Album Droppings: Final Edition: Funny Ladies

I can't believe I actually finished this herculean task. I am not known for completion. After nine years, my condo remains unpainted, my fridge still whistles, and I'm about two years behind in filing my important papers. But I've finally finished something, and it's a biggie. Almost two years ago (November 17, 2007, to be exact), I began a project which I thought would be a fun and useful way to kill some time between gigs. The thing took on a life of its own. For the first four months, it swallowed my life, so much so that I had to abandon the project for a while. That "while" lasted about a year and a half. Recently, I returned to the task, and today, I finished it.


I'll backtrack. Two years ago, I ran across a machine at Costco which converts vinyl recordings to MP3 files, and I began the task of turning my massive collection of records (several hundreds) into digital files. This was during the early months of this blog, and I chronicled the various discoveries I was making as I slogged through my collection, most of which I had not even looked through in 20 or more years. If you are twisted enough to be interested in such things, you can access the entries I wrote during the process here.

I am relieved the project can now be put to rest. The final recordings I converted were comedy albums which I collected when I was a young pup dreaming of a show business career. Not that I ever wanted to do Stand-Up; I have very little interest in the gents who stand in front of a mic and tell jokes. But I've always been attracted to ladies of wit, even as a kid, when I watched Moms Mabley, Dodie Goodman, Joanne Worley, and others on the Merv Griffin show. Decades later, I enjoyed the Domestic Goddess routines of Roseanne Barr (back when she had two names), and the soft-spoken observances of Rita Rudner. (I have a feeling that, without acknowledging it, I am one of Kathy Griffin's gays.)

But it would not occur to me these days to buy a CD of any of the current crop of funny ladies. Years ago, though, I purchased several comedy albums by the leading comediennes of the day.

I have two albums by Joan Rivers. These live comedy concerts were both recorded decades before she became the gargoyle she is today, but even back then, she had a relentless, needy quality which can only be taken in small doses (it's no wonder her husband offed himself). But Rivers is always mentioned as a role model for current female stand-ups, and among contemporaries like Totie Fields and Phyllis Diller, she was the quickest with the quip.

I've already written a bit about Laugh-In, and its importance as a touchstone for political and social satire; the show's cast was uniquely funny, but only one member of the ensemble emerged as a true comic genius: Lily Tomlin. I have two of her early comedy albums, including her first, This Is A Recording. All the routines on this album involve Tomlin's most famous character, Ernestine the Telephone Operator, a character of which Lily herself grew tired (there were several years there, after the Laugh-In period, when she refused to include the character in her live performances). Tomlin joined Laugh-In during its second season, and was an immediate hit. During her hiatus from the show, she toured her stand-up routine to various small clubs around the country. I saw her in a tiny cabaret/comedy club in the basement of a strip mall in Atlanta during this period; she was a scream. Her brand of character-based stand-up was pretty new back then, and she specialized in improv with the audience. I knew I was witnessing something very special when she was playing little Edith Ann, the kid with the thpeeth impediment, taking questions from the audience. And her sequence playing Lola the Party Lady at a funeral (she propped up the corpse to use as a ventriloquist's dummy) was wickedly funny.


I purchased one album by the comedy team of Burns and Schreiber, but only because of the presence on the disc of a woman absolutely nobody has heard of, Ann Elder. She was an occasional performer back in the late 60s; in fact, she was hired to replace Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In. But she was much more successful as a writer, winning Emmys for two of Lily Tomlin's TV specials. This particular album is called The Watergate Comedy Hour, and was released during the Senate's investigation into the scandal which brought down the Nixon presidency. Elder wrote much of the album, and appears on it as Nixon's embattled secretary, Rosemary ("I erased 18 minutes") Woods. Along with Burns and Schreiber, the ensemble included Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes), who's a hoot as loudmouthed whistle-blower Martha Mitchell, and Jack Riley, who later found fame on Bob Newhart's first sitcom.

Another funny lady represented in my collection is Bette Midler. The Divine Miss M released a stand-up comedy album in 1985, recorded live at the Improv in LA. I don't know why this musical diva wanted the experience of stand-up, and truth be told, her jokes are better when they are surrounded by musical interludes. Mud Will Be Flung Tonight includes some very raunchy Sophie Tucker jokes, and has only two songs, one of which, "Otto Titzling," was successful enough to be included in later film and talk show appearances.

