I Don't Do Duets

Good-bye & thank you, R.I.P. Marvin Hamlisch. He was one of only 11 people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, & a Tony. He is also one of only 2 people to have won those 4 prizes plus a Pulitzer Prize (the other is Richard Rodgers).

I did it again,

I always make the same mistake

When it comes to men
 I fall for the guys with the bedroom eyes

It starts out great but before too long

Mr. Right turns out to be Mr. Wrong

He said, "I love you baby,
 You're the best I ever knew

But I'm not ready for anyone like you

This is as far as it goes & as close as it gets"

He said, "You sure sing pretty
 But I don't do duets"

He walked in the room &
 All he had to do was smile

Waiting in his arms,

A fool would have known was a danger zone

His talk was so sweet but let there be no doubt

While I was moving in, he was moving out

He said, "I love you baby,
 You're the best I ever knew

But I'm not ready for anyone like you

This is as far as it goes
 & as close as it gets"

He said, "You sure sing pretty
 But I don't do duets"

Said I wish that I could lose my mind

For the faithful, ready, steady kind

He's out there singing on his own

& like me, he's tired of doing it alone

I did it again,

I always make the same mistake

When it comes to men
 I fall for the guys with the bedroom eyes

It starts out great but before too long

Mr. Right turns out to be Mr. Wrong

Enough of, "I love you baby,
 You're the best I ever knew”

No more, "I'm not ready for anyone like you"

Not gonna fall for those lines,
 The lies & regrets

Not gonna sing so pretty, if he don't do duets

I don't wanna make the same mistake again

Lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

Born On This Day- June 9th... Cole Porter

At a very young age, I was so enamored of the songs of Cole Porter & the story of his life & friendships, that my parents gave me huge “coffee table” book about this great American songwriter for Christmas when I was 11 years old, & then followed it up with another big book of his collected lyrics for my birthday the next week. I still have both books.

Born in Peru, Indiana in 1891, Porter studied music from an early age, & began composing as a teenager. After high school he attended Yale University, where he was voted “most entertaining man.” He went on to law school at Harvard University, but his interest remained in music. At Harvard he continued to write songs, & a some of his pieces were used in Broadway musicals.

In 1916, his first full score was performed. The musical-See America First was a flop & closed after only 15 performances. Bruised by the experience, he began to travel around Europe & got an apartment in Paris. This was the beginning of his lifelong affection for the city, which he would return to in songs- You Don’t Know Paree & I Love Paris. During his time in Europe, Porter contributed to many musicals, but until his song- Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love appeared in the 1928 musical Paris, he had not had a big hit. Paris was a place Cole flourished socially. He attended parties with his pal Noel Coward. The parties of the era were elaborate & fabulous, attended by the upper crust. His own parties were marked by gay & bisexual activity, cross-dressing, international musicians & actors, & a large surplus of recreational drugs. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era, the very theme of Woody Allen’s 2011 film- Midnight In Paris, my favorite film of the new decade.

Porter started spending time with American divorcee- Linda Thomas, & they became close friends quickly. Their financial status & social status made them prefect as a married couple.The fact that Linda's ex-husband was abusive & Cole was gay made the arrangement even more perfect. Linda was always one of Porter's staunch supporters & being married increased his chance of success. Being married to Porter allowed Linda to keep high status in society for the rest of her life. They married in 1919 & lived in a happy arrangement, a successful public relationship, but a sexless marriage until Linda's death in 1954.

Porter was happy with a life in Hollywood in the 1930s, including a more liberal movie industry where Porter enjoyed more open sexual adventures. At the time, it was somewhat more acceptable to be an eccentric gay artist, but Linda feared for Porter’s reputation & career. Her social standing was threatened by his activities & the rumors in upper-crust social circles.

Despite a horseback riding accident in 1937 that crippled him for life, Porter produced much of his best work in the 1940s &1950s. He wrote 100s of songs for Broadway shows, movie musicals, & TV specials. His most successful musical- Kiss Me Kate opened in 1948 & ran for over a 1000 performances. A recluse in his later years, Porter died in California in 1964.

