A Headley Above the Rest
This is one of those finds. Bear with me. It's worth it.
Over time, I’ve posted a few videos of Heather Headley who I think is a remarkable singer. To sort of recap the best of them, this post here has three of what I think are among her top gems, notably her rendition of “Your Song” at the Kennedy Center Honors for Elton John (she had won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical for Aida, to which he wrote the music). This should serve as a good primer of her work. (If you don't know her work, do yourself a favor and check out this link after you finish here.)
She’s also been in the Broadway musicals of The Lion King, The Color Purple, a musical version of The Bodyguard that premiered in London's West End and the original production of Ragtime that premiered in Toronto, and has gone on to a successful solo career. Back in 2018, I wrote about attending the fundraising event A Starry Event, when the beloved Northwestern University brought up several dozen of its famous alumni from the theater department, hosted by Stephen Colbert, and even amid that impressive gala, she brought the house down.
A few weeks ago, she did an online Q&A with the new dean of the School of Communications, and talked about how when she was a senior at Northwestern, she got an offer to appear in Ragtime in the ensemble and understudy Audra McDonald. (Seriously, that is not shabby for a college student...) She went to talk over what to do with the founder of the school’s Musical Theatre Program, the legendary Dominic Missimi. She wanted to graduate, but she said that as much as he wanted her to stay, because he had a great role for her in the upcoming Spring musical, he told her that leaving was the only real choice.
In that conversation, she also talked about having performed a song at the Waa-Mu Show, the student-written musical now going into its 92nd year. (Side note: I was never able to get any material in the show, though I only tried once. I did get a couple of songs accepted in the “alternative” student musical, the Mee-Ow Show, in its very first year – and I’m glad to say that this show caught on and prospered, and has been performed every year since, despite me getting justifiably pissed off at one of the producers and pulling one of my songs out of the show. But I digress…)
Back to Heather Headley. When talking about her being in the Waa-Mu, they mentioned that the song she sang had been written by a couple of other Northwestern students for the Waa-Mu Show many years earlier. It turned out to be Larry Grossman and Jason Cochran. That might mean nothing to most people, but I’ve posted several songs here by Larry Grossman who wrote the music to such shows as Minnie’s Boys (about the Marx Bros.), Snoopy!!!, and Goodtime Charlie (about French King Charles VII). While I knew he’d gone to Northwestern, I was intrigued to find out he’d written this song for the Waa-Mu Show that Heather Headley performed in 1995, called “Children of Privilege.”
The dean talked about the reaction her performance of the song got, blowing the roof off the theater, so I was curious to see, if by any chance, I could track down a recording of that. In not the actual performance, of course – that was quite a long shot… -- but maybe she’d recorded it later for an album. It turns out that I did actually find an audience recording of her singing the song live on stage during that Waa-Mu performance. Though audio only, it was remarkable. And I was going to post it here – when, for some reason, I decided to do just a little bit more searching. And the almost unbelievable happened –
And I found a video of Heather Headley giving that very performance, singing “Children of Privilege” on stage in the 1995 Waa-Mu Show…when she was (I believe) a sophomore at Northwestern!
(The video says 1997. But the audio selection I found said it's from 1995, and that the show that year was called "Rites of Spring." The Waa-Mu Show titled "Rites of Spring" was, indeed, in 1995.)
The audio quality isn’t great, so you’ll likely miss words. And unfortunately the video cuts off after about a half-second of applause – because you just know (from what the dean said and from what you can see from this performance) that the audience had to have gone wild. But still, the audio is good enough to understand most of the song, and you’ll understand it all from the visceral power of the performance.
To give added credit, it's a terrific song, too.
(I should note that the lyrics were more clear on the audio-only version, but unfortunately that's no longer available online.)
Again, this is Heather Headley as a sophomore college student. She was that tremendous even then. Which helps explain why she's gotten to where she has now.
Here is "Children of Privilege."
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