The cover of Flip Wilson's album, The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress, leads one to believe the entire recording will be centered on his famous drag persona, Geraldine, but in fact, his female alter-ego appears in only a couple of routines on the album. Wilson had a break-out variety show in the early 70s, a series which landed in the number 2 slot in the Nielson ratings its first two years. He broke with convention and had no chorus, and his performance space was in the round, resembling an intimate nightclub. His style was hip and up-to-date, and was very accessible to a wide demographic. Flip's salary demands escalated just as he was facing stiff competition from The Waltons, and the show was cancelled after its fourth season. Wilson's "Geraldine" skits were always stand-outs on his show; ditto this album.

The last comedy album I converted to MP3 was recorded by another legendary funny lady, Paul Lynde. It's a disappointing effort; Lynde is much funnier on the various Hollywood Squares albums. Recently Released was recorded while he appeared in his breakthrough role of Harry McAfee in Broadway's Bye Bye Birdie, and he is clearly not a star at stand-up. But I've always been his fan, and this album is a rarity.

And with that, I've finished the project at hand. This week, I'll be boxing up my hundreds of LPs and hauling then to Raleigh, NC, to be donated to a thrift shop started by my sister's animal rescue organization. I'm told they have various experts who examine their incoming merchandise and assign realistic prices; I bet most of my collection would go for two bucks apiece or so. But there are a few actual gems hidden among the mountains of vinyl, which I hope might bring a nice price.

And, even better, I will finally get these record albums out of my closet.

Album Droppings: Unexcused Absences

I deserve a pink slip for some of the gross oversights in my CD collection.





I have finally reached a resting point in my mammoth undertaking: the transfer of my vinyl record collection to digital format.





It's taken over three months, but I have now completed the bulk of my task. But there is still plenty of work to do. I have about a hundred records which are not cast albums or soundtracks. Believe it or not, I actually purchased many "regular" albums, by "regular" musical artists.





But before I launch into that chasm, I have to confess that there were some very serious oversights regarding my theatrical collection.






I transferred well over a hundred albums, but I skipped about a hundred others. These were albums which fell into one of two categories: they were either pieces which I had already purchased on CD, or they are shows which I have decided I really don't need on home-made CD. Among those in the latter category are such items as the original Guys and Dolls (don't need it, I've got the Nathan Lane revival on CD. So sue me.), or the soundtrack to Flashdance (what was I doing with that, I wonder?).










But I have run across a handful of albums which I never re-purchased on CD, and should have. These items are imperative to have in digital form, and it is incomprehensible to me that I overlooked purchasing them, when they became available at the CD store.

















The most egregious example of my neglect is certainly the original cast recording of Sweeney Todd. Yes, I have the recent Patty LuPone revival, which is terrific, but why the hell I don't have the original Angela Lansbury / Len Cariou / Victor Garber recording on CD is just incomprehensible. The vinyl release is a double album set, and includes the controversial sequence which is almost always cut these days, the judge's self-flagellation scene. God, that's good!
















I'm also surprised that I never purchased the original cast album of Chicago, considering I saw the production live. Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Jerry Orbach, supported by Mary McCarty and Barney Martin, all sharing the theatre with me, and I never bothered to pick up the CD? Whatever happened to class?





















Oh, and while I'm thinking about Kander and Ebb musicals, I'm stunned that I never purchased the CD release of an album I listened to hundreds of times in high school, the film soundtrack of Cabaret. This film may be the perfect example of how to translate a stage show to film, without alienating a modern audience.








Of course, I didn't recognize that at the time, all I knew was, I wanted to play the Emcee.

(and in 1989, I did.)

There are a couple of other film soundtracks which I have on vinyl, and should have purchased on CD. Hard to believe, but I never tracked down the soudtrack to Funny Girl, which is surely Barbra Streisand's finest film musical. I almost wore out my vinyl copy. I have the Broadway cast album, but Streisand really came into her own in the film, and the soundtrack is testimony to that. Everyone says it contains the finest recording of "People" she ever sang, but I'm not so sure (I think she always sang it better live, in concert). But it definitely contains the most exciting rendition of "Don't Rain on My Parade" ever recorded.














What did I have that I don't have? The soundtrack to On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, though again, I have the Broadway album. The movie was not all that effective, due to the unfortunate miscasting of Yves Montand as the male lead, but our Babs is a quirky hoot, and sings the score much better than Barbara Harris, who played it on Broadway.






















