What went wrong with Shuffle Along?

I saw it thought it was meh. I did not care for it. I am just wondering if it should of had an out of town?

It should have had an out of town tryout.

broadwayguy91 said: "it's all Will Swenson's fault."

Ha! Good one.

Nobody cared about the historical significance and fall-out of a show nobody remembered to begin with. It's hard to tell people that something they never heard of is important. Or, it's hard to succeed at it when you have to spend so much money to do it.

I would say that, like most failures, the book was the biggest problem. It seemed to me to be overly diffuse, unfocused, meandering. And beefing up McDonald's role, which should really have been secondary, to suit her stardom was a big mistake. She had a lot of songs, but no real story to play. (This was, many believe, the same problem that killed Grind and Moon Over Buffalo.)

It was too bloated in my opinion. They tried to give all of the leads equal stage time which resulted in an exhausting evening where there was so much going on, but very little actually happened in the story.

I found it unfocused, and really hated the narration throughout. Did it want to be a biopic of the authors or a show about the actual making of the show? They also showed very little of the actual Shuffle Along.

The book was overblown and overwritten about a segment of history that it didn't try to make us care about.

I'm afraid that I can't agree that the show had something cogent to say about race and history; it was not only often reductive, it also was full of Trump-style lies. For instance, Shuffle Along was not the first Broadway show to feature a jazz score - the reviews for Gershwin's La La Lucille, two whole years earlier, called it "the incarnation of jazz." And Gershwin certainly didn't steal a clarinet riff and turn it into "I Got Rhythm" - a song that wasn't even written until eight years after Shuffle Along closed.

The book's heart was in the right place; but the truth is good enough to tell this story without resorting to fabricated showbiz clichés that feel old, no matter how new they might be.

Updated On: 9/30/16 at 10:08 AM

jbird5 said: "It should have toured Pennsylvania first."



Hilarious...

neonlightsxo said: "And Gershwin certainly didn't steal a clarinet riff and turn it into "I Got Rhythm" - a song that wasn't even written until eight years after Shuffle Along closed.



As soon as I heard that line I was like: how can they possibly prove that? I need the receipts on that one, George.




"

https://books.google.com/books?id=7n6Ir7OUS8MC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=i+got+rhythm+plagiarism&source=bl&ots=ThVPXMaL&sig=bAVl_5un79pmPKN7n98jYHvmVJ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx0MOLx7fPAhXFNx4KHSCgDJg4ChDoAQgqMAU#v=onepage&q=i%20got%20rhythm%20plagiarism&f=false

broadwayguy91 said: "I wonder if Forbbiden Broadway will parody Shuffle Along at some point.



There is pregnant "Audra" in Spamilton and a couple of lines as to why she left the show.

It seems to me that the excerpt to which Dancingthrulife2 links does more to disprove the ridiculous notion that a brilliant composer like George Gershwin stole four notes from a pit musician and turned them into the entirety of "I Got Rhythm." Clearly, this passage is the source for Wolfe's dialogue (it seems to my memory to be stated almost verbatim in the show - talk about plagiarism), but it's utterly ridiculous - mainly because it's musically idiotic.

The book claims that the purloined notes are C#-D#-F#-G#; those notes would be the notes for the lyric "I got rhythm" (and "I got my man" and others), but only when the song is in the key of F#, which is not a key often employed; in fact, most musicians would just use the enharmonic key of Gb, which is easier (but not easy) to read. (In Gb, the notes would be Db-Eb-Gb-Ab.)

In solfège, the progression is Sol La Do Re, 4 simple ascending notes. The rhythm is a blank downbeat, three dotted quarter notes, and an eighth note tied to a half note. It's astonishingly simple; not a complex progression worth stealing - AND it's merely a fraction of a full melody, sans harmonics.

Gershwin had been contributing syncopated/jazz songs to Broadway shows since 1918, three years before Shuffle Along (Blake's first show score - prior to that he was a performer on the vaudeville circuit).

So yes, the story has been made (up), and repeated; but there's absolutely no reason to put any credence in it.

Updated On: 9/30/16 at 01:25 PM

True, true, Gaveston - we are an exceptionally territorial, acquisitive, and selfish species, living in terror that someone will take away something that we think "belongs" to us.

Music is music; it all belongs to everyone. No group ever "owned" syncopation, just as China doesn't "own" the pentatonic scale, nor the Irish 6/8 time.