The MasterVoices Podcast

Preparing Gershwin's 'Strike Up the Band': A Journey Through History, Humor, and Music

• MasterVoices • Season 1 • Episode 1

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 What was life like in the 1927? What changed by 1930? And how was it all reflected on stage? 

For over half a century, Strike Up the Band has been one of the great mysteries of the American musical theater - lovingly reconstructed and reworked by teams of theater makers, historians, and archivists. For the past year, Maestro Ted Sperling and theater historian Laurence Maslon have been crafting a new version that brings out the best of the original 1927 and 1930 scripts and scores. Listen as they discuss their process with John McWhorter- and share some great anecdotes. 

  • no broccoli, no pizza, no talkies 
  • slackers and hacks and chaff, oh my! 
  • business with cigar… continued business with cigar…
  • everyone pays attention to the way a note begins, not so much to how it ends.
  • Larry Hart had a brother, Teddy
  • ...and who is George Spelvin? 

ARTIST BIOS
JOHN MCWHORTER teaches linguistics at Columbia University, as well as Western Civilization and music history. He has written extensively on issues related to linguistics, race, and other topics for Time, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and elsewhere, and has been a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, and other books, including Nine Nasty Words and Woke Racism, both of which were New York Times bestsellers. He hosts the Lexicon Valley language podcast, and has written a weekly newsletter for the New York Times since August 2021.

LAURENCE MASLON is a professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and associate chair of the Graduate Acting Program. He is the host and producer of the radio series, Broadway to Main Street, on the local NPR-affiliate station WPPB-FM, which won the 2019 ASCAP Foundation/Deems Taylor Award for Radio Broadcast. Books include a companion volume to the PBS series Broadway: The American Musical, and Broadway to Main Street (Oxford University Press, 2018).  Editing work includes the two-volume set American Musicals (1927-1969) and Kaufman & Co., an anthology of Broadway comedies by George S. Kaufman, both published by the Library of America.

TED SPERLING is a music director, conductor, orchestrator, singer, pianist, violinist and violist. He is the Artistic Director of MasterVoices and was Music Director of the recent Broadway productions of My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, and The King and I. He has led the NY Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Boston Pops, and BBC Concert Orchestra, among many others, as well as the orchestras of New York City Opera and Houston Grand Opera. A graduate of Yale University and The Juilliard School, he appeared as Steve Allen in the Season Two finale of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” tedsperling.net
 
SHOW LINKS 

The MasterVoices Podcast is a project of the New York City nonprofit MasterVoices (previously The Collegiate Chorale), whose mission is using the human voice to connect, inspire, and unite. Founded in 1941 by Robert Shaw, the Chorale was one of the first integrated choruses in the United States.

Learn more at www.mastervoices.org.

Gershwin Musical

Speaker 2

Hello and welcome to the Master Voices podcast , where we invite a diverse range of masterful voices to explore subjects ranging from music and language to history and culture . This pod is a project of the New York City non-profit Master Voices , formerly known as the Collegiate Chorale , which , then as now , is dedicated to the unique power of the human voice to connect , unite and inspire . In the next three episodes , linguist New York Times writer and Gershwin enthusiast , john McWhorter , delves into the world of the Gershwin and Kaufman musical Strike Up the Band . You'll hear from theater historian Lawrence Maslin , new Yorker cartoonist and editor Bob Mankoff , maestro John Malceri and Master Voice's own maestro and artistic director , ted Sperling , as they unpack the many unique facets of the wholly unique Strike Up the Band . And now , without further ado , sit back and enjoy the Master Voices podcast .

Speaker 3

So , folks , welcome to our podcast about the George Gershwin musical Strike Up the Band . I should also mention that his brother , ira , wrote the lyrics and the original libretto was by the great George S Kaufman . And what we're going to talk about today is the very interesting story of this musical that premiered in 1927 , and at this recording , that's now 97 years ago . And it was playing in Philadelphia in its tryout and did not make it . And the historiography of the Gershwins is such that you almost can't believe that , especially in the 20s , they would have had a show that didn't make it . But the 1927 version just didn't work .