And what am I doing without a single CD of Sweet Charity? I don't know. I've transferred my album of Gwen Verdon's original cast recording, but I can't really understand how the years went by without my ever having purchased any digital recording of this classic show. There's gotta be something better than this...









If my friends could see me now...








In a day or two, it's time to start on the next section of my project. It's time to tranfer all my other music to CD. I'm hoping this goes a bit faster. I know I purchased a great many of these albums just to get a single song. I have the ability to transfer just one track from a full-length album, and I have a hunch I'll be doing that a lot.








It will be an eclectic group. I have everything from Gloria Gaynor to Joan Rivers to Billy Idol to Flip Wilson to Melanie to Dionne Warwick to Glen Campbell to Lily Tomlin to...well, you get the picture.








As before, the best place to start is at the beginning.:

Album Droppings: Tributes

I have close to a dozen vinyl recordings of various tributes, concerts, and revues, all focusing on one composer or another. Many of them were important enough to me to purchase on CD once they were released, but I have several which I needed to transfer to digital.











The most represented in this group is certainly Noel Coward. I have more than a handful of vinyl albums of his music, though on store-bought CD, I own only one of his shows, Sail Away. I know exactly why I never bothered to purchase these various compilation albums once they became available on CD. I don't really like Noel Coward's music. I know I'm supposed to like it, but for me, a little Coward goes a long way. For the most part, the songs strike me as brittle and unfeeling. I have the cast recordings of two high-profile revues of his work. Noel and Gertie is a two-character piece covering the longtime friendship between Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Oh, Coward! had a successful run on Broadway, and included in its small cast one of my favorite stage actresses, Barbara Cason. In listening to these pieces again, I have confirmed my opinion that I like Noel Coward's plays more than Noel Coward's music, and I like Noel Coward's music only in small doses. He's a bon bon, not a meal.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green were extremely successful lyricists and book writers, but they began their careers as performers. Back when no one would hire them, they began writing their own material and performing it in small Manhattan clubs. They eventually gained fame for their writing, and are very well known as contributors to On the Town, Wonderful Town, Singing in the Rain, On the Twentieth Century, and countless other shows and films. Late in their careers, they put together an evening of reminiscences called A Party with Comden and Green, which visited Broadway a few times over the years. The cast album from that retrospective confirms that they are not the best interpreters of their own work. The highlights of this double album are the spoken narratives between the numbers, as the duo recalls who they worked with, when they wrote what, and the like. When they start to sing, it's a little painful.

These Charming People (and Other Vocal Duets) features the husband and wife team of William Bolcom and Joan Morris, joined on this recording by Max Morath, who is better known as an historian of Ragtime music. This album could just as easily have been included in my list of One Offs, as it does not appear to be a recording of any specific concert or revue. The participants are not known to me, and I have no recollection of purchasing this album. The twelve tracks are meant to reflect the period between the World Wars, and include duets written by Kern, Hammerstein, Rodgers, Hart, and the Gershwins. I have been unable to locate any internet mention of this recording except on the website of Balcom and Morris themselves, who are still married and performing together. As it's never been released on CD, and seems to have otherwise disappeared, I may have a very valuable album here.

Or a real stinker.






I have already revealed myself to be a Sondheim fan. I surely have way too many CDs as proof: two Sundays, two Night Musics, two Into the Woods, two Forums, two Sweeneys, two Merrilys, at least three or four Follies, and on and on. I have Unsung Sondheim (songs cut from his shows), jazz Sondheim, piano Sondheim, Sondheim on Film, Dick Tracy (Madonna singing Sondheim? Don't shudder: one of those songs won the Oscar), and obscure pieces such as Saturday Night and even his musical for television, Evening Primrose.

And has anyone had so many tribute concerts recorded? I must have half a dozen celebrations recorded in various venues, from Carnegie Hall to the Barbican in London to the Doolittle in LA to the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. And that's not to mention other people performing the Sondheim songbook, from Cleo Laine to Barbara Cook to Bernadette Peters to Mandy Pantinkin and on and on and on.

How did all this get started? Well, it probably all started on March 11, 1973, when a bunch of Broadway actors gathered onstage at the Shubert theatre in New York and performed the first Sondheim tribute. It may have been here that it was first recognized what we all know now: that Sondheim's songs are one-act plays, and can be performed independently of their respective shows. Of course, that first tribute was recorded, and naturally, I have it on CD.

