Ma's Day
This is one of my favorite songs about mothers -- and one of the littlest known, I'd think. It's from an unsuccessful musical, Juno, that opened in 1959 and only ran for 16 performances. But it had a pretty interesting pedigree.
The show is based on the famous Irish play, Juno and the Paycock (an Irish pronunciation of "peacock") written by Sean O'Casey, and was adapted as a musical by Joseph Stein -- who in a few year would write the book for Fiddler on the Roof. And it had music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein, a protege of Kurt Weill, who had adapted The Threepenny Opera for its off-Broadway debut, and wrote the score to The Cradle Will Rock for Orson Welles. (The story surrounding that production was made into the recent film, Rocking the Cradle, made my Tim Robbins.) And Juno starred Shirley Booth. But alas, it didn't last on Broadway.
But it did have several interesting songs. And most notably for me is this one -- "Song of the Ma."
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