Speaker 3

But everybody involved was smart enough to know that it deserved another chance and so , instead of just going into the trunk forever , there was a second version of Strike Up the Band in 1930 , and the Gershwins had Maury Riskin write a second book , similar but sweetened somewhat literally , in that the original topic was a war over cheese .

Speaker 3

Now , in 1930 , the war is over chocolate . And more to the point and we'll be doing a podcast about the music , but more to the point , the second version was dancier , it was hotter , they rewrote about half of the score and a lot of the new songs have a certain kind of popcorn pep that probably made the 1930 experience a little more theatrical , a little more jazzy in this jazz age . And so with me today I'm John McWhorter is maestro Ted Sperling who will be conducting our concert of Strike Up the Band , or I should say his concert of Strike Up the Band , a few weeks from our recording and Lawrence Maslin , the august author on the history of musical theater and other subjects . And so , ted , I wanted to kick it off to you . How does one do Strike Up the Band in a single evening , when Strike Up the Band is actually two shows , each of which have full recordings , and it's an awful lot of music and different stories .

Speaker 4

Well , one thing is you work with Larry Maslon . I'm delighted to be collaborating . We've been friends for a long time and Larry is steeped in this era and in this genre . So I should mention I'm also going to be directing the evening In addition to conducting . That's something that I do a lot with Master Voices , and we're not doing a full out production .

Speaker 4

Obviously , we have around two weeks of rehearsal , but we're going to try to give you the sense that you saw the show , which is always what we try to do when we do a Broadway piece . There will be dancing and for the first time in my tenure with Master Voices , we'll actually have tap dancing , which I'm really looking forward to . We're working with Alison Solomon , an up-and-coming choreographer that I'm having a great time with already . Our principle and , larry , I'd love you to chime in on this has been to try to synthesize the best elements of the two versions of the show . I think both of us love a lot about the 1927 version and think perhaps it was an outlier at the time . Don't forget this was the same year of Show Boat and this is a show that takes a lot of inspiration from Gilbert and Sullivan . It's the first of three satirical operettas that the Gershwin brothers wrote .

Speaker 1

We've already done With George S .

Speaker 4

Kaufman , with George S Kaufman and Maury Ruskin , right , yep . So we've already done Of Thee I Sing and Let Him Eat Cake . I was drawn to Strike of the Band , not just to finish the trilogy , but because I always think about what's going on in our world , and how can Master of Voices concerts reflect and mirror that . And , of course , we're heading right into a very contentious election . There's a lot of war going around the world , unfortunately , right now , and tariffs are very much on people's minds , and so those are all subjects that Strike Up the Van tackles head on .

Speaker 1

And cheese is an eternal topic for the American people .

Speaker 3

We never quite get over it .

Speaker 4

Yes , we've made the decision that we want to sing about cheese . The rhymes are better and it's a little sillier , I think in a way . Yeah , it's better . So , uh , we'll talk about our adaptation , but generally speaking , I think we're trying to make the story as strong as possible , the jokes as funny as possible and the music as memorable as possible and I think to your point , john .

Speaker 1

I appreciate being referred to as august , but you know it's only September , so we'll move into October with this concert . October 29th , Right , Ted ? I think that's the date .

Speaker 1

At Carnegie Hall Showboat , which everyone has , all you know and all the history books say is the great first integrated I hate that term , so maybe a better term is the first great narrative musical , and that opened a couple days after Christmas in 27 . But this tried to open , as you said , John , out of town in Philadelphia , and it's a very strong narrative musical . I mean it is not fluff by any stretch of the imagination , and that may be what got itself tripped up . George S Kaufman was , if you can imagine this , a highly articulate , intelligent writer for the New York Times , just like you , John .

Speaker 1

Exact same thing and in 1919 , he started writing plays , because this was the era between the wars of . You know , the New Yorker would start a couple years later . The Herald Tribune , the Times and all these folks hung out at the Algonquin Hotel , at the Algonquin Roundtable , alexander Wolcott and Benchley and Dorothy Barker , etc . Etc . Anyway , kaufman thought why don't I try my hand at writing comedies ? And by 1925 , 26 , he really had made a name for himself . He had done a couple of plays with Mark Connolly Beggar on Horseback , which was very successful but most pertinent to our case in my opinion .