Probably the most famous of all the concerts, tributes, and revues of Sondheim's work is Side by Side by Sondheim. For some mysterious reason, it is the one production I do not have on CD, though I played my vinyl recording constantly way back when. The show was conceived as a light entertainment for "off nights" in London. The piece took off, and a very young Cameron Macintosh produced it in the West End, years before he became enamored with the Bigger Is Better mentality his subsequent hits have projected. Side by Side moved to Broadway and enjoyed a healthy life there.

I saw the show twice during its New York run (in a single week!). The show's original cast had moved on, but the replacement cast I saw was top-notch: my favorite Nancy Dussault was singing the soprano role, and Georgia Brown (remember her from Oliver?) was singing the alto part. Larry Kert was the man in the show, and the narrator was none other than Hermione Gingold, who lent a ribald quality to the elegant proceedings. She even sang two numbers (the original narrator, Ned Sherrin, who was also the director of the show, did not sing). Because of Gingold's previous role in A Little Night Music, she performed her number from that show, Liaisons. But the highlight of her performance in Side by Side was surely her rendition of a little known Sondheim song, I Never Do Anything Twice. Her dry, delicious delivery of this song, sung by a sexually adventurous woman, brought down the house. I wish her performance were captured on this recording, but as this is the original London Cast, no such luck.

My store-bought CD collection includes tributes, concerts, and revues of just about every composer and lyricist who ever worked in the American Musical Theatre. I am glad to now have home-made CDs of the above recordings to add to that collection. I am also glad that I am very close to finishing this monumental task of transferring my vinyl recordings to digital format. I wonder if I will ever listen to any of these things again?

Album Droppings: "Everything's Coming Up Shows"

One of the many patterns I'm detecting in my album collection reveals an interest in the Backstage Musical. Anytime I ran across any cast album, or soundtrack, which seemed to deal with people putting on a show, I grabbed. Often, they were not worth the effort. Five After Eight was such a show. This is a terrible little musical which hangs its limited plot on a young group of performers, and their various personal problems and relationships. The piece only tangentially deals with Putting On A Show (the title refers to the fact that all personal problems cease when the show starts at five after eight. I hate late curtains.)

Here's another show with identical themes, but set in a wildly different circumstance. A group of young performers emerge from a bomb shelter to discover they are the only humans left on earth. (I can't really say they survived a nuclear holocaust, since there is no evidence of radiation in the atmosphere nor any, you know, mutants running rampant.) Instead, this group is joined by a shlub named Avery, who claims to be God's emissary. This guy tells the gang that they must audition to be chosen to repopulate the world. I'm not making this up. So, the show deals with this group rehearsing and then performing their Big Audition for God. This bomb could only be called one thing:

Here's one that's not quite so stinky. Stages concerns yet another group of young performers (why are all these things populated only by young people?) attending college, all in the theatre department. The requisite personal problems and relationships arise, etc etc etc, until these kids finally graduate. This show was obviously a vanity production, as the book was written by the same guy who wrote the music who also wrote the lyrics who also directed the thing. The man in question (Bruce Kimmel) had a minor cult success a little earlier with The First Nudie Musical, and instead of inflicting us with the second nudie musical, concocted this show. Stages had its first (and possibly only) production in Los Angeles, and in the cast was Sammy Williams, who had already won the Tony as Paul in A Chorus Line, and should have known better.

Another piece which concerned a group of young performers learning their craft was a film, and much more successful. I fell in love with the movie Fame as soon as I saw it. It took place at the New York High School of the Performing Arts (at the time I didn't even know such a place existed), and the film is full of such exuberance that one couldn't help but be roped in. A motley group of geeks and misfits all come alive here at this performing arts school. The soundtrack is dominated by several disco flavored songs sung by cast member Irene Cara, who subsequently became a Disco Diva for about a week, but the score is augmented by one melancholy ballad sung, and written, by a young Paul McCrane, decades before he lost his hair and checked into ER. The film boasted a rare dramatic performance by comic Anne Meara, and a brief appearance by Debbie Allen, who later starred in the TV series based on the film.

None of these "backstage musicals"made it anywhere near Broadway, though a stage version of Fame has been knocking around for years.

But I have a couple of vinyls of backstage shows which did make it to Broadway.

So Long, 174th Street is the musical version of the Carl Reiner comedy, Enter Laughing. I have no idea what the music sounds like, as this is another album I have owned for 25 years without opening. The cast included Robert Morse, still trying to recreate his How to Succeed... triumph, and Kaye Ballard as his mother. The show was not a success.

