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= THE =
GEO. M. COHAN RECORDING PROJECT
UPCOMING RECORDING TO FEATURE NEW PERFORMANCES
OF REDISCOVERED EARLY 1900s BROADWAY SCORES
Preview by Rick Benjamin, curator
More than a century after he rocketed to fame, George M. Cohan's name still conjures up vivid images of the archetypical Broadway song-and-dance man.
But Cohan (1878-1942) was far too complex an artist to sum up so breezily. He was one of the most brilliant figures in theater history, celebrated as an actor, dancer, choreographer, playwright, lyricist, composer, director, producer, and theater owner. His range of talent was itself remarkable. But astonishingly, Cohan often fulfilled all these disparate roles simultaneously, and with breathtaking skill. As his longtime orchestrator Mayhew Lake put it, Cohan was ...purely and simply, a genius - with so many brilliant facets that even his most intimate, oldest friends never ceased to be amazed and to thrill over new flashes.
Historians have long viewed George M. Cohan as one of the most important figures in the evolution of the American musical theater. Yet his successes as a performer and impresario have greatly overshadowed his equally impressive influence as the creator of some of this country's most enduring pop music; to date, little research has been presented regarding Cohan's work as a composer and lyricist. His songs such as Over There,
You're A Grand Old Rag,
and Give My Regards to Broadway
are still so widely known that there is a general assumption that Cohan's artistic output and cultural significance has been thoroughly documented. But remarkably, they have not. Among other issues, exploration is needed into Cohan's seminal role as the first major white figure to embrace syncopated Afro-American music - ragtime
- as the new sound for the musical theater. While his Broadway contemporaries stuck with the formulas of European operetta, George M. Cohan blazed the path for modern American musical comedy using syncopation to advance his stories. His raggy tunes and slangy lyrics injected a new sense of vitality, brashness, and informality to the American stage, creating a stylistic template adopted (and amplified) by later Golden Age
figures such as Kern and Gershwin.
This upcoming recording for New World Records will present a fresh and compelling look at the music of George M. Cohan using original period orchestrations (none of which have ever been recorded), played with authentic style on antique instruments by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Because Cohan made only six commercial recordings during his entire career (all on May 6, 1911), heretofore there has been a dearth audio material for study. Thus, this new recording will offer modern listeners the opportunity to evaluate George M. Cohan's work by presenting historically-informed new performances based on his original early 1900s score materials.
Repertoire to include:
Overture to Little Nellie Kelly (1922).
Selections from The Honeymooners (1907).
Gems from Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway
(1906).
Overture to Fifty Miles from Boston (1908).
Selections from Little Johnny Jones (1904).
Selections from The Man Who Owns Broadway (1909).
Medley from The Talk of New York (1907).
Medley from George Washington, Jr. (1906).
Instrumentals: Popularity
(1906), Cohan's Rag Babe
(1908), Geo. M. Cohan's Rag
(1910).
Selected songs, accompanied by original orchestrations, including You're a Grand Old Rag,
Over There,
Harrigan,
Life's a Funny Proposition After All,
and others.
The CD will include a forty page booklet with history, analysis, photos, and newly surfaced first hand accounts by Cohan's co-workers, employees, and particularly, reminiscences of his orchestrator and conductor, Mayhew Lake (1879-1955).
Click to listen to George M. Cohan singing his own hit "Over There", in a rare informal recording made shortly before his 1942 death. (4mb mp3 file)
Click to hear Cohan singing "You Won't Do Any Business If You Haven't Got A Band." Recorded in 1911, this comic story-song (words & music by Cohan) was written to amuse Cohan's show-biz buddies. The story: Leading Broadway producer Charles Frohman (1856-1915) has taken his latest show to the "sticks" (Connecticut!) for a try out, where he is told by the local theater manager that nobody will buy tickets unless the show has a brass band to parade around "drumming up" business (that was the old time way - obsolete even in Cohan's day - of attracting an audience to a show in a "hick" town). The song, as it chugs along, drops the names of dozens of then-famous theater folk, including Sir Henry Irving and minstrel Lew Dockstader. For Cohan's contemporaries - familiar with these names (and the miseries of touring) - this song was a real "laff riot."(3.7mb mp3 file)
Click here to download the piano/vocal sheet music for Cohan's 1916 song "There's Only One Little Girl."(7.4mb pdf file)
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