Emerald City Radio

We in the Tiger Den are delighted to announce that Hungry Tiger Press has its own internet radio station. And it's available free to all listeners! Our current playlist includes music from almost every Oz musical and Oz film - songs from the 1903 Wizard of Oz on up to the latest Oz hit by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It's easy to listen to Emerald City Radio on Live365. Just click here to go to Live365 and click "Sign Up" in the upper right hand corner and join for free for access to thousands of internet radio stations. Then "Log In" and make a search for Emerald City Radio. When the Emerald City Radio logo shows up in your search results, just click on the logo to start listening right away! Listening is free.

If you don't want to hear any ads, you can become a Live365 VIP listener. Just click on the banner ad at the bottom of today's blog. It costs a few bucks a month to be a Live365 VIP, but as a VIP you can listen to a wider range of internet radio stations and you'll skip the advertisements.

Emerald City Radio allows a limited number of free non-VIP listeners. So in the slim chance you're kicked off the station or can't connect as a free listener, try again later when there may be fewer listeners. Or convert your account to VIP and you'll never have to leave Live365 unless you want to.

So come on and give Emerald City Radio a try. Our current playlist is over 7 1/2 hours long with such a wide variety of Oz songs and music that you're sure to hear some old friends and some new delights.

Emerald City Radio - all great, all powerful - all the time!  

It's Not Easy Being Green

I've been quite curious about Andrew Lloyd Webber's revamp of the MGM Wizard of Oz which recently opened in London. Today a video appeared of one of his new songs, The Red Shoes Blues, sung by Hannah Waddington who plays the Wicked Witch of the West.

I like the song  - but I don't think it fits into the MGM score very well. It's too character driven, and the MGM score just doesn't really support this kind of song. It's also interesting to look at this and realize how much WICKED is reinforming people's views of the MGM film. I really wish Andrew Lloyd Webber had just written a new musical version of Wizard from scratch.

But here, you can listen for yourself.

Oz Connection Connected

Thanks to all of you who submitted answers to this installment of Oz Connection. None of your responses were the connections I had in mind, but that's just fine! There is no single correct way to connect someone to Oz!

Bill Lee

I've now posted all of the Connection threads that were sent in - so go back one blog and read the comments section to see how our readers' minds work. Okay, here's how I'm connecting these three gentlemen to Oz.

Christopher Plummer is best known for his starring role in the movie version of The Sound of Music. In the film, Plummer's singing was dubbed by Bill Lee who did a lot of voiceover work, much of it for Walt Disney. Bill Lee provided the singing voice for Woot the Wanderer in Walt Disney's 1970 children's story book recording of The Tin Woodman of Oz. Lee, as Woot, sings a love duet with Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter, called, "I Found My True Love." In the Disney recording Woot and Poly get hitched!

I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald might be too easy because of his very direct Oz Connection. He wrote a short-story called "Outside the Cabinet-Makers" in which a father entertains his daughter by making up a fairytale about the people they see on the street. The father describes all sorts of things, including an ogre, who is "transformed like Mombi in The Land of Oz." The story was originally published in the December 1928 issue of The Century Magazine. I reprinted the piece in Oz-story No. 1.

Last but not least, we come to Ludwig van Beethoven. The most direct connection is that the "Ode to Joy," choral section of the Ninth Symphony also served as the tune to The Seekers' 1967 recording "Emerald City." It's a good song and surprisingly unknown among most Oz enthusiasts. The song lyrics were written by Kim Fowley and Keith Potger (under the name of John Martin). You can listen to "Emerald City" from the YouTube link below:

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Oz

A few years ago I  bought a copy of a proposal for a "Theatre Stage Work, Feature Film, or TV-Animated Series" called The Wonderful Land of Oz by composer and lyricist Ann Ronell. There is no connection to the 1969 live-action film of the same name.

Ann Ronell is probably best know as the co-writer of the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" from Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs animated short (1933) and her best known song "Willow Weep for Me" from 1932.

The proposal is marked as "registered with the Screen Writer's Guild 1960," but it likely dates from somewhat earlier.The proposal contains a detailed seven page outline, a character breakdown, and lyrics for six songs. The song titles are: "The Wonderful Land of Oz, "The Great Adventure," "Lonesome Prairie," "The Witching Wishes," and songs for the Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodman, and Scarecrow.