The New Faces of 1952 cast album caught my eye in the record store due to the presence in its cast of several performers who were to become stars. Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostly, Eartha Kitt, Robert Clary (later of Hogan's Heroes), and Carol Lawrence were all in this musical revue. A film version was later released as New Faces of 1956.

When I was in London as a teen ager, I had the opportunity to see a truly spectacular stage performance. Nobody believed that anyone other than Ethel Merman could ever play Mama Rose, so it took almost two decades for Gypsy to make its London debut. Angela Lansbury radically reinterpreted this stage mother from hell, and created a sensation. She later took the show to Broadway and won the Tony. This recording of her performance reflects the humor and humanity which she displayed in the theatre. Go HERE to see a grainy but still spectacular clip. Her rendition of "Rose's Turn" is so shattering, you want to jump out the window.

This album is definitely worth having on CD, but as I already have the Merman Gypsy, the Midler Gypsy, and the Bernadette Gypsy (I passed on the Tyne Daly Gypsy), I'll make do with my homemade copy. That is, until LuPone records her Gypsy later this spring. Have an eggroll!

Album Droppings: The Royals

One of the many geeky aspects of my personality is my fascination with European royalty. Or at least, the history of it. I don't have much interest in the current royals, as they don't wield much power and are usually sad, lame descendants of much more exciting ancestors.

So, whenever I ran across any kind of soundtrack recording of anything having to do with royalty, I snapped it up.

I was enamored of the BBC costume dramas covering the lives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, which were shown to much acclaim on PBS back in the day. One of the series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, was such a success, here and abroad, that a quickie movie was produced, with the same actor, Keith Michell, playing the king. The DVD of that movie has not been released in this country, but for some reason, I own the soundtrack on vinyl. I suppose it's a reasonable recreation of actual Renaissance music, full of lutes and flutes and tambourines and things. There is no earthly reason for my owning this album except one: it exists.

Soon after the Elizabeth I miniseries hit the American airwaves, big screen producer Hal Wallis tossed us a sumptuous telling of the story of Bess's cousin and rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. Wallis had had some success earlier with the Ann Boleyn- Henry VIII story (Anne of the Thousand Days), so he knew a little something about showy historical biopics. He enlisted Glenda Jackson to recreate her signature role as Elizabeth, and cast Vanessa Redgrave as Mary. I have always been interested in the actual story of Mary, who became queen of Scotland at 6 days old, and Queen of France as an early teen. Three marriages, a couple of gruesome murders, an exploding palace, two daring escapes, and Mary's eventual execution, what's not to like? But the film is pretty draggy, and I never thought I would say this, but Redgrave, one of the phenomenal film actresses of all time, is downright dull in this movie.

That doesn't stop me from owning the DVD of this snore-fest, recently released, nor does it prevent me from owning the original soundtrack. Composer John Barry is known for his lush, full-bodied scores, and he does not disappoint here. The album contains a little gem, too: Vanessa Redgrave, as Mary, singing a wispy ballad in French.

British royalty has been represented on the Broadway musical stage, too. Of course, everybody knows Camelot, but as I own that one on CD already, my vinyl recording does not need my transfer treatment. But Henry VIII, a most unlikely musical hero, appeared onstage in a musical in the mid-70s. The show is called Rex, and judging from the original cast recording, it's Rex, the dog. The liner notes are very complete, which is good, because the show was reportedly very hard to follow in the theatre. Americans are not well-versed in British history, so this tale of the king who divorced two wives and beheaded two others was a whirlwind. (And everybody looks the same in those clothes).

The only things interesting about this album are the names attached to it. Above the title: Richard Rodgers. Yep, that Richard Rodgers, during his loooooooong decline from greatness, was here hooked up with Sheldon Harnick from Fiddler fame. They were unable to come up with anything memorable for their cast to sing, and the show holds the distinction of having the shortest run of Rodgers' long career. But what a cast. Nicol Williamson was playing the king, and apparently acting up alot (he had a reputation for bad behavior, including slapping actors onstage and worse. His co-star in I Hate Hamlet quit the show due to Williamson's disorderly handling of fight choreography).

Penny Fuller was the female lead in the piece, playing both Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Princess Elizabeth (yes, they tried to cover Henry's entire reign in one evening. They couldn't cram it all in, and dispatched two wives during intermission). Fuller is one of those terrific stage actresses who, had they been working in an earlier period, would have been a full-fledged star. She had a real triumph in Applause, holding her own opposite Lauren Becall (go here for a Dance Party clip from the show). But because the era of Broadway stars becoming nationally known was now over, few people outside the theatre community have ever heard of her these days. The biggest star attached to Rex was a then-unknown talent, making her Broadway debut as Henry's eldest daughter Mary, Glenn Close.