Speaker 1

In 1925 , he wrote the first legitimate book show for the Marx Brothers , called the Coconuts , with a score by Irving Berlin , which was a huge hit and really established the Marx Brothers as Broadway personalities . And so a couple of years later he was hired by this producer named Edgar Selwyn to write something with the Gershwins who couldn't be hotter either I mean , these are highly combustible giants of the American theater and he decided to write something topical and satirical which he almost always did which was a satire about kind of America's position between the two wars . And it was now what you would know better than I , john , but I don't think the phrase superpower had been coined yet .

Speaker 3

But that sort of thing .

Speaker 1

Yeah , yeah , it certainly bestrode the world scene by 1927 .

Speaker 3

Newly , that was the new feeling of being an American and this nation .

Speaker 1

Right , and there's a few lines , lines about we won the last war , what are we going to do now ? What are we going to be ? And it also taps into this , uh , you know , wave in the 1920s of self-promotion and being a company and and a sort of as ted put it and I think , a press release , a kind of babbitry um what it meant to be a head , a big company , and what was the blurring line between economics and political power , something we have not exactly lost .

Speaker 3

Yeah , the middle-aged men in this show are babbits . They are Sinclair Lewis characters and the whole atmosphere is very post-Theodore Roosevelt in that sense . This is that America , yeah .

Speaker 1

I think so , and Kaufman looks at it as he looked at everything , with skepticism . Theodore Roosevelt in that sense sophisticated for its time and it certainly was poking holes at things that musicals never , ever did by 1927 . Maybe a few review sketches , but not a full-scale musical .

Speaker 3

Yeah , it must have really thrown audiences at the time , as sweet and even cute as it can seem to us . Go ahead , Larry . I didn't mean to interrupt .

Speaker 1

No , I think that would have been the context . Sweet and cute and something came . So within that icing on the chocolate cake came some vinegar and I gather out of town in Philadelphia , which is what they used to do . They used to take these big shows out of town . It did well for a week or two and then didn't really have great comedians in it . It had Larry Hart's brother , teddy Hart , who was not on the , not on the , it was sort of a B-list comedian and it sort of petered out and they had to close it . And one of the comments great comments that comes out of this show is Kaufman was asked to describe satire and he said satire is what closes on Saturday night , referring to this failure the irony fromquote failure of Strike Up the Band out of town has somewhat overshadowed what I think , and I'm sure Ted will talk about this as well . When you really dig into it , it's a tremendously ambitious , smart and still relevant show .

Speaker 3

Very much so , and the thing about this one is that imagine the historical context People are used to no , no , nanette or the Gershwins had just done OK . These are shows that were delightful , but they really weren't about a whole lot of anything . Even if the music was very good , the plots were piffle and nobody really had any problem with that . Then , all of a sudden , here is Strike Up the Band , where the plot is one that , for one thing , you have to follow .

Speaker 3

I remember seeing a Philadelphia production of this in 1984 , when I didn't know a thing about musicals . I was interested in this Gershwin musical that I could see , but I had not been bitten by the show music bug yet I was 19 . So I went and saw this production , had no idea what I was going to see , fell instantly in love with the whole thing I live , right down to the orchestrations , which , for some reason , anybody who was there , who was a grownup , says there was something wrong with that production . But I didn't know any better and I thought it was just amazing . And the thing that I remember thinking is hey , that actually had a plot , that the plot was actually a little bit sour in places and I actually had to pay attention because I was thinking it was going to be no , no , nanette , or the likes of that which I knew from middle school and high school , having seen . So yeah , there was a lot there .

Speaker 3

And I wanted to insert something about Kaufman . I have always thought that he must have been relieved to do Strike Up the Band , even though it didn't work , because they actually did his lines . There's a Kaufman anecdote that he's at the coconuts at a rehearsal of the coconuts , the Berlin show , and he interrupts his conversation with someone , says wait , he's in the lobby . He's in the lobby while the show is going on . Right , he says wait , I just heard one of my lines because the box is improvised so much that did not happen for a strike up the band , so he must have enjoyed listening to his actual work .

