicago is that you didn't have to know what they were doing to totally enjoy it.

[23:32] Thomas Hischak: When Mama Morton comes out, Be Good to Mama, it was almost exactly like a Sophie Tucker song. But nobody knew who Sophie Tucker was. But the writers did. Oh, yeah, they knew very well. And of course, they were pretty old. You know, not real old at this point, but they didn't live to the 20s. They sure knew all those songs and those recordings. So I picked all that jazz. I think it's the best song in the show, and I think it's also the song that exemplifies what the show is about. This hedonistic, wild, roaring 20s thing. I like the way this song builds as well. It goes places. And I think it's just a great way to open a musical. Chita Rivera singing it. It just brought down the house at the beginning.

You know, it was like an 11 o'clock number, but it was there at 8 o'clock. And thanks to the movie, it became very well known again. The lyric is very sassy, very clever, probably more clever than a lot of the 20s songs. And just the rhythm of it. Kander and Ebb take the word jazz and turn it into a two-syllable word. All that jazz. You know, kind of a Louis Armstrong kind of sound. I just love the way it plays with words and all the things it's filled with references to the 20s. Including Louis Armstrong.

[24:46] Thomas Hischak: Oh, yeah. But they didn't worry about it. It would go down to United Drug. The hell is that? You know, a drug store that was famous. And other references. And it was like, you know, it's okay. We're just doing it. Were there people in the audience who remembered the 20s? It'd be pretty old. And this show might be a little too rough for them. This was not nostalgia like Hairspray would be, you know, in Greece. This was recreating a period. And as I noted with Some Like It Hot, the 20s are not that easy to pastiche. 50s, easy. 60s, yeah. But the 20s, the music is a little more complex than that. And you can't just go fast and call it a 20s. But this one definitely has a 20s sound to it. Many good songs in it, mostly tied to the plot.

But all that jazz just is about the time. You know, it's a time and a place. Chicago in the roaring 20s. Yeah, this is where we are. And this is where we need to be for this story. I just love the way it opens. One woman coming out in a flunky 20s gown, and she gave you everything you need to know about the evening.

[25:51] Thomas Hischak: And even though we're in an era now of very few songs, as opposed to Aquarius, which becomes all of those songs turn into top 10 hits, or so many of them do. Oh, yeah. That's sort of the end of that. That won't happen again. Very rarely will a theater song get up there in the big numbers. Even a song as popular as Sending the Clowns, that was recorded by everyone and had a huge hit recording with Judy Collins. I don't even think that got into the top numbers. It was very well known and it made the song famous. But theater songs on the charts is pretty much a thing of the past. By this time, yeah. I do remember, however, All That Jazz. In fact, the first time I heard the song, I think was Bernadette Peters singing All That Jazz on the Carol Burnett show.

[26:37] David Armstrong: Oh, I could believe it.

[26:40] ♪ Musical number: "All That Jazz" — performed by Bernadette Peters ♪

[27:30] Thomas Hischak: And I remember that song standing out and then hearing it not too long afterwards, either on the cast album or something like that. I was a teenager at the time.

[27:41] Thomas Hischak: Oh, she's gonna shimmy till the garters break.

[27:48] Thomas Hischak: And all that jazz.

[27:51] Thomas Hischak: Show her where to find her girdle.

[27:56] Thomas Hischak: It was a song that got out into the world, if not in a hit recording.

[28:01] Thomas Hischak: Let she hear her baby squeal for all that jazz.

[28:16] Thomas Hischak: After recording this conversation, I found that video on YouTube and discovered that Bernadette Peters had performed All That Jazz on the Carol Burnett show three months prior to the Broadway opening of Chicago.

[28:30] Thomas Hischak: What's interesting is we get to the 1986-87 season, and your song of the season is going to be from the 1930s. But I agree with you, that year, that song just had an impact. I think on Broadway, it certainly hadn't had before, and even in America, it had never had before. We're talking about the Lambeth Walk.

[28:52] Thomas Hischak: From Me and My Girl. My criteria was it had to be a song that had not been heard on Broadway before. You could, you know, fool around with that limitation, but here was the case where it was a pretty lackluster season for new songs, and here was this old song coming from an old show just lifted the audience up with the end of the first act. It's one of the great first act closers. It was first done, the musical, back in the late 30s in London. It was very successful. It was made into a movie, which they called The Lambeth Walk because the song was so popular. Neither the play nor the movie was ever really well-known in this country. The dance sort of caught on in the forties because the song does describe this walk that you do, a kind of a strut, cockney strut.