Rodgers had only one more musical make it to Broadway before kicking the bucket. It was a musical version of I Remember Mama, and with brooding Scandinavian film star Liv Ullmann in the leading role, it was as big a flop as Rex. But I never purchased that cast album, if they ever made one, so at least I won't have to put myself through that.

Album Droppings: Diva Edition

I continue to slog away at my vast record collection, translating hundreds of albums to digital format. I've moved into the 'Ps"!


I have to admit that many many MANY of these albums are real losers. I don't know why I bought them in the first place.

Well, yes I do. I know why I bought each and every one of them. In some cases, in fact in a whole lot of them, I bought the album merely for the presence of a single female performer.

Such was the case with Pins and Needles. This was a studio recording celebrating the 25th Anniversary of a Harold Rome revue which in its original form ran about four years back in the 30s. This recording was released in 1962. Rome was at the time represented on Broadway as the composer of I Can Get It For You Wholesale, and for this studio recording of Pins and Needles, he enlisted one of the minor players in Wholesale. It is Streisand's appearance on this album (she doesn't need a first name on this blog) which encouraged me to purchase it. It's amazing how clear and clean her sound was back then (she was in her late teens at the time), with only a hint of the nasality which she adopted soon afterward.

While on the topic of I Can Get It For You Wholesale, it's a very under appreciated story of the meteoric rise and sudden downfall of an unscrupulous young businessman. The tone is considerably darker than another show with identical themes which appeared around this time (early 60s), How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. While Wholesale sings of "men and ulcers on parade," How to Succeed admonishes that a "secretary is not a toy." Audiences chose lightness over dark; How to Succeed won all the Tonys and the Pulitzer, and Wholesale is remembered solely as Streisand's Broadway debut.

I was never a Mary Martin fan. Give me Merman or Channing, please, but not the sugary sweet characters Martin tended to play. I own the original Sound of Music because one must, and the original I Do! I Do! because the terrific Robert Preston is worth it. The only other recording I have, either on vinyl or CD, which features Martin is One Touch of Venus. This is one of those studio albums which pretends to be an original cast album, and as such things go, this one is pretty darn good. Kurt Weill broke with his usual atonal habit and contributed a fairly traditional score, but as I am a fan of neither Weill nor Martin, you might wonder why I own this thing. Well, I purchased it on vinyl only a few years ago, when I appeared in a staged reading of the musical at American Century Theatre. We did a weekend's worth of performances, and I actually liked the piece. I had a ball playing sidekick Stanley.


I have lots of other recordings featuring various divas, but this one is probably the weirdest. Sid and Marty Krofft had booming careers as producers of children's television back in the 60s and 70s, but their shows all had a psychedelic twist. Lidsville took place in a world of talking (and singing and dancing) hats, and starred the hilarious Charles Nelson Reilly, a gig for which he was MUCH too good. The Bugaloos were all flying insects who were also a rock band, or something, tortured by a villainous Martha Raye who lived in a giant juke box. Or maybe the singing insects lived in the giant juke box. I can't remember those specifics. I can only remember being embarrassed for Raye, who was one of the great film clowns of the golden age, being reduced to this thing (our Maggie Raye has starred in the Friday Dance Party in these pages). Sigmund and the Sea-Monsters starred a post-Family Affair Johnny Whittaker, before things went so terribly wrong for him.


But the weirdest, wildest, most disturbing show from the Krofft Brothers was also their most famous, H.R. Pufnstuf. These guys surely ingested something illegal when they concocted this story of an island where all inanimate objects talked, and many of them walked. All of them annoyed. Poor Jack Wild, fresh from an Oscar nomination for Oliver, did the best he could as the kid lost in this acid-induced world, where the title character was a talking Dragon. Or maybe he was a dinosaur, who knew? Somehow, this piece attracted my attention way back when. I'm sure it was due to the presence in the cast of character actress Billie Hayes, whom I had loved as Mammy Yokum in Li'l Abner, and was here chewing the scenery as an incompetent witch.


