I was watching another one of my The Songwriters: An Intimate Evening of Songs and StoriesDVDs last night. This one was devoted to Charles Strouse and Arthur Schwartz.

I really enjoyed the Charles Strouse segment as he threw in a couple of bits of acting. He and his Annie cowriter Martin Charnin did a mock backer's audition, feebly describing the concept of the show to a very rich backer (played by Debbie Shapiro who had an amazing voice). They play, she smokes, they play, she looks distant, they play, she smokes. Finally at the end her one question is "Annie has no pupils, how are you going to cast someone without pupils". Then "Good luck with your show" and she leaves. Very funny. I've experienced something similar...

Charles Strouse sure can write show tunes (Bye Bye Birdie was his first show on Broadway) but he is more of a shouter than a singer. (Dammit Jim, I'm a writer not a singer). It was another great sing and tell and he told the story about Annie being troubled and needing fixing and re-writing.

In one great story, they had finally written the song that would really help the show and then they promptly lost it. Since they were so stressed, neither could remember a note or word of it! After searching through bags of garbage and having a nervous breakdown, the conductor finally found it -- "Easy Street"! It's a great number, and it would have been a shame if it had ended up lining a gerbil cage. I also learned he wrote "Those Were The Days" for All In The Family! Kewl -- I love it when my two favs, musical theater and TV, dovetail!

I hadn't known that Charles Strouse wrote the music to Nick and Nora (book by Arthur Laurents and lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr.) so when my husband gave me the original Broadway Cast recording of it, I was anxious to hear it. Looking at the writers and the amazing cast list (Joanna Gleason and Barry Bostwick star, with Christine Baranski, Chris Sarandon, Faith Prince, and Debra Monk among other luminaries) I was puzzled as to why this wasn't a smash hit.

Now, I'm a hug fan of the Thin Man movies. My husband and I watched them so much while we were dating we decided to name our first born Myrna, after Myrna Loy. (If it had been a boy we would have called him Powell, after William Powell).

Maybe it's because I have such a strong vision of who these characters were from the movies, that the story as described in the liner notes ("Nick and Nora are forced to confront their own hidden demons...they also investigate their marriage, working on the case and their personal problems...") didn't seem very Nick and Nora-like. And to be honest I was underwhelmed by the music and lyrics.

Charles Strouse had played some tunes on that DVD that I had never heard before and instantly fell in love with ("Once Upon A Time" from the show All American starring Ray Bolger) so I was kinda disappointed in this CD. The songs never quite seem to measure up to the spectacular voices. However, the liner notes point out "The show features extended musical scenes, but it is not through-composed and gives equal weight to song and spoken word. Because of the fragmentation and unorthodox structure of many of the musical numbers, the score tended to be underappreciated by many at first hearing, and rewards repeated listening."

Hmm...maybe I should give it another listen...

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