It did get some popularity, mostly as a dance number, and there were people who recorded it, but it was never in the mainstream. And then after this very successful London revival of the show, where they changed the script a little bit and they put some other songs in by the same songwriter, but this had always been in the show and been the centerpiece of the show. And this cockney comes out and is an audience on stage. His audience is aristocratic, snooty, and he's got cockney, and he sings with his girlfriend about the Lambeth walk.

[30:10] ♪ Musical number: "The Lambeth Walk" — performed by the cast of Me and My Girl ♪

[32:18] Thomas Hischak: I was leery about using such an old song for the most significant song of that season. But when I looked at the other competition, I was like, no, nothing came close. This was the song.

[32:29] David Armstrong: That's a bold statement. And I don't disagree with you, but I'm sure some people will, considering it's the same season as Les Miserables.

[32:36] Thomas Hischak: Oh, yeah. I've had to defend that one too. Les Miserables, and there were a lot of very good songs, and some became popular outside of the context. But in the case of that, it was the show that was so famous. Everybody wanted the whole show. Everybody wanted the whole score. It wasn't, you know, let's get the pop version of "Bring Him Home." I'm sure there were, but I kind of see that as a show with a score that everybody loved. Where Me and My Girl, it was a song that everybody loved. But oh, yeah, I'll never convince Les Miserables fans of that.

[33:10] David Armstrong: It's interesting because the Lambeth walk, as you said, is so infectious. And in fact, my husband and I always have a joke. If that song comes on, we immediately say, turn it off, turn it off, because you will never get it out of your head for the next week. You are stuck with it in your head forever.

[33:25] Thomas Hischak: I've always wanted to go back, which I've never done, but compare the 1980s Broadway version with the original version. Does it have that many key changes in it? Because it just keeps changing and going up and up, you think it's like 25 key changes, it feels like.

[33:44] David Armstrong: It doesn't stop.

[33:45] Thomas Hischak: My guess is it's there. Well, if nothing else, there is the old movie, the British movie called The Lambeth Walk, and Lupino Lane, who introduced it on the London stage, sings it in that movie. That's where you'll hear if it's there or not. But this composer was an old guy. He was pretty good, and he was subtle at times, too. The show was filled with wonderful songs, none of which are well known. None became famous because of the show. But you listen to that score, and it's like, wow, this is a great 1930s score. And it is in many ways to find the score.

[34:27] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Thomas and I will be back right after this quick break.

[34:38] David Armstrong: You talked a little bit earlier about how "Aquarius" and "All That Jazz" were so perfect as the opening numbers, the opening statements of those shows. We get to another season that we're going to talk about, 97, 98, where, as you write, there are two shows that year that just have opening numbers that so perfectly set up the show that's coming and just knock you off your seats. And that, of course, is Ragtime and The Lion King. And because The Lion King was written for a movie and not new to Broadway, I got off the hook. I didn't have to choose which of those two amazing openings. And they're very different. So I chose Ragtime. Here's a score filled with beautiful music. You know, I didn't always pick my favorite song.

I picked songs that I thought were my favorite song on that show is "New Music." I just think that is intoxicating. And that sequence when she comes down those stairs at the end of that song and the way that song is so beautifully structured to that moment, it's thrilling. You get goosebumps. And then the situation is building the song. I thought the song by itself is really fine. But Ragtime, the song Ragtime, which opens the show, does some amazing stuff for an opening number. Just as Fiddler on the Roof opened with "Tradition" and they told you everything you need to know about the village and the people and the characters. So it's not the first time it's been done. But in this case, you're introducing three groups of people and you're capturing them musically. And what I loved about that original production, you saw it in their costumes, you saw it in their lighting. So here's a song you start off with the white upper class living in the suburbs.

[36:18] ♪ Musical number: "Ragtime" — performed by the cast of Ragtime ♪

[39:08] David Armstrong: It is amazing. I think of that show as being so influential on everyone that's come afterwards, even more than it was a hit at the time, although it was a substantial hit. It has influenced all the writers that came afterwards. It's such a masterclass, that number is a masterclass in how to write one of those opening numbers.

[39:28] Thomas Hischak: Yes.

[39:29] David Armstrong: Introducing like a dozen characters, which is really hard to do.

[39:31] Thomas Hischak: Oh, yeah.

[39:32] David Armstrong: And that confusing or losing the people, you know, the audience, it's done so well.

[39:37] Thomas Hischak: Yeah, it really is perfect blending of script and score.

[39:52] David Armstrong: So, let's talk about one of my favorite songs from the current era. I'll put it that way. For some people, this may seem like an old show already. For me, it's certainly not. And this is "Omar Sharif" from The Band's Visit. One of the most mesmerizing songs, I think, of the modern era.