Frankly, the outline is sort of weird. Oz is a planet. The light side is ruled by the old Wizard, and the dark side by his son, a young scientist.

There is a "Fairyland Forest" separating the two halves which is inhabited by all the characters from Mother Goose and Aesop's Fables. As I said, it's sort of weird - and pretty complicated for an animated TV series!

Ann Ronell only died in 1993 and it's a shame this proposal didn't come to light a bit earlier. I'd love to know what motivated her to try an Oz project, if she'd liked the Oz books, if she only knew the MGM film, and how her interest in Oz ever came about.

Babes in Toyland

In addition to Oz collecting I have a strong interest in  early musical theatre - both Ozzy and otherwise. A particular favorite is Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland (1903).

Not only does Babes in Toyland have a superb score, but it was also the show that replaced the 1903 Wizard of Oz musical after its initial run at the Majestic Theatre in New York. In the photo (at left) you can see workers painting out the Wizard of Oz signage on the side of the Majestic and replacing it with Babes in Toyland.

Many things in Babes parallel Wizard: elements of the plot, the comic animals, opening the show with a pantomime and a storm. Babes was also produced by Fred Hamlin and Julian Mitchell who had produced Wizard. And Bessie Wynn, who played Sir Dashemoff Daily in The Wizard of Oz, went on to play TomTom the Piper's Son in Babes in Toyland where she introduced the still-remembered song "Toyland."

I have a lot of Babes material; but my pride and joy is an original 1903 poster from the show that I got off eBay about ten years ago. It had some problems: a few rips and tears, scotch tape, staining. But Broadway lithographs over 100 years old are pretty rare in any condition! The image on the poster represents the "Birth of a Butterfly," an especially beautiful moment in the show.

A couple years ago I finally splurged and had it professionally restored. The restorer liked my poster so much he made a great little video about the project. I thought you might like to see it.

The Equine Paradox

In this month's free TIGER TALE on our main website we offer the lyrics to L. Frank Baum's song "The Equine Paradox,"  from his 1905 flop stage musical The Woggle-Bug, which was an adaptation of Baum's second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904).   

Here's a link to the Tiger Tale

It would be nice to imagine the song referred to the Sawhorse, but it really doesn't. The song featured music by Frederic Chapin.  

The short life-span of The Woggle-Bug musical has caused the original sheet music to be very rare today. But it has all been reprinted in our Complete Sheet Music from The Woggle-Bug.

Only a handful of song sheets survive - several of them in only one known copy! Hungry Tiger Press takes great pride in having collected all of them for you in a handsome and affordable volume.

All of the Woggle-Bug music that is known to survive is in this volume, including Paul Tietjens's "What Did the Woggle-Bug Say?". This volume also contains a reprint of the original Woggle-Bug program book, contemporary reviews, articles, and photographs. Plus a generous appendix featuring several songs from Chapin's 1902 hit, The Storks, and an informative foreword by David Maxine.

The Original RETURN TO OZ

I especially love finding Ozzy things that I didn't previously know existed. This 12" LP recording was certainly a surprise. It is an album of all the music from the 1964 Rankin Bass Videocraft Production of Return to Oz. This animated television feature was released as a follow-up to the short-lived Tales of the Wizard of Oz television cartoon series.

The record was produced for internal studio use and was seemingly distributed to the production staff only. The record label says "Not for Sale or Broadcast" and has a copyright date of 1963, the year before the film was broadcast. The record has music on only one side and the back is blank, containing neither label nor sound. The copyright is to FTP music, Inc., the initials of the three songwriters: Gene Forrell, Edward Thomas, and James Pollack.

When I re-watched the film recently to compare the film score to the newly acquired LP, I was surprised by two things. First, the film was better and much more enjoyable than I had remembered. The early 1960s design and animation has a charming retro feel to it now, instead of just looking cartoony and cheap, as I'd remembered it.

The second surprise was that the LP features a song that was not used in the final version of the film called "I'm a Wise Old Wiz of a Wizard," which is sung by the Wizard, of course. Otherwise the music on the record matches the music for the film. It's a neat little record.