In 1945 the film Night & Day was made with Cary Grant, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. This movie has almost nothing to do with the actual life of the songwriter. Night & Day leaves out the important elements of his gay life, & his sexless marriage of convenience.

The 1990 album- Red, Hot, & Blue features Cole Porter songs sung by popular musicians of the 1980s & 1990s. It remains a favorite of mine. The dismal 2004 movie- De-Lovely, with an improbable Kevin Kline as Porter, came a tiny bit closer to the true story & featured beautiful sets, major actors, famous current musicians, & a strong Hollywood marketing campaign for the movie & the soundtrack. But for me, this movie is a miserable mess.

The songs of Cole Porter are very important to me. This is my favorite:

Born On This Day- May 17th... Erik Satie

In the early autumn of 1976, I had a brief, but very intense affair with a still world famous classical guitarist. A class act, he spirited me away from NYC to Cape Cod for 3 days of hot sex, guitar playing breaks, food & wine, & more hot sex. During our rest periods he would play for me. One of the compositions that really struck me & made me temporarily forget his other gifts, was Erik Satie's Gymnopodie #1. This piece was written for piano & the arrangement for guitar was by my new buddy. I still listen to his recording of it & I can remember the salt air, & the sweat from our extended weekend.

Dadaist, absurdest French composer & pianist Erik Satie, was contemporary of Ravel & Debussy. he collaborated with Jean Cocteau to create the ballet Parade (1917) for the Ballet Russes, with set designs by Pablo Picasso . He knew, worked with or influenced most of the artists,  writers & musicians in Paris when it was the cultural capital of the world. He is credited with nearly every avant-garde movement of the 20th century.Satie was  influential in the fields of minimalism & ambient music,&  the use of piano music-to-film synchronisation.

Satie referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning someone who measures sounds) preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.

In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the Dada 391 to the American culture chronicle- Vanity Fair.

Satie was an incredibly private & eccentric man. He was known to enter a room & sit without removing his hat, coat or gloves, & always with a brand new umbrella.

After his funeral 1925, his friends entered the tiny room he had occupied for 27 years but had never allowed anyone else to enter. Along with dust & cobwebs, they found huge quantities of umbrellas, many never used, as well as large numbers of unknown compositions hidden all over the room.

Born On This Day- May 11th... Great American Songwriter, Irving Berlin

He was not gay, & he was a Jew who wrote the best selling Christmas song of all time. His life spanned more than 100 years & he composed over 1000 songs. Irving Berlin was born Israel Beilin in 1988, his exact place of birth is unknown, although his family had been living in Tolochin, Russia, when they immigrated to New York in 1893. When his father died, Berlin, just turned 13, worked the streets in various odd jobs, singing for pennies, then as a singing waiter in a Chinatown Cafe. In 1907 he published his first song, Marie from Sunny Italy, & in 1911 he had his first major international hit - Alexander's Ragtime Band.



For 5 decades, Irving Berlin composed ballads, dance numbers, novelty tunes & love songs that defined American popular song for much of the century. Irving Berlin standards include: How Deep Is the Ocean, Blue Skies, White Christmas, Always, Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, There's No Business Like Show Business, Cheek to Cheek, Puttin' on the Ritz, A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody, Heat Wave, Easter Parade, Let's Face the Music & Dance, & God Bless America.

He wrote for Broadway & Hollywood. He composed 17 complete scores for Broadway musicals & revues, including the phenomenal score for Annie get Your Gun. Among the Hollywood movie musical classics with scores by Irving Berlin are Top Hat, Follow The Fleet, On The Avenue, Alexander's Rag Time Band, Holiday Inn, This Is The Army, Blue Skies, Easter Parade, White Christmas & There's No Business Like Show Business. His songs have provided memorable moments other films, from The Jazz Singer in 1927 to Home Alone in 1991. Among his many awards are a dozen Grammys, 2 Tony Awards & the Academy Award for White Christmas in 1942.