[40:15] Thomas Hischak: I agree. I kind of lose faith in Broadway when one show after another opens and nothing really excites me in terms of the score. Productions are usually great, performances are outstanding, but I just can't get excited about scores. But this score for The Band's Visit absolutely wowed me. It is so unlike anything else. I think that's one of the reasons. David Yazbek had written several musical comedies, some successful, like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, some not. A Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I was never too impressed with his lyrics. I liked his music pretty much. But in this show, the two came together, and "Omar Sharif" is one of the most hypnotizing lyrics I've ever heard. It's nostalgic for a time of her youth, and it's totally foreign to us.

We have no connection to say, oh yeah, I remember when we, you know. This is so unlike our youth, and listening in Israel to recordings coming from the so-called enemy, Egypt, and just being mesmerized by these two artists.

[41:40] ♪ Musical number: "Omar Sharif" — performed by the cast of The Band's Visit ♪

[43:10] Thomas Hischak: We know who Omar Sharif is. The other person she sings about in the song is a singer from Egypt who was very popular. She was mesmerized by that singer.

[43:18] Thomas Hischak: Omar Sharif in the movies. Egyptian movies and then, of course, famous American movies. In the way she describes these two people, in the way she talks about the music coming into their house, is just poetry on a high level. Yazbek just found something he'd never been called for in his earlier shows. I think it's just remarkable. I agree with you. I remember sitting in the theater and just being drawn in. It's that thing where you just feel like everything goes away except that performer on the stage singing that song. That sort of tunnel thing that happens in great moments of theater. I've seen the movie it was based on, a very good movie, but I don't remember that moment in the movie. She may have talked about the past, maybe she mentioned Omar Sharif or whatever, but it was a musical moment.

It was a feeling and a yearning that could only be expressed with music, not with a monologue. So whether it's in the movie or not, it's a highlight in the musical. And I remember you went away from the show and I loved the entire show, but that was the thing I talked about. I said, that song in that show was the standout moment of the season. The music is so interesting because it's so un-Broadway. It's got some kind of like a Hebrew hymn to it. At the same time, it has the call from the minarets. The Arab call is so musical in itself. And it seems to mix the two together, which is what the whole show is about, is Egyptian and Israeli people starting to get away from the clichés they think about the other.

Just a wonderful moment and a wonderful show all around it. There are several songs in that show that I consider superior, but this is the one that, yeah, you walk out and you can't forget it. Absolutely. As you said, it sort of reinforces every time I think we might despair about Broadway, a song like that or a show like that will come along and you go, oh, I see, we're still here. This still is a vital and amazing art form. It happens enough that, you know, I go a year, a season or two and just totally give up and then something will come along and say, oh, yes, there are still people who love musical theater as I love it differently than everybody who wants to see Mamma Mia for the fifth time.

[46:12] David Armstrong: You had to stop somewhere. And I'm sure the publishers were saying, this is when your book has to go to press. So this is the last year you can cover. And that turned out to be 2022, which is just two years ago. And Some Like It Hot. How did you arrive at that as the conclusion of the book?

[46:29] Thomas Hischak: I had turned in the entire book except for the last season, which was still going on. I told the people at Bloomsbury, I said, you know, if you can just hold it out, finish this last chapter, but go ahead and start doing the proofing and everything else. I kept hoping the season would end up with something worthwhile. There were a couple of shows that year that did pretty well, but this was the one that grabbed me and it was the title song that grabbed me. And I thought, well, this is how we'll end. I have no idea the future of the show or the future of the song. It was so recent when I wrote about it. I don't think I found any recordings yet. I can't recall. But it comes at the end of the first act, the title song.

And it's not sung by Sugar Cane. It's sung by the band leader. But then Sugar comes in and everybody else comes in. It's a great way to bring a lot of stuff together at the end of an act. Traditional way of doing it. It's in the 20s style. Mark Shaman and Scott Whitman, they have very big success with Hairspray. And Hairspray was a fun pastiche score. But as I mentioned, I think the 60s are very easy to pastiche, but they did a very good job with those songs. And in fact, you chose one of their other songs. You Can't Stop the Beat. I picked as the song of the season. It brought the audience out on a high and it was a very good 60s pastiche. Well, the 20s, as I already mentioned, are harder to pastiche and they did pretty good on this score. Not all the songs are as strong as this, but this one stood out. I think they knew they had to have a pretty good, strong title song, especially if it was going to be used to end the first act.

[48:24] ♪ Musical number: "Some Like It Hot" — performed by the cast of Some Like It Hot ♪

[49:15] Thomas Hischak: What I like about it is the lyric is clever. It's a knowing lyric. It has things in it that 98% of the people in the audience are not going to get, but they got it and that made them happy. References to certain things, not just 20s things, some from the 30s. I think they stretched it a little bit here. For example, they make a reference to the play The Iceman Cometh, a play that nobody knows except us theater people, Eugene O'Neill drama, and they make reference to that. They also make reference to The Postman Doesn't Ring Twice. The movie hadn't come out yet, but the book had been out, so I think that might be their justification. Who puts this in a musical number? It's a big rouser for the end of the first act.