Speaker 1

Well , my little . I think that was the prince music theater . It may have been called something else back then in philadelphia , um , and we're grateful for them to breaking ground on that . But the way in for me , because ted and I have worked to do a new adaptation of this text which we can talk more about , is I think I think I know I wrote the liner , know I wrote some of the liner notes to the studio album that came out in the 90s and it occurred to me when I looked at the Kaufman chronology .

Speaker 1

He wrote Strike Up the Band in between , writing the Coconuts in 25 and Animal Crackers in 28 . And he must have had the Marx Brothers on the brain . He was friends with them , he hung out with them . Coconuts toured , it went to London . They were very much not in the zeitgeist , even . They were very much in his circle . And that helped me unlock what could be a solution to this show , because in a weird way he's written the template for Duck Soup , which I think is 34 . I think it's 34 . Yeah , yeah . So if you go , oh , what would the show be like if he had Groucho and Margaret Dumont ? There's a big Margaret Dumont character . Groucho is clearly in the character of Fletcher who owns the cheese factory , and this anarchic crazy comedy around the periphery is clearly Chico and Harpo , so that helped me go . Let's try it that way . Maybe audiences could get in the front door on this very complex property if we kind of thought about it with those parameters

Creating Comedy Duos in Theater

Speaker 1

.

Speaker 3

So in the new version and folks , this is a genuine question , I have not experienced it yet In the new version , do we have Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough ? Are we keeping those two characters as the comic pair , or are we doing the George Spelvin thing from 1927 where there's just one guy ?

Speaker 4

Well , let's explain just to our audience , who may not know the show at all right , that this anarchic quality of the show comes through a character that keeps drifting in and out and causing chaos and then at the end , proves to have been on one track all along . In the 1927 version the name of the character is Spelvin , george Spelvin , and he transforms from scene to scene as necessary . And then I think one of the reasons perhaps that the 1930s version took off more is that they cast a very popular comedy duo that you referred to which are Mark and .

Speaker 4

McCullough , sort of an Abbott and Costello kind of pairing with sort of the smart one and the dumb one , right , and they , I think , probably had a fan base and they incorporated their shtick into the show . In fact , the script that we have from 1930 is an early script it's not necessarily the performance script and it will have scenes where it just says business with cigar , continued business with cigar , and so they clearly had some cigar act , you know , and then they worked it into the show yeah so that's actually .

Speaker 4

That's the one of the things that we are still figuring out . Um , for our concert version . I think for a future fully staged version , the preference would be to have a duo . Um , but because of the kind of schtick I was just describing , that kind of thing sometimes takes a lifetime to refine . You know , these vaudeville acts would define , refine an act and do it for the rest of their careers . We have two weeks and we're also at Carnegie Hall , which is a very big room . So we're trying to figure out what's going to be the funniest and most successful version for our concert and then have another look at what might be the best solution for a stage version .

Speaker 3

For the record , this cigar thing was that they would walk out . And what was it , Larry ? Bobby Clark would drop the cigar and Paul McCullough would try to pick it up , and Bobby Clark would take it back For some reason . That was funny .

Speaker 1

Yeah , I mean to say that clark and mccullough were the abbott and costello of their day . I mean , for my money , abbott and costello are like no coward and and terence radigan compared to a clark and mccullough . You can see them on youtube . Yeah uh , bobby clark made a famous . They did some films too . They did some short , you know , yeah , he had painted on glasses he had a cigar .

Speaker 3

He had a very brash manner . Bobby Clark made a famous career .

Speaker 1

They did , some films too , they did some short , you know little shorts . Yeah , he had painted on glasses . He had a cigar . He had a very brash manner , it's a mystery today , yeah .