In 1978, a jaw-droppingly handsome young man with deep blue eyes, stood center stage, straight up & still & with a sweet pure tenor, sang the 1924 Irving Berlin tune- What’ll I Do? for an audition. I was impressed with his looks & his talent. More than a year later this young man would tell me that he was in love with me while Harry Nillson sang What'll I Do on the stereo in the background. This man would eventually become my Husband & I would spend more than half of my life at his side. What’ll I Do remains my favorite Irving Berlin song, although I love them all. I also have quite a soft spot for You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun:

Oh, a man may be hot...
But he's not... 
When he's shot! 
Oh you can't get a man with a gun!

Born On This Day- March 22nd... Post Apocalyptic Bohemian Favorite- Stephen Sondheim

The Husband: “ I can't belive that you still have not cracked Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes & Miscellany that you just had to have even though you never finished Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines & Anecdotes. Stephen: "Some things are so cherished that I can't bear to soil them. I am treasuring it, waiting for the perfect afternoon to spend with it. I will know when that moment is right. As Sondheim said in Into The Woods: 'I was raised to be charming, not sincere'." Today is such a day. With a light dusting of springtime snow last night, I am enjoying an unexpected day off, warm & toasty at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, drinking tea & wasting the day away.

The greatest composer/lyricist for the theatre & I have some history together.

In the spring of 1973, I saw A Little Night Music in the pre-Broadway tryout in Boston. I was my late teens, 2500 miles from home, & sporting a huge red afro; I sat in the darkened, half-filled theatre & let the magic & enchantment wash over me. This was not my 1st Sondheim. I had, of course, seen West Side Story & Gypsy!. When 17 years old, I had talked my parents into letting me go to San Francisco all by myself to see the original cast (minus Dean Jones) of Company (I had more than just a little fun freely footloose & 17 in San Francisco in 1971). I had worn out the Original Cast Album of Follies the same year.

5 years later, I would play Henrik in A Little Night Music, a fabulous role & the closest I ever came to playing an ingénue. The character plays the cello. Traditionally the orchestra’s cello plays the music while the actor mimes the playing. Because I actually can play the cello, & I was able to do my own cello work. I thought this gave my performance a bit more authenticity, although I had to practice for hours & hours to be able to the play cello & sing at the same time… in character. I found this rather daunting & I worked hard to make it work. I understand that I was rather convincing in this role.

Your Host in A Little Night Music, circa 1977

I would go on to play Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on 2 occasions, including a long run at Seattle Civic Light Opera.

I did another long run in a sold out, & extended production of Side By Side By Sondheim, a musical revue of collected songs from several produced & un-produced Sondheim musicals. Among the songs I was so very lucky to perform in that show, was my favorite Sondheim tune- Anyone Can Whistle. Via the wonders of Facebook, the director of Side by Side & I reconnected & he sent me a DVD of the show. I am not all that keen for watching myself on screen, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the show was, how young I looked, how much hair I had, & what a captivating, compelling, curious, & clever vocalist I was 26 years ago. I was also sort of hot, with single digit body fat, curly red hair, & discreet risqué deportment. I totally would have done me.

I sang Not A Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along for auditions for a few years in the 1980s, until I decided that singing Sondheim for auditions was cliché & too gay… even for me.

I was aware early on, that Stephen Sondheim was a homosexual, & it did give some solace when I was grappling with coming out. Sondheim came out as gay only when he was 40, & he did not live with a partner until he was 61. He shared his life with writer- Peter Jones, until 1999, living at the Turtle Bay house that has been Sondheim’s home & writing place since the early 1960s. Katharine Hepburn used to live next door. Sondheim: “up one night at about 3, pounding on the piano, writing The Ladies Who Lunch for Company, when I heard this banging on the door. There was Hepburn, in a babushka & no shoes, saying, ‘Young man, I cannot sleep with the noise you’re making’.”

Sondheim: “If I had to live my life over again, I would have children. That’s the great mistake I made. It’s too late now. The idea of being a homosexual & raising children was one that was just not acceptable until, my goodness, I’d say the 1970s or 1980s. You want to live long enough to see your children grow up, they’re not puppies. The joy is not just to have them, but to watch them change & grow. So, yes, that is a great regret. But as Bach proved to a great degree, you can have both. It would be nice to have both. But to have any outlet for creative energy is indeed a very good emotional substitute for not being able to put that energy into the raising of a family.”