You don't put obscure references in, but they did. I appreciate it and I salute them for it. The song is catchy. It is a good concept. It's a list song. Some people like to do this. Some people like to do that. Some people like it this way. Some people like it this way. Some people like it hot. If you like it hot, then it's what I got. Not great poetry, but great bang lyric for an upbeat song. When I wrote this, this show was the biggest hit on Broadway. It won the Tony Award. It got great reviews. I thought, wow, this is good. I'm picking the last song. It's going to be from a big hit show. It'll probably run two, three years like Hairspray. The thing closed in a little over a year. Everything going for it, but it still couldn't run.

It just really made me despair for the finances of Broadway that this show couldn't keep running. It's going to tour. It is touring by now. COVID came in, I guess. Was this after COVID? Yes, it was. It was right after, but we're still suffering from COVID. That's right. Audiences weren't coming to the theater like they used to, but it's toured and it'll be done. It's a fun show. It'll be done by different people, but it's just the finances of Broadway. It got everything going for it. You couldn't ask for better reviews. You couldn't ask for, you know what, four or five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and it still cannot make money. They'll make it eventually, but it's just scary. This is a people audience show.

This is not something for sophisticated, the geeks who love the difficult musical theater. No, this was a big mainstream show and it still couldn't hack it. Well, I hate to end on such a down note, but it is where we are at the moment. One of the concerns is getting past this moment, but it's not for nothing that Broadway is called the fabulous invalid.

[52:01] David Armstrong: Exactly. It's fabulous, but it is an invalid. Always dying, but it never dies. Knock on wood, this is just another moment to overcome. Looking back now, you've had time to reflect on this book. What do you think people will take away from this book, or what are you hearing from people in terms of their response to the book?

[52:11] Thomas Hischak: I haven't talked to a lot of people, and of course, people who know a lot of theater will have more opinions because they know these other songs. At the end of each chapter, I do list the competition. You know, these are the other memorable songs from that season that you might consider the song of the season, you know, and sometimes there's some really good candidates in there. If it's somebody who goes to the theater very casually, they'll recognize most of these songs and say, oh yeah, that was a good song. But if it's somebody who's a musical theater geek more than casual listener, they're going to disagree. But what I found for most of them is they said, oh, I couldn't believe you picked that show.

Then I read what you wrote, and I looked at the competition, and I thought about it, and it's like, well, yeah, I guess it sort of was like they didn't want that song to be the one of the season. So I don't claim that the songs I pick are the best songs or my favorite songs. I will admit there are some songs in here that I really disliked, and I hated writing about them, but I knew that was the song that it should have been. If I disliked them, a lot of other people would dislike them. Who's got their favorite song from Les Mis or their favorite song from Gypsy, one of their favorite songs of all time, how dare you not pick that? It's so subjective. A lot of research, a lot of details, so that I can turn around and then just have an opinion. But very rarely is a book let you do that, both.

[53:31] David Armstrong: Do you remember what your hardest choice was?

[53:33] Thomas Hischak: Yeah, there were some I just, some it was just hard to find one. But for example, Waitress, I struggled between the song, She Used To Be Mine, which is a big 11 o'clock showstopper, and the character and the singer puts her heart into it, and the audience just, you know, rises up. But I really liked Everything Changes. I thought it was what the show was about. I thought it was a song that got into characters more than this tirade that preceded it. And I picked that, and I'm sure a lot of people disagree. The big hit, obviously, is the one that was recorded the most, She Used To Be Mine. But that was a hard one. There were years where there were so many great songs. Rodger than Hammerstein's songs of the 40s. What'd he do when Carousel is there, and he had all these songs, and South Pacific is there, and just the shows alone are overwhelming. And then when you get to the scores, so yeah, there were some difficult times with it. And who knows, if I wrote the book again, I probably wouldn't end up with the same choices.

[54:34] David Armstrong: Well, that's like, everybody always asks, I'm sure they ask you the same thing, what are your favorite musicals? And I always say, well, it depends what day it is. It depends what week it is. I just tell them it's Follies, and that shuts them up, because most people don't know it. It has been delightful to talk to you, Thomas Hischak, about your brand new book, Song of the Season, Broadway songs since 1891.

[54:52] Thomas Hischak: Thank you for having me.

[54:59] ♪ Musical number: "Some Like It Hot" — performed by the cast of Some Like It Hot ♪

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[57:12] ♪ Musical number: "Some Like It Hot" — performed by the cast of Some Like It Hot ♪