So we closed the show yesterday afternoon, and I’m pleased, overall, with the way it went. (There’s always something that you wish could have been better. Like I wish that I’d had a coach to help me fine-tune the brief bit of stage combat.)
Every so often I use music as a way to get into the world of a character. (My friend Lisa suggested this trick a long time ago.) Now, the little Bobby McFerrin riff that Roger used as transition music at the top of Act 2 was all I needed to help me find Tom Driscoll. But for the well-meaning, somewhat feckless, gentle parish priest Rev. Jim in Act 1, I needed a complete playlist. Some of this music I already had on hand, and some was newly-purchased. Here it is, Jim’s Jam, all songs pre-1959 as far as I can tell:
- Perry Como, “Accentuate the Positive”
- Lawrence Welk orchestra, “Bubbles in the Wine”
- Patsy Cline, “Walkin’ after Midnight”
- Glenn Miller orchestra, “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo”
- Mel Tormé, “Moonlight in Vermont”
- Lawrence Welk orchestra, “Beer Barrel Polka”
- Perry Como, “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You”
- Mantovani orchestra, “Charmaine”
- Patti Page, “Old Cape Cod”
- Glenn Miller orchestra, “A String of Pearls”
- Perry Como, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”
- Lawrence Welk orchestra, “Village Tavern Polka”
Mantovani’s version of a 1926 waltz by Rapée and Pollack is most everyone’s idea of soul-evacuating elevator music. (I remember an ironic modern dance troupe performance from about 20 years ago, set on this song, that consisted of the entire company queueing up as if at the DMV.) But for Jim, the lush, pillowy arrangement is pure bliss, his idea of what God’s grace must feel like. Is that a zither in the mix in the last chords? Plus, you can do t’ai chi stretches to it.
Jim and Judy danced to Glenn Miller when they were courting.
The Lawrence Welk recordings, all from the pre-TV days, are astonishing. Joyful, energetic, inventive, not slick at all—nothing like the bland music I heard when I was a kid in my grandfather’s living room watching the TV show. I used to worry that I was turning into my mother. Now I should worry that I’m turning into her father.