Speaker 1

McCullough sort of stands around and tidies up . You know , they're not for my money . I love American comedy . They're not the A-team , Although they were very , very , very , very successful . But they were what I would call parachute comedians , by which I mean their gag and their routines . And the audience expectation was so clear that you could parachute them into any scenario and you'd be off and running . Just the way , you could parachute Abbott and Costello into recruiting in World War II and you'd get Buck Privates . Or you could parachute the Marx Brothers into Fredonia and get Duck Soup .

Speaker 1

And I think the challenge , the ongoing challenge Ted is right , we're a servant of two masters . We want to do a concert and then we hope , because the original 27 is actually in public domain , because we can uh , the original 27 is actually in public domain we can reconceive a version that will hopefully be so astonishingly successful that everyone will want to do it five years on broadway . Right , how do you create a comedy team from scratch ? But I'm I'm of the opinion that the way this show did work was the audience had some expectation for what that comedy team was . They didn't have to figure it out from scratch .

Speaker 1

And we're going to lean a little into the Marx Brothers there , I think , so that the audience goes oh , I think I know what's going to happen if this guy winds up in this situation , which is part of the fun . And , as you quite rightly say , this is the era of Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante and Fanny Bryce and Clark and McCullough and the Marx Brothers . So these shows were written to give them room to do their thing . Give them room to do their thing and I think Kaufman , being more of the craftsman than many , many , many of these writers in the 20s , sort of knew where he wanted them to land and how he wanted the scenes to go .

Speaker 3

Yeah , it's a fascinating piece in so many ways . There's a genius in it in a lot of ways , because it is very Gilbert and Sullivan-esque . I would say that the 27 more so than the 1930 , not what you would expect from a vernacular American musical and it has to be remembered how long ago a hundred years ago now was . 1927 was very different from now in a lot of ways . In 1927 , you probably , unless you were Italian , had never eaten broccoli and you had never eaten pizza . That was not regular food .

Speaker 3

Yet In 1924 , immigration , especially from Southern Europe and brown-skinned countries , had been largely barred , and so we were now past the era of large numbers of , for example , italian people and Jewish people coming into the country . In 1927 , if you went to the movies , it was silent . So Jazz Singer 1927 , that's just that year . Not everybody saw it . Before that there had been a few sound film shorts , but film was silent .

Speaker 3

And of course , in 1927 , calvin Coolidge is the president . We have Silent Cal , and when he passed away , dorothy Parker said how could they tell that was the sort of president that he was ? And so people finding an evening's entertainment were coming in from the 1920s , when also I was told by somebody who was very much alive in the 20s , about 30 years ago , that women tended to wear stronger smelling perfume than they do today . The world smelled like Chanel no 5 in 1927 . I know that's trivial , but I just wanted to get that in . And so Strike Up . The Band is in that world and of course the music is spectacular . In many cases it's very much ahead of its time for American music . I imagine , ted , that's a lot of what interested you in this piece .

Speaker 4

Yes , I always start with something I love . I don't really like to spend weeks and weeks preparing for something that I'm not in love with . So that's number one . And also our group does everything from Broadway to opera and contemporary music , so there's a certain standard that the chorus expects to be working on . So I like to find pieces that are challenging for the chorus and for the principles . It also has to be worth it to learn something this quickly , to put so much energy into it . But the principals who work with us always leave feeling like I would never have done that if you hadn't asked , and I'm so glad I did .

Speaker 3

Maestro Sperling , may I ask a question ? You have a chorus and you've got all these syllables , all these syllables going by , and it's in English . How do you get the diction ? How do you manage to make it so that we out in the audience can understand the diction ? How do you manage to make it ?

Speaker 4

so that we out in the audience can understand . I've always wondered how you did that . I have my own approach , which is not necessarily widespread . My main thing is I say to the chorus after we've learned it , I do go through some very specific cutoffs , and I'm on the rampage with the chorus for several years now , because everybody pays a lot of attention to when a note begins , but very few people pay attention to when a note ends , and so the tendency is always to hang on to the last note too long . So I am very specific about cutoffs and often that's what helps you understand a word is . You know a word's not done till it's done , unless it ends with a vowel . If it ends with an open vowel , you know what the word is right from the beginning .