This TV series was popular enough to spawn a film, and I own the soundtrack to that film. It has not been released on CD in this country, and somebody has listed the vinyl recording on EBay at 20 bucks. I imagine it used to be worth even more than that, as the soundtrack boasts a solo by "special star Mama Cass" (I bet she loved that billing) which has not been available anywhere else for over 30 years. That song, "Different," has now been released on a CD of Elliot's solo recordings, so I guess the value of Pufnstuf 's soundtrack has dropped (that number can be viewed here). The film was extremely low budget, shot on the TV series' sets, and when watching it now (full disclosure of my geekiness: I not only own the soundtrack, I actually own the movie on VHS-it's never been released on DVD), one feels rather sad. Three divas playing witches deserved better. Martha Raye was ending her long stage and screen career; to her credit, she is as subtle as anyone could be playing a character called "Boss Witch." Billie Hayes, who spent a lot of time in Krofft Bros. series, deserved better than to be remembered only for this hammy role of "Witchiepoo." She snagged the role of Mammy Yokum in the film version of Li'l Abner after playing the role on the first national tour (she stole it from original Broadway Mammy, Charlotte Rae. I love that.) And Elliot was just stepping out on her own, which is probably how she was talked into playing this role in which her first appearance is made sitting in a vat of fruit, munching on a banana.





It helps, I suppose, to be hopped up on mushrooms to enjoy this thing. But be careful. The mushrooms in Pufnstuf talk.

Album Droppings: "One Offs"

One of my favorite British slang expressions is starting to catch on in this country. A "One Off" is a fluke, a one-time occurrence, and the term describes more than a few of my vinyl recordings. You may recall that I have given myself the outrageous task of converting my large LP collection to digital format (I had a welcome interruption with my trip to LA and various Christmas doings).

I have now, somewhat reluctantly, returned to the task at hand. I'm running across quite a few records which I purchased only because the name intrigued me. I listened to these gems exactly ONCE before relegating them to the pile, never to be played again.

They're One Offs, and for the most part, they deserve to be. Nobody has ever heard of these shows today.






Well, maybe a few people have heard of this one: "Boy Meets Boy" is exactly what it sounds like, a traditional musical comedy love story with the leading players all male. This show apparently had some life to it, as it had a London and New York production, as well as the LA production which was recorded. I suppose it may have been fun to see, but it's not all that entertaining to listen to, and even the liner notes confess that it was recorded "under difficult conditions by an inexperienced but enthusiastic cast." Maybe so, but we've had "La Cage" and "Falsettos" since this slight piece, set in the roaring 20s, made its debut, so the novelty of same-sex couples in a musical has worn off. And this score isn't getting any respect on EBay; the CD release is being offered for only 99 cents.




The liner notes for "In Gay Company" proclaim that this revue was a long-running hit in New York, LA, and DC, with accompanying press quotes to prove it. The cast includes one lone woman surrounded by a handful of gay boys, singing a bunch of songs about, well, being gay. Not very interesting. This recording preserves the cast which ran the show in LA, at the Backlot Theatre, which was actually a cabaret space perched behind the legendary Studio One disco back in the 70s and 80s. I remember seeing a very different revue there, starring two of my favorite Broadway Ladies, Nancy Dussault and Karen Morrow, belting out show tunes and having a ball. Now, that dynamic revue would be worth having...

In June, 1977, the citizens of Dade County in Florida, led by former Miss America and Orange Juice Queen Anita Bryant, voted to repeal local ordinances which guaranteed fair housing and employment for gays. The vote sent shock waves through the Gay Rights movement. A scarce two months later, the Callboard Theatre in West Hollywood presented their musical revue, "Joseph McCarthy is Alive and Living in Dade County." The recording includes several long sketches as well as some listenable songs, all by somebody named Ray Scantlin. The comedy, being topical, does not hold up well in retrospect, but it's kind of fun to hear such routines as "The Schtick Center for the Control of Effeminacy," and a game show which yanks people out of the closet called "Rat on a Fag." The liner notes hold up better, which contain fake quotes from Norman Mailer, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and Brenda the Queen of England.

You've never heard of anybody on any of these recordings except one: Amanda McBroom appears in the "Dade County" show, singing two songs which she did not write. That same summer of '77, she penned "The Rose" and was forever relieved from ever appearing in things like this again.