There is common thought on Sondheim, that although he can do LOVE in a theatre piece, he struggles when it enters his own life. Even people who follow him closely have assumed that he was single. It came as a surprise in 2006 when he announced: “I have someone else now, his name is Jeff. We celebrated our 7th anniversary. Jeff is a great joy in my life & once I had tasted the joys of living with someone, I wanted to live with someone else when it broke up.”

There is the work though; about 20 major stage shows, music & lyrics: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into The Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), Bounce (2003) which later became Road Show (2008), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965), Candide (1973). Plus the revues: Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1981), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99) Moving On (2001) & Sondheim on Sondheim (2010) that are anthologies of his work as composer & lyricist. For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) & Reds (1981) & songs for The Seven Percent Solution (1976) & Dick Tracy (1990). He also wrote the songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) & the play Getting Away With Murder (1996). In total, his works have accumulated more than 65 individual & collaborative Tony Awards & an Oscar.


Sondheim created cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine in the late 1960s. He was screenwriter for the television series Topper (1953) & The Last Of Sheila (1973, with his friend Anthony Perkins). He appeared as himself in the film Camp (2003).


In March 2008, Sondheim & Frank Rich of the NY Times appeared in an interview/conversation in Portland, titled A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim. WCK3 & I were fortunate enough to attend. One of my revered revelations from that evening was that Sondheim & I share a favorite non-Sondheim musical in She Loves Me. He was very funny & charming that evening. I am crazy for Frank Rich & I have loved Sondheim’s music & lyrics for 50+ years. I was thrilled.


I feel so damn old. During the Company/Follies era, Sondheim appeared on the cover of Time with the caption- The Boy Wonder of the Theatre. The boy went on to an Academy Award, 8 Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards including Song Of The Year for Send In The Clowns in 1974, & a Pulitzer Prize.

Sonheim turns 82 today. We both got old & we both got lucky. Oddly enough, he shares this birthday with the British composer of that weird musical with the singing & dancing CATS. Go figure.

"I chose & my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on."
Sunday In The Park With George

Born On This Day- March 18th... John Kander

The celebrated songwriting team of Kander & Ebb were working on the musical The Scottsboro Boys when Ebb died in 2004 of a heart attack. The Scottsboro Boys tells the true story of 9 young black men falsely accused of rape in 1931. It opend on Broadway in 2010 to strong reviews & weak box office. Today is the birthday of the musical half of the team- John Kander.



From The Act to Zorba, for 5 decades, composer John Kander & lyricist Fred Ebb have been Broadway's paramount songwriting team, the longest running music/lyrics partnership in Broadway musical history. They've given the world some of the great creations of the American Musical Stage. Their scores have a breathtaking ability to capture the flavor of a specific time & place, with music brimming with audacity & brilliant, droll, penetrating lyrics. The team has taken on serious, challenging subjects: Nazism, abortion, murder, capital punishment, prison torture, greed, corruption, with originality & stunning talent. Kander & Ebb combine razzle dazzle with a political conscience. On John Kander’s award shelf sit Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, Grammys & Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards. They've written for the great musical performers of our day: Lauren Bacall, Joel Grey, Liza, Stephen Rutledge, Gwen Verdon, Frank Sinatra, Robert Goulet, Chita Rivera, & Barbra Streisand.


In 1965, their 1st produced show-Flora, the Red Menace introduced Liza Minnelli to Broadway & a young singer Barbra Streisand had hits with 2 of their songs- My Coloring Book & I Don’t Care Much, & their careers were launched. 22 shows later & they are still at it, even with ½ the team deceased. Here are the John Kander contributions to Musical Theatre:


• A Family Affair (1962) - lyrics by William Goldman
• Flora the Red Menace (1965)
• Cabaret (1966)
• Go Fly a Kite (1966) - music and lyrics also by Walter Marks
• The Happy Time (1968)
• Zorba (1968)
• 70, Girls, 70 (1971)
• Chicago (1976)
• The Act (1978)
• Woman of the Year (1981)
• The Rink (1984)
• & The World Goes 'Round (1991)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992)
• Steel Pier (1997)
• Fosse (1999)
• Over & Over (1999)
• The Visit (2001)
• Curtains (2006) - additional lyrics by Rupert Holmes
• All About Us (2007 revision of Over & Over)
• The Scottsboro Boys (2010)

Chicago remains one of my favorite musicals & in high school, I adored the score to their not so successful- 70, Girls, 70s, including this tune:



In 2006, at 79 years old, John Kander bravely came out of the closet. He said he had waited so long for professional reasons. I agree, because when choosing to go to a Broadway musical, audiences have often been known to bypass shows written by homosexuals.