Speaker 4

but if it has a final consonant . You don't know what we're saying until we finish it . So I do make sure everybody finishes together . But the other thing is I say you have to mean it . You have to actually be singing like you made this up , like this is a thought that just occurred to you that you want to express , right , so if it's dead , if it's flat , then it's not going to register . But if you sing it like you mean it , it will suddenly come to life .

Speaker 4

The other thing is that I believe in singing as much as possible the way we talk . So I don't actually love it when people are over enunciating when they sing , because it sounds phony to me , mm-hmm . So I try to strike that balance between sometimes not saying a final consonant because we wouldn't right . Right , you lied things , and sometimes that's great for me with singing . And then there are some other places where I think no , we have to make this note shorter so we can really understand it . Exactly the word strike up the band . If you're going to strike up like strike cup , you don't want it to sound like there's a dry cup somewhere . It's strike up . So I make the word strike shorter than written sometimes , right .

Speaker 3

Larry , I wanted to ask you something about legacy on this show . We're in 1927 , such an important year in so many ways , in so many areas . So you've got the 1927 edition of Strike Up the Band at Flops in Philadelphia . Showboat is , as we've said , 1927 . And then Strike Up the Band makes a hit in 1930 . Did it have a legacy ? Did it affect the development of the form or was it just a one-off Strike Up the band , because showboat essentially was showboat , did not change musical theater , then did strike up the band in 43 .

Speaker 1

Yeah , exactly yeah to oklahoma . That's an excellent question . I think , um , you left out one very important date and uh milestone , which is depression , the stock market crash in 29 . So you might say that's the kind of tipping point where , you know , strike up the band was the first musical , the revised version by Maury Riskand , who was a friend of Kaufman's . It wasn't antagonistic at all . Kaufman said , hey , I did what I could . You want to take a crack at it ? Go ahead . And um , there's a lot of Kaufman in the 1930 version one could argue the best part of the 30 version . And the Depression happened and Strike Up the Band was the first musical to open the 1930s . It opened the first week of 1930 .

Revising a Classic Musical for Today

Speaker 1

And you know people's , what people wanted changed . Maybe they weren't so interested in pointed political satire because their life had become pointed political satire . And Riskin himself said when he inherited Clark and McCullough , I had to rewrite War and Peace for the Three Stooges . And you can tell it's I hate to use the phrase dumbed down . You would come up with a better phrase it's denatured . How about that ? Is that a better phrase ? And it's a little simplistic . It's a dream sequence which is always a cop-out , in my opinion . So you might look at in two levels what people are going to see in October is the 1927 version running at 30 miles an hour .

Speaker 1

Um , and the 1930 version running at 30 miles an hour into each other . Smack like in a Warner brothers cartoon . Um , and the explosion is kind of the best bit . Certainly we went and cherry picked the best songs . Uh , because Ira Gershwin was an acolyte of WS Gilbert . It's probably among the most American take on that kind of style and I think we've tried to find a slightly cleaner plot . I hate to even use the word plot in a musical written between 1927 and 1930 . But I think we found a way for audiences to get on board . I think we have different expectations of characters . I think in 2024 , it's a little harder to lean back and say here's where the boy and the girl do their tap bit . We like a little bit of motivation sprinkled in there .

Speaker 3

Oh really . So they're not just going to come out and sing and tap , which I kind of enjoy something .

Speaker 1

Yeah , they are , but you'll sort of know why I have to say something right now , you'll know , why been a long day ?

Speaker 1

yeah , have a question for you , john . You're the best person in the world the world to ask this question . So in revising the book we've had make cut some elisions and create some new situations and so on and so forth . And because it does exist in this limbo between 27 and 30 , I've had to be very careful about my word choices and I pull out my Random House Dictionary of American Slang to see when they land . The word slacker actually appears in the original script , surprising to me .

Speaker 3

In today's meaning yeah , actually .

Speaker 1

But the word I couldn't pin down was the word hack . In the way we use someone who's sort of second-rate and hackneyed A political hack , I can't find it anywhere .