I'm sure I'll come across many more One Offs as I slog my way through my album collection, but here's one more that's not even a One Off. It's a None Off. I own a copy of the original cast album of William Finn's "In Trousers" which I never even opened. For 25 years or more, this record has been in my collection without my ever having unsealed the thing. I'm sure I know why. I bought the album, didn't have time to listen to it, then attended an LA production of the show. It's a one-act, lightweight piece, but has the distinction of being the first appearance of "Marvin," Finn's alter-ego who goes on to greater glory in "March of the Falsettos" and "Falsettoland." In this prequel (is it a prequel if the composer actually wrote it first?), Marvin struggles with his failing marriage and the realization that he'd rather be spending his time with a man.

Anyway, I caught the show in a bare-bones production in some basement theatre in LA, starring Bill Hutton (the original Broadway "Joseph" of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame), and I guess I was not all that impressed. Like I mentioned, I never even unsealed the album.

Kind of interesting to note that the first "In Trousers" starred a very young Chip Zien, who was so impressive in "Into the Woods" many years later. When the second and third Marvin stories finally hit Broadway in "Falsettos," Zien was no longer playing the protagonist but was instead playing Mendel the psychiatrist. Finn is nothing if not loyal to his friends. Alison Fraser appears on this early recording as Marvin's wife Trina, and she remained in the role through all subsequent versions of the trilogy.



I've just reread the above notes, and let's face it, this set of One Offs is, shall we delicately say, pretty fey. It reminds me of Oprah's oft-told story of watching TV as a child. Whenever a black performer showed up, she would jump up and down and shout "There's black people on TV! There's black people on TV!"

When I was browsing through record stores as a kid, and I ran across anything gay, I certainly didn't jump up and down and shout. I held my breath, and bought the thing.

Album Droppings: Duplicatus Interruptus, or, "What Were They Thinking??"

I have proudly been making headway with the outrageous task I have given myself: to convert my huge collection of vinyl recordings to digital format. I've made it through the "G's".


But my monumental task is being interrupted, for at least several weeks. Christmas is rearing its unforgiving head, and I've had to break in order to get my Christmas Cards out. Due to my upcoming trip to LA, from which I won't be returning until the middle of December, it was necessary to dispatch my cards this week. All 109 of them. Don't even ask.


So, music duplication has ceased. But not before I marveled at several albums which must be labelled "What Were They Thinking?"


I mentioned earlier "Doonesbury the musical." Why oh why would anyone think that the very topical, very current comic strip "Doonesbury" could be translated into a standard musical comedy? In spite of having in its cast Kate Burton (Richard's daughter, and a Tony nominee lately), Mark Linn-Baker (later on TV in "Perfect Strangers"), and Gary Beach (recently a Tony winner for "The Producers"), the show is a true disaster. The creators, which included Gary Trudeau himself, placed the music in the hands of Elizabeth Swados, who never met a melody she couldn't deconstruct. (Her big claim to fame was the fluke hit "Runaways," which I bet I'll have something to say about once I get to the R's. But we're still on the D's here...). Her atonal music sinks an already shaky concept, and "Doonesbury" failed to follow in the footsteps of other comics-to-musical hits such as "Annie," "L'il Abner", and "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."



I've run across two more "What Were They Thinking?" musicals in my collection. I've already confessed to being a Hermione Gingold fan, so when I ran across an album with her name on the cover, I pounced. The show happened in the late 50s, and was called "First Impressions." It's the musical version of (are you ready for this?): "Pride and Prejudice." Yes, somebody thought Jane Austen's novel would make a good musical. They were wrong. Gingold played the mother, and two of the daughters were played by Phyllis Newman and Polly Bergen (who's currently chewing the scenery on "Desperate Housewives"). When, in the opening number, Gingold laments the fact that she has Five Daughters who need husbands, I was reminded of Tevye and his five daughters, all of whom are more interesting than this bunch.









Perhaps the weirdest of this set of musicals was scored by none other than Charles Strauss, who should have known better. Who in the world would have thought that "Flowers For Algernon" should be a musical? This is a real corker, with a pre-Phantom Michael Crawford fawning his way through the thing as the retarded Charlie who suddenly gets better, grows up, sleeps with his doctor, then regresses to his childish state. I kid you not, there is even a vaudeville-type number between Crawford (as Charlie) and Algernon. In case you've forgotten who Algernon is, get ready: he's a mouse.







Truth be told, there is one number in this stinker which deserved some life outside, maybe in cabaret acts, called "I Really Loved You." But the ballad is rendered unlistenable by the slurred delivery of Crawford.







Wow. And yet I press on, loading these losers onto my hard drive, then burning a homemade CD. Who's the real loser, I wonder?