Before the Rainbow - Designer Dilemmas

One of the most enjoyable parts of owning Hungry Tiger Press is designing the books and CDs. One of my favorite projects was designing the label for our first compact disc, Before the Rainbow; The Original Music of Oz, back in 1999. The CD is a collection of very rare Oz music and included a suite from the 1903 Wizard of Oz, long medleys from The Woggle-Bug and The Tik-Tok Man of Oz,  music from the 1913 film score for The Patchwork Girl of Oz,  and even music composed by L. Frank Baum himself for his plays The Maid of Arran and Prince Silverwings.

The booklet design was pretty straightforward. I used a 1903 poster featuring Montgomery and Stone as the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman for the booklet cover. I pulled an illustration of Tik-Tok from the more common red background Tik-Tok Man of Oz sheet music for the back cover of the booklet. And I used a photograph of the Cowardly Lion from the 1903 Wizard for the back of the CD case.

But I was stuck for what to do with the design for the actual disc itself. I've always liked CDs to be decorative, not just typography on the shiny silver disc. But CD label design is a little tricky. It's like designing a picture and typography that have to be printed on a doughnut. I looked through all of my notes and the assorted sheet music. Then I came across the alternate Tik-Tok Man of Oz sheet music cover that was used for Victor Schertzinger's interpolations.

"Hmmm," I thought, "too bad that decorative orange border isn't round . . ." And  instantly I saw the finished label design in my head. I scanned the sheet music and dropped out  the color, thus turning the image into a clean black and white illustration which I printed out in several sizes. I got out a piece of illustration board and my trusty compass and began to draw a number of concentric circles in the proportion of a CD label.

I cut out the faces of Tik-Tok and the Shaggy Man from my print-outs and positioned them on the right and left sides. I also cut out four of the the little "clock face" girls and positioned them, leaving room at the top for the title of the CD and at the bottom for credits and the copyright notice. The penciled circular lines were inked in and the new image was scanned back into the computer. The CD label was to be silk-screened onto the discs, and I was limited to two colors, so I picked a navy blue for the line art and made a second layer of color for the orange background in the top and bottom sections. I added the desired typography to the blue layer and at the last minute added an orange tone into the circles with the "clock face" girls.

 

I like to think it was a subconscious design choice, but it might have only been serendipity, that my orange and blue CD label so closely matched the orange and blue color scheme of the poster I had already used for the CD booklet cover. In any case, I was very proud of the look of my first compact disc.

The CD has been out for eleven years now and there are only a handful of copies left. If you don't already have one, this is a great time to check it out.

Before the Rainbow - The Original Music of Oz

Airy, Fairy Carrie Barry!

On July 10, 2010, the 1903 musical The Wizard of Oz will receive its first confirmed full-scale revival in over ninety years.  In this case "full-scale" means that it is the first production to use the original orchestrations and a twenty-eight piece orchestra. The single performance is taking place at the Canton Comic Opera Co. in Canton, Ohio, under the direction of Joseph Rubin. The image (at left) is a handbill from the last time the show played in Canton on August 28, 1908.

My infatuation with this long-forgotten show began about fifteen years ago when I discovered that period recordings of songs from the show survived on 78 rpm records and wax recording cylinders. This discovery combined four passions of mine: musical theatre, records, history, and Oz. I was utterly hooked! In 2003 I produced a 2 CD set of these Vintage Recordings from The Wizard of Oz. It is one of the projects I am most  proud of - and it was nominated for a Grammy Award as "Best Historical Album."

In honor of the Canton revival, our FREE Tiger Tune this month is the song "Carrie Barry" which was sung by Dorothy in Act I of the 1903 Wizard of Oz.. You can read more about the song, listen to a charming mp3 recording, and see a couple photos by clicking on the link above. The recording was prepared by James Patrick Doyle for my multi-media recreation of the show at the Centennial Oz Conference in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2000. The recording features an orchestration by Doyle and vocal by Stefanie Lynn. The original orchestrations (those being used in the Canton production) were only discovered a few months after my Bloomington talk in 2000 and they will eventually be the basis of our critical edition of the score.

You'll get a full-report on the Canton revival in about two weeks. Personally, I can hardly wait! In the mean time, listen to Dorothy Gale sing "Carrie Barry."