Speaker 3

I don't think that word is used that way , then it's only used as a vehicle . You hire a hack , but no , I've never seen it in any pop culture source of that time and I don't have my books with me right now . But my intuition is that , no , he's just a hack . Would not be something somebody said in 1927 find ?

Speaker 1

how do you , what do you use as your barometer for , like when words are in common usage at a certain time , because we certainly . The last thing I want is for you know words that that appear in common parlance to , to disrupt the surface tension of the show .

Speaker 3

You do two things . There is something called the online etymological dictionary .

Speaker 3

Okay , there is something called the Online Etymological Dictionary . Okay , and that sounds kind of cheap and you're wondering whether , but actually the people who put it together are excellent and so they almost never mess up . Then also , you get a subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary and you don't bother with the big giant navy colored volumes . Now it's online and they can add to it every 10 seconds . Giant navy colored volumes Now it's online and they can add to it every 10 seconds and that will tell you all that is known generally since last week about the history of a word .

Speaker 3

And so hack . Actually , when you said that , I thought I'm going to go look at the OED after we finished taping for hack , and if you can't find it in either one of those places , then you can be pretty sure . Although , if you really get obsessed about things like this , you can also do hack and then 1927 , see what comes up , and then try hack 1900 and see if something comes up in some ancient farming document or something like that . So those are the three things that I do when I'm putting together my , I do a language podcast called Lexicon Valley or if I'm writing a column .

Speaker 4

So yeah , but hack you I don't know , but it doesn't feel right to me no , okay , I throw in one word that's jumped out at me , um , that I don't think we use anymore , but it's in the score and it's in a very famous standard , um , from that era , which is the word chaff , c-h-a-f-f . Where where's soaff ?

Speaker 3

in it so .

Speaker 4

I gaily chaffed , you know from . Oh yeah , that's right , it's in one of the choruses . We were just working on one of the finolettos , of which there are two in this piece . They're mid-act finales , but that's a word that , just you know , screams the 1920s to me .

Speaker 3

Oh , it's also when smoke gets in your eyes , isn't it ?

Speaker 4

That's the one I saw I'd love to get a draft , yeah . Right , I wanted to say just a couple of things just for our future audiences , and I hope everybody who's listening is going to come . Larry was saying we were picking and choosing the best , but sometimes you do have to leave out some of your favorite things . And there's a song that was written for 1930 , which became a minor standard , called Soon , and it's a love duet for the main couple .

Speaker 3

I remember my heart swelled hearing it in Philadelphia in 1984 .

Speaker 4

Yeah , it's a beautiful tune and it actually was born of some material from the 1927 score . That tune is used in these finolettos .

Speaker 3

Jim , how can you do such a thing ?

Speaker 4

Exactly Beautiful . Some friends of the Grisham said that's a tune you should exploit it . So it became its own tune later . But , as Larry was saying , we're trying to keep the plot airborne for the length of the evening and in both of the versions that tend to get done , the two romantic couples and there are two , there's sort of the more serious grown-up couple and the younger , more soubrette , juvenile couple . They both are sort of in love from the beginning and the only obstacle to them is permission . For the , the younger couple , it's the market Dumont character has to say yes , and for the older couple it's mr Fletcher . So Larry is investing more in these two romances and and giving them the whole span of the evening to actually resolves .

Speaker 4

And the conflict comes from within the couples . So for either them to sing soon in the first act is very resolved . It's saying soon we'll be together in our obstacles will be gone , right , and since the obstacles are remaining through the show , we have not found yet a place for soon in our , in our version . So I don't want people to be disappointed . You will still hear the beautiful melody because it's in the 1927 final letos , but you may not hear the full version no soon .

Speaker 3

Oh , by the way , strike Up the Band trivia . This is because this will be the only place I will ever have a reason to mention this Philadelphia . The Margaret Dumont character is Edna Mae Oliver , who was the kind of you're right , yeah , and she left the show as it wasn't working out . So she left , and you know what . She then went to Showboat because she was Parthy in Showboat . There's that connection between Stark Up the Band and Showboat . Just wanted to get that in there . So anyway , amazing .

