Sparks from the Fire

(If you missed the beginning of this series, please start with The IRA Awards Part 1)

Richard Rodgers was one of the theater’ greatest composers.  Diamonds attract pearls.  Rodgers attracted the best of his time.  When it came to lyricists, he had the great fortune of working with two of the very best.

Larry Hart

Lorenz “Larry” Hart was his first.  Some of his more famous lyrics include, “Blue Moon”, “Isn’t It Romantic?”, “The Lady Is a Tramp”, “Where or When”, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”, “Falling in Love with Love”,  and “My Funny Valentine”.

Hart attended Columbia University, where a friend introduced him to Richard Rodgers, and the two joined forces to write songs for a series of amateur and student productions.  The great success of their score for the 1925 Theatre Guild production, The Garrick Gaieties, brought them great acclaim.

They continued working together until Hart’s death in 1943, along the way producing scores for a series of hit shows and making a substantial contribution to the Great American Songbook.

As a lyricist, Hart was an advocate of internal rhyme and multisyllabic rhyming, and his lyrics have often been praised for their wit and technical sophistication.

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James Taylor

If you were to ask me, “Who has been your favorite pop star throughout your life?” I’d have to answer that it is a tie between The Beatles and James Taylor.  Perhaps that dates me; perhaps, on the other hand, it doesn’t.  Both have had such musically triumphant careers and both are sure to be long lasting.

Also both churned out mountains of great music and for me that’s the bottom line.  The Beatles were perhaps more eclectic, but Sweet Baby James was, well, just so sweeeet!

As a lyricist, James can be somewhat impressionistic like Paul and Joni, but also could just nail it down with the best of them.  He wrote this song for a musical, “Working”, and as a story-telling song, it’s one of the best.  It wins my Ira Award for Best Song for a Musical Written by a Pop Star.

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I first arrived in New York in my early twenties to study acting at Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. My parents were footing the bill for the school, but they wisely kept my funds limited so that I needed to get a job to supplement my income while in school.

Fairly soon after I got here, I landed a job selling orange drink in an intermission refreshment stand at Carnegie Hall. I fairly quickly rose through the ranks to assistant bartender in the intermission café.

One of my duties every Saturday afternoon was to restock all the refreshment stands on each tier of the hall. I would come in around 2:00 in the afternoon before the evening concert and schlep cases through the empty hall to the tiers.

On one particular Saturday afternoon before a James Taylor concert, being a big fan of Sweet Baby James, I was fascinated with the setting up of the stage for the concert.

As the afternoon went by and I schlepped and the roadies worked on stage setting up speakers and platforms, mics and monitors, while all this was taking place, I couldn’t help but notice that there was one man who wasn’t working at all. Instead, he sat in a chair facing the empty house and quietly read a book while all those around him worked away. (more…)