Considering Songwriter Vincent Youmans On The Day Of His Birth

One of my personal favorite self-created playlists of the summer of 2010 is my Happiness Mix. It has proved popular in my circle. The Husband & I listened to it on a car trip. It contains Ella Fitzgerald's version of I Want To Be Happy, which is really swinging. It got me thinking about the life of Vincent Youmans, who was born 113 years ago today, just one after Georege Gershwin.

A friend of Gershwin, Vincent Youmans had much in common with his famous friend: they both collaborated with George’s brother Ira, they both wrote pop songs & serious music, & they both, tragically, died young: George at 39 & Vincent at 47. Unlike George, Youmans left behind only a handful of songs that are truly famous: Tea for Two, I Want To Be Happy, Hallelujah, & the jazz standard Sometimes I’m Happy. For decades, a legend circulated that Youmans had left behind a trunk of unpublished songs, all notated in a secret code that only he could decipher. Music historians worked for years to determine if this was true. The trunk was discovered, & the trunk contained unheard melodies & scores, written in his mysteriously mirrored & intricate Da Vinci-like code.

He came from privilege: Born in 1898 in Manhattan, he was raised on Central Park West. Youmans served in WW1, & while in the Navy, he fell in love with men & musical theater. After the war, he went to work as a song-plugger for the prestigious TB Harms Company, publisher of the Gershwins & Jerome Kern. Before phonographs, people purchased sheet music & sat around the piano at home & sing the hits of the day. It took talented pianists who could put a song over with panache to sell the sheet music songs to music stores. By performing the work of the great Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the day, Youmans grew familiar with the infrastructure of hit songs, & quickly decided he could create his own.

As a composer, he turned to other lyricists, & collaborated with the greatest: Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Caesar, Leo Robin, Billy Rose, Mack Gordon, Buddy De Sylva & Gus Kahn. With Ira Gershwin, he wrote songs for Two Little Girls In Blue, which became a big Broadway smash in 1921.

The greatest triumph of his life was No, No Nanette. With lyrics by Irving Caesar, it became one of the most successful musicals of all time, with simultaneous productions on Broadway & London during much of the 1920s. It has been revived many times, & has been reinvented several times throughout the years. In the 1940s a version featured the beloved tap dancer- Ruby Keeler, which played on Broadway even longer than the original, & was a huge hit again in the 1970.

Youmans wrote songs for movies, most famously for Flying Down To Rio, with Fred Astaire. But his heart was on Broadway, & unfortunate failures followed, shows which bombed & closed quickly, although the songs he wrote for them were always memorable. In 1932 he took one more chance with a Broadway show- Take A Chance, but it also failed. Disheartened, he retired in 1934, after a career of only 13 years, but worked undercover for years on the songs & scores in his secret trunk. Youmans returned to Broadway in 1943 with a colossal & ambitious extravaganza called The Vincent Youmans’ Ballet Revue, which merged classical & Latin music. A failure of unprecedented proportions, it lost more than $4 million dollars, & this fiasco might have been the reason for the secret songs in his hidden trun , but its failure, along with a drinking problem & a life in the closet helped to bring on his final emotional & physical decline. He died alone & largely forgotten in 1946 of TB.

Tea For Two, his most famous song, is an ideal example of his economic use of short melodic phrases. Irving Caesar has said that the opening section was actually a dummy lyric on which Vincent could write a melody, but it worked so well, they kept it. The song is unusual as a hit, it is written in 2 keys at once:-A flat & C-major, a musical fusion that the Beatles would use 40 later, but which was mostly unheard of in the 1920s. Youman’s modernization of the American pop song inspired the musicologist Alec Wilder to say that Youmans was “one of the innovators of American popular song, & one of the truest believers in the new musical world around him.”