Speaker 4

And also we were speaking about WS Gilbert , of Gilbert and Sullivan fame . One of the nice little tidbits is that Ira Gershwin first encountered Gilbert's writing in a book and thought it was just poetry . He didn't know at first he didn't know that it went with music , and so that was a big light bulb moment for him as a teenager when he finally got to hear the music that went with these words that he loved so much .

Speaker 3

You know , folks , one reason to experience Strike Up the Band is that and I'm going to get in trouble for saying this I have offended many people . Gilbert and Sullivan , I have great respect , Never loved them , Not even the Mikado , not even Pirates , and part of it is that , frankly , I find the music rather unengaging . It's not surprising to me that Ira would see the lyrics and think that they didn't go to music . And the truth is Strike Up the Band , to me , is Gilbert and Sullivan better Because you know it's in our language and the music is , frankly , more interesting . It's the way I prefer to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan is to listen to Strike Up the Band .

Speaker 1

Well , you know , if Strike Up , the Band's plural did nothing more than to have a moment where George Kaufman and Maury Riskin when the show opened in 1930 , the story goes that they were watching it from the back of the orchestra and during intermission , kaufman turned to Maury , uh and said who was a Columbia graduate , by the way , john and said you know what , why don't we do ?

Speaker 1

The next one just for us . And the next one was of the I sing um , which you know won the Pulitzer prize and is considered to be the gold standard , certainly , of the three political musicals they did , together with the Gershwins uh , a total um , landmark in the history of the American musical theater and , I think , the most kind of fluent and cogent access or appropriation , if I'm allowed to use that word in this context , of the Gilbert and Sullivan style . So you know , it was the ultimate strike up the bands , or the ultimate kind of workshop , right , it was for them to get their muscles going so that they could , in the depths of the depression a couple years later , turn out this masterpiece very much .

Speaker 3

So yeah , I've always thought of it that way as well , that it's the it's . It steps things gradually up to what became in my mind of the I cake , you know , basically those two , those two magnificent .

Speaker 1

Strike up the cake . Strike see the the cake . You know , there is one anecdote I feel like I must say and Ted by all means feel free to use it in concert is Kaufman , who was . I don't think of him so much as a curmudgeon , I think of him as an acerbic realist with a sense of humor , acerbic realist with a sense of humor . But he told this story that he was in a lobby right , all these great anecdotes seem to happen in theater lobbies and a man came up to him and said oh , mr Gershwin .

Speaker 1

Mr Gershwin and Kaufman said well , you know , we both tall , jewish , dark hair , long chins . He said I didn't have the , I couldn't , I didn't have time to interrupt the guy and tell him he had made a mistake . He said oh , mr Gershwin , I love your work , you know , but I have and I put money into so many of your shows and they've all been hits , except one . I put money in to strike up the band in 1927 and I lost my shirt . Could you possibly tell me why that show failed ? And Kaufman said I gave the poor man the only possible answer I could think of . Kaufman gave me a lousy book .

Speaker 3

You know . With that , I think that our conversation on the historical circumstances of Strike Up the Band or Strike Up the Bands has come to a graceful end , and I have been so happy to be here with Maestro Sperling and Larry Maslin , who is so talented and knowledgeable about so very many things .

Musical Production Announcement

Speaker 3

And please listen to our next edition of the podcast , where we're going to discuss other aspects of the circumstances surrounding the creation of this musicals , so to speak .

Speaker 4

The concert is October 29th at Carnegie Hall , one night only . We have an all-star cast , and you can find out much more about our production by visiting mastervoicesorg , where you can also find a link to buy tickets .

Speaker 2

Thank you for listening to the Master Voices podcast . To learn more about Master Voices , visit mastervoicesorg . You can discover our rich history , read chorus member spotlights and buy tickets to upcoming performances . You can go there to support our work by making a tax-deductible donation . Your gift will allow us to continue our mission to spark greater human connections by reimagining what the choral experience can be . If you enjoyed this episode , make sure to like and subscribe . Wherever you listen to podcasts .