What are Your Favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein Lesser Known Songs? — Page 3

Thanks, Eric, I'll have to look for one of those recordings. All I know of the show is "All the Things You Are" and what I've read in academic accounts of Hammerstein's work. At least one dissertation does credit MAY along with SHOW BOAT as essential precursors to OKLAHOMA! But my impression was that most critics saw it as another passé operetta.

I did misrepresent the show's success. I see now it only ran for 2 months; hardly a success even in the days before shows ran for decades.

GavestonPS said: "Thanks, Eric, I'll have to look for one of those recordings. All I know of the show is "All the Things You Are" and what I've read in academic accounts of Hammerstein's work. At least one dissertation does credit MAY along with SHOW BOAT as essential precursors to OKLAHOMA! But my impression was that most critics saw it as another passé operetta.

The Song is You from Music in the Air is one of my top five fav Kern's songs!! also includes the great song Ive told every little star-jane pickens does a a great version...

All the Things you Are, BTW came from the kern-Hammerstein fantastic show "very warm for may"

I did misrepresent the show's success. I see now it only ran for 2 months; hardly a success even in the days before shows ran for decades.

"

Seems like a lot of people saw or heard the Encores' Pipe Dream and discovered a lot of songs that they liked. I bet that if someone wrote new lyrics to "Sweet Thursday" it would be a hit.

On Rodgers and Hart, I've seen the 1932 film Love Me Tonight, a pre-code comedy starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald that introduced "Isn't It Romantic" and "Lover' ( a song that Peggy Lee did wonderfully). And before that film they had about a half dozen still popular songs from Broadway, including "Spring is Here" and "With a Song In My Heart." You don't hear that much about the sad life and early death of Larry Hart. He left everyone with his lyrics. Rodgers, I believe, said that he would write the music first and then have to find Hart and force him to stay until he finished the lyrics. How could this little man write such beautiful love songs?

If you believe Wikopedia, one of those who saw "Very Warm for May" during its short run was nine year old Stephen Sondheim, who claimed that it inspired his interest in the musical theater.

Sinatra doesn't have much Rodgers and Hammerstein among his best known songs. He recorded "Some Enchanted Evening" and "This Nearly Was Mine," but was not much competition for Ezio Pinza, the opera singer who originated the role on Broadway. He had a great deal of admiration for "Soliloquy" from Carousel and frequently sang it in concerts.

Updated On: 11/21/15 at 09:37 AM

I love "I Have Loved and I've Learned," which was cut from The Sound of Music but later used in the Broadway version of Cinderella but was cut during previews. I wish they kept it in. It's a good song and gives the stepmother some backstory, and through it we see how she steers her daughters down the wrong path. I learned the song was originally for Max and Elsa. I assume it was written before "How Can Love Survive."

I also love "He Was Tall" from Cinderella, which was cut from The King and I. It was originally the introductory verse of "Hello, Young Lovers."

As I just wrote in the very thing you quoted, complete with the IBDB link. I am now so confused.

Not a deep cut like the rest of you all are posting but the amount of times I've listened to "Yatata" from Allegro could easily be considered an inordinate amount, and I still find it oddly thrilling. It's so driving and eerie, and it makes me wish dearly the show had been a wild success, which may have prompted further experimentation, as opposed to their turn from sentiment to sentimentality. I'd love to see a big, barnburning revival that invests entirely in its premise and concept.

To add to the post-1951 discussion:

I just think the shows are uninspired and blame mean old man Rodgers. I think he stopped caring about whether the property really "sang", and dragged Oscar into anything that seemed feasible, but in the end, wasn't really right. They weren't really right for PIPE DREAM, as nice as some of the songs are. FLOWER DRUM SONG didn't beg to be musicalized, as interesting and as nice as some of the songs are. They just stopped doing interesting ideas, and sort of gilded the lily until 1959.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC, however, screams to be musicalized, which is part of the reason why it works and why it succeeded. I find the show maudlin at times, but it's still touching, and there's no denying that it works. (It would have worked even better had Hammerstein written the book, but I think he was too ill without even knowing it specifically.)

jv92 said: "To add to the post-1951 discussion:

I just think the shows are uninspired and blame mean old man Rodgers. I think he stopped caring about whether the property really "sang", and dragged Oscar into anything that seemed feasible, but in the end, wasn't really right.

thanks for you inputs jv92. Was Rodgers known to be a "mean spirited" person or was that just in his last years and in what ways did that behavior come out?

broadwaysfguy said: "jv92 said: "To add to the post-1951 discussion:

I just think the shows are uninspired and blame mean old man Rodgers. I think he stopped caring about whether the property really "sang", and dragged Oscar into anything that seemed feasible, but in the end, wasn't really right.

thanks for you inputs jv92. Was Rodgers known to be a "mean spirited" person or was that just in his last years and in what ways did that behavior come out?

"

He increasingly was--there is a lot of talk about him calling Sondheim a fag when they did Do I Hear a Waltz, and mixed things about how he treated Hart, albeit he must have been frustrated by his alcoholism.

I think The Sound of Music is a fine musical. But it is by far the most traditional musical of their "big 5" they ever did--in many ways it really is a play with music.

Didn't Rodgers have severe clinical depression? Or am I making that up? I've also heard his wife was kind of a jerk.

Charley Kringas Inc said: "Didn't Rodgers have severe clinical depression? Or am I making that up? I've also heard his wife was kind of a jerk.

Both. He was in a terribly unhappy charade of a marriage. Music really saved him, which is very moving. It's part of the reason why people had to endure TWO BY TWO, though. He had to keep writing to survive, and unlike someone like Sondheim finding a more experimental voice to collaborate with mid-career (James Lapine) who took him in new directions, Rodgers was turning out the same old, even less inspired sh*t. Even if some of the stuff is pretty, it ain't CAROUSEL, folks. Or even PIPE DREAM.

My opinion of R&H can come only from their scores and it is that Hammerstein was genius squared and Rodgers was genius cubed. Also, I did like all of Rodgers' compositions from "Do I Hear A Waltz", especially the title waltz number in addition to "The Sweetest Sound I Ever Heard"" from "No Strings" in which he was both composer and lyricist.

on the Rodgers discussion, just found my funniest rodgers lyric line from the Rodgers & Hart song

Give that Girl a Hand!

"She's the only reason sailors

ever come on land,

Wont you give that darling little girl

a hand"