Holiday Music Fest

Yesterday, we had a sequence from the Harnick and Bock musical She Loves Me, and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to play a couple of other Christmas songs from that same musical, but which are so little-known that people who even love She Loves Me inside-out don't even know them.  That's because they were cut from the show.

They both come from a terrific double-album, Sheldon Harnic: Hidden Treatures, which you can fiind here.

The first song, "Christmas Eve," was to come at the very end of the show -- around the time when the "12 Days to Christmas" number we had yesterday comes in.  It's a lovely, wistful ballad, but in his liner notes Harnick writes that the show just didn't move the story forward enough and had to be taken out.  It's sung here by the composers, with Harnick in the lead.

The second number is a show song, one that really one fits within the context of the musical.  Harnick notes that it was ultimately too complex and didn't work well-enough for that, so it too was cut.  But it's good fun to hear, especially with Harnick filling in the dialogue.  And if you do know the show, you'll recognize that some of the lyrics were saved and able to be used elsewhere in the show, mixed in as a sort of sardonic counterpoint in the song "Ilona."  Here then are Hanick and Bock singing, "Merry Christmas Bells."