REMEMBERING CHARLES STROUSE By Peter Filichia
And he was only three weeks away from his next birthday.
True, anyone who’s 96 can’t count on becoming 97, but we would have wished that Charles Strouse could reach this June 7th and many more.
Orson Welles famously said that when it comes to hits, “You only need one” to make a reputation and a fortune. Strouse had three – BYE BYE BIRDIE, APPLAUSE and ANNIE, all of which won Best Musical Tonys and became TV specials, too.
Unlike Conrad Birdie, Charles was neither born in Indochina nor West Virginny, but in New York City, close to Broadway. It took him a while to get there, because he wanted to be a so-called serious composer.
Aren’t we lucky that he lightened up? Besides, Charles was fated to be on Broadway. After all, his mother was named Ethel like Merman and his father was named Ira like Gershwin.
In 1956, Strouse made his Broadway debut by providing incidental music for the play SIXTH FINGER IN A FIVE FINGER GLOVE. Doesn’t this sound like a show that would close after one performance?
No – it closed after two.
And yet, you may well be one of the literally millions upon millions who heard that music, because Charles sold it to The Price Is Right, the long-running TV game show. Apparently, the price was right, and the melody was, too; for years, it was the program’s theme song.
On March 24, 1958, one Elvis Presley was drafted, causing a mournful hullabaloo from fans. That was lucky for Charles, lyricist Lee Adams, librettist Michael Stewart and stars Dick Van Dyke and Chita Rivera, as well as director-choreographer Gower Champion. Otherwise, we would have never had BYE BYE BIRDIE.
The show has a song celebrating Ed Sullivan, who had a primetime weekly TV show that featured acts that would appeal both to young and not-so-young viewers. BIRDIE did the same by having songs that were pure rock ‘n’ roll (as rock was called then) for the kids and easy listening for the adults.
Appealing to all ages was “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.” As fine as that song was onstage and on the cast album, it’s longer and better on the movie soundtrack. Adams, who did lyrics for half of Strouse’s 14 full-length Broadway scores, gave extra and excellent lines that are well worth hearing.
Next came ALL AMERICAN, from which Tony Bennett recorded “Once Upon a Time.” Charles liked to mention that it sold half a million copies in its first few months before adding, with quite the twinkle in his eye, that the other side of the record – “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” – was far more responsible for the sales.
ALL AMERICAN was about immigrants, a group that Strouse would again honor 24 years later in RAGS. Among the former show’s superb songs is “Melt Us,” a ragtime number where the new Americans want to be assimilated. RAGS especially excels with “Blame It on the Summer Night,” a sinuously sexy song in which a newly arrived wife in America has feelings for a man she’d just met.
After Strouse and Adams had the long-running GOLDEN BOY, they did IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S SUPERMAN for Harold Prince. “You’ve Got Possibilities,” introduced by young Linda Lavin, was remembered more than 50 years later when PRINCE OF BROADWAY was produced.
SUPERMAN has an almost-title song that shows up in the marvelous overture, and later in the second act and finale with Adams’ lyrics. It’s a fine example of how Strouse was so good at mixing a rock sensibility with Golden Age show music.
When I lived on West 56th, I would run into Charles quite often, for his apartment was right across the street (in digs that were, needless to say, substantially better than mine). In 2006, we happened to meet on Eighth Avenue, and I asked, “What are you working on?” And when he told me he was writing his memoir and said he was looking for a literary agent, I said, “Funny thing! My girlfriend Linda is one!”
Linda took on the project, asked me to be the “as-told-to” writer, but I was facing a fast-approaching deadline of my own book. So, she had the estimable Stephen Cole to do the ghosting, which he did expertly. Put on a Happy Face, named for BIRDIE’s most famous song, was published in 2007.
To help promote the book, Charles and I did an event at the Paley Center. There I pointed out that what was distinctive about his music is that it often bounced. Listen to BIRDIE’s “The Telephone Hour,” ALL AMERICAN’s “I Couldn’t Have Done It Alone,” and ANNIE’s “It’s the Hard-Knock Life.” Those songs have the definitive “Charles Strouse bounce.”
“Bounce!” Strouse said, smiling. “I like that!” Afterward, one of his sons told me that Charles would use that expression from then on.
The book that precluded my ghosting PUT ON A HAPPY FACE was my second edition of LET’S PUT ON A MUSICAL. Bart Greenberg, who booked events at Barnes & Noble, offered me an in-person promotional appearance. Fine, but I decided that I needed a marquee name to get people to attend. My first thought was Charles Strouse.
His response: “My nickname has always been Buddy, but I’ll always be a buddy to you.”
(To quote one of my favorite songs from APPLAUSE, “When you’ve got good friends, you’ve got a good life.”)
On the night of the event, Charles was suffering from an eye ailment, but he was there. That he was wearing sunglasses made me dread that he’d keep them on during our chat, which would make him appear remote or even uncaring.
No. He removed them. Throughout the 45 minutes or so, the merciless fluorescent lights would occasionally make him wince from pain, but he soldiered on and even went to the piano to deliver his favorite medley.
It started with “The Night They Raided Minsky’s” from the 1969 film of the same name; the title song from the BYE BYE BIRDIE film; “Once upon a Time,” and “Those Were the Days,” the theme from the 1970s TV sensation All in the Family.
That last one was particularly great fun, because he slowed the tempo and choppily delivered “Gee. Our. Old. La. Salle. Ran. Great.” because Jean Stapelton’s delivery that started every episode wasn’t at all clear.
After the mini-concert, he took questions and answered a particularly tough one: “When you and Lee Adams were summoned to Detroit by David Merrick when HELLO, DOLLY! was floundering, did you really write ‘Before the Parade Passes By’?”
Charles said that up till then, out of courtesy to Jerry Herman, DOLLY’s composer-lyricist, he’d always denied it, but was irked when he’d recently seen Herman say on TV that he’d never had any help.
“So,” said Charles, “I’ll say here for the first time that, yes, Lee and I wrote a song we called ‘Before the Parade Passes By,’ and while it wasn’t used, it certainly gave Jerry the title and the idea for his first-act finale.”
In every career, there are heartbreaks. Three of Strouse’s last few musicals – CHARLEY AND ALGERNON, RAGS and NICK & NORA – averaged a mere 10 performances. Yet each received a Best Score Tony nomination. Yes, RAGS received four other nods, but the other two musicals were only nominated for Best Score, which suggests that Charles’ work was not the reason for the shows’ short runs.
These came after his biggest hit. Through ANNIE, Charles joined an august group. Every Broadway composer worth his sheet music has written a song about New York – Cohan, Herbert, Gershwin, Rodgers, Bernstein, Styne, Bock, Kander, Menken – so Charles joined the club via “N.Y.C.” Yet his is unique because his starts off bluesy and evocative before barreling forward to a speedy and exhilarating finish.
True, Charles was often a waste-not-want-not composer. He took his melody for “You Rat, You,” a razz-ma-tazz vaudeville specialty for THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY’S and put it to a much slower tempo. With a Martin Charnin lyric, it became “Something Was Missing,” the tender ballad in which Daddy Warbucks expressed his love for the future Annie Warbucks.
As fine as those songs are, there’s one for which ANNIE will always be most remembered. After The Beatles had written about “Yesterday” and John Denver had sung about “Today,” Charles and Charnin instead looked forward and wrote about a different day. And there will be many a “Tomorrow” for Charles Strouse’s music.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
