Over on his website, my pal Mark Evanier wrote a couple of articles about Allan Sherman, The first here is a good, long piece about Sherman’s career and its descent. In it, he mentions Sherman trying his hand at writing a Broadway musical and it closing after four performances. (One slight, somewhat-addendum. In talking about Sherman’s career falling off, Mark references him trying to shred being a short, fat Jewish writer with a crewcut and glasses and becoming instead Frank Sinatra. Worth noting that in his autobiography, A Gift of Laughter – which Mark also writes about, and is correct about it being an enjoyable book, even if not, as Mark points out, not always accurate… -- Sherman jokes at length about wanting to be Cary Grant. So, there’s a little of both icons in his personal changes.) In his second piece here, Mark mentions Sherman’s attempt to write some serious songs and embeds a video of a sort-of parody original. All this brought to mind one of those serious song, which is actually fairly enjoyable. It comes from that failed 1969 Broadway musical, The Fig Leaves are Falling. The music for the show was written by Albert Hague, an accomplished composer who had a couple of Broadway hits to his credit, Plain and Fancy and also Redhead, with lyrics by the great Dorothy Fields, that starred Gwen Verdon and co-starred Richard Kiley, who soon after would star in Man of La Mancha. (Hague also wrote the popular song, “Young and Foolish,” and composed the music for the songs in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.) However, he’s probably best-known for playing the music teacher Mr. Shorofsky in the film, Fame, a role he re-created in the TV series. I mention all this to make clear that The Fig Leaves are Falling did at least have some pedigree behind it. For what it's worth, the star Dorothy Loudon was nominated for a Tony as Best Actress in a Musical -- and won the Drama Desk Award. And it had a revised revival off-off-Broadway in 2013. The reviews both times though were not good. I don’t know the score, but have heard this one particular song from it, “Did I Ever Really Live” There are a couple of recordings of it online by jazz greats Joe Williams and Nancy Wilson accompanied by Ramsey Lewis. They’re very good, though I think like another unlikely, basic version more, sung by of all-people deadpan comic Pat Paulsen, from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The simplicity of the song’s lyrics and it’s straight-forward music serves it especially well. And he does a good job with it. Paulsen’s is the first time I heard the song. I was working at the radio station WNUR while attending Northwestern University and one day was going through the music library. That’s when I came across Pat Paulsen’s comedy album, Live at the Ice House, which is a comedy club in Pasadena. And in the middle of all the comedy bits, there he was, singing a song – and a serious one at that. (I later saw Allan Sherman perform the song on TV. He noted that one thing he was pleased with was, to emphasize the simplicity, he only used words of one syllable, except for four words – or six, since the word “ever” is repeated two times. He said the only other song he know like this was “My Heart Stood Still,” by Rodgers & Hart.) Anyway, Pat Paulsen sang the song on TV, as well, when he had his spin-off series from Pat Paulsen’s Half a Comedy Hour. It ran for 13 episodes, and he sang it at the end of the last “real” episode, #12 – the final episode was basically a clip show. If you want to hear either Joe Williams or Nancy Willson/Ramsey Lewis’s recordings, you can find them both here. But this is Pat Paulsen’s version of the Allan Sherman-Albert Hague song. Not only because I like the song and his rendition -- but...hey, I just like seeing Pat Paulsen sing. And a serious song at that...
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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