There Comes a Song

Okay, two more songs from the British musical The Four Musketeers, and then on to other things.  The 1967 show had a lively, fun score that, amidst all the comic frivolity, featured two beautiful ballads, and this is the first of them.

Both were sung by Harry Secombe, and more about that tomorrow because there's a story behind it.  That one is more of a tender, love ballad.  This today is The Power Ballad.  And if anyone could nail a power ballad to the roof, it was Harry Secombe, who had a famous, huge hit with "If I Ruled the World" from the musical Pickwick about five years earlier, which became his signature song.

This song, "There Comes a Time," is very much in the same mode, though closer even to something more dramatic like, "The Impossible Dream."  It's the final, original song in the show (there are a couple of reprises that follow) and is the big 11 o'clock number, when all the farcical machinations of the plot has come to a head, and the drama has peaked.  France, at last, is at stake, and the country bumpkin d'Artagnan has to step up and finally act.  It's his moment to prove himself.

And Harry Secombe's moment to soar.