Mairzy Doatsy

The other day, I mentioned that in fixing the glitch with tagging my songs, I came across a bunch of favorite songs that are unknown, and that I'd be posting some.  Yesterday, I had the first of those, from The Sound of Music.  Today, we have a wonderful little song from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The score to that by Carol Hall actually has several gems that are little-known, because they weren't included in the movie.  Some were cut because Dolly Parton's deal was that she could write some new songs for the film, and they overlapped what was originally there.  Others were cut because they just didn't fit the film -- it made it too long or (as often happens, as with yesterday's from The Sound of Music) the songs were for minor characters.

That's the case here.  The song is sung in the Broadway show by Doatsy Mae, a waitress who has an unrequited crush on the sheriff, and a fairly quiet life in general.  It fleshes out her character greatly, but for the movie (played by Lois Nettleton) it just distracted from the love story that the movie moved more towards.  The stage show was more of a social commentary on hypocrisy, personal lives, and small town life in the South, and I thought worked better.

By the way, even Dolly Parton had some of her own songs cut.  One that I know of (the lyrics were in the screenplay) never got shot, in which Miss Mona tells about how she got to where she was.  (That would have replaced the wonderful, "The Bus to Amarillo," from the stage show.)  But another was actually shot and included in the first rough cut of the film -- I was working at Universal Studios at the time, and saw it when the film was shown early to our department.  It was a song called something like, "The Stallion," that Burt Reynolds sings near the end, walking in the fields.  It was a tender, very wistful ballad -- and believe it or not, it was wonderful, and Reynolds did a terrific job with it.  But when the finished film was released, it got cut.  It may have been for time, it may have been because they felt it slowed down the pacing at that point, or it might have been because audiences didn't react well to a Burt Reynolds ballad, good though it was.  I just don't recall at this point.  But I wish it would have stayed in.  But there's an odd P.S. to this -- because enough semi-salacious material had to get cut for TV, the movie was too short when it showed up on television, so they had to extend it.  And I was watching one day, and...they put "The Stallion" back in!  (I wish I had been recording it.)  So, it might be interesting to check if that's now the official TV version.  It may also be included as a bonus on the DVD, for all I know, though I suspect not because I checked YouTube, and no one has uploaded it there.  They do have an audio version that Dolly Parton re-rid and recorded herself, mixing it as a duet with the audio of Burt Reynolds.  I'll link to it later.

But that's another matter entirely.  Today, we're here for Doatsy Mae, and she's not gong to get ignored again.  So, here's her wonderful, heart-breaking, unknown song, performed by Susan Mansur.