A Flahooley Affair
I had to shake my head and smile when I walked into Footlight Records yesterday and saw the 1951 original cast album of Flahooley prominently displayed. If someone had told me in 1975 that the recording would be re-released not once (on a Capitol LP in 1977), not twice (on a 1993 Broadway Angel CD), but three times (now on a DRG CD) in 29 years, I would have never believed him. For this record, which marked Barbara Cook’s cast album and musical theater debut, was the object of one of my greatest personal odysseys.
When as a teenager and I became interested in Broadway, I read Stanley Green’s The World of Musical Comedy, which listed many shows and original cast albums I hadn’t known existed. They included the oddly named Flahooley, music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. It was, said Green, “an unappreciated score of great charm.” Considering that he’d said of Hazel Flagg, “There’s little to recommend here” — and I loved Hazel Flagg (which I snagged from underneath a counter in a record store in my home town of Arlington, Massachusetts) — I could only imagine how great Flahooley would be.
One problem: It was then December, 1961 and Flahooley had been out-of-print since July, 1955. Thus began my safari for Capitol Records Number S-284. I took the bus to record stores in Lexington (where I found Whoop-Up), Winchester (where I found Saratoga), and Belmont (where I found Tenderloin). But Flahooley was nowhere. When I approached a record store displaying a sign that boasted, “9½ times out of 10, we have the record you want,” I knew I’d represent the store’s 5% failure rate.
“I’m looking for Flahooley, Capitol S-284?”
“Fla-HOO-ley?” the clerk scornfully asked, regarding me with suspicion. “What’s that, a children’s record?”
I felt as if I were six years old. “No, a Broadway musical.”
“Oh, a musical,” he snorted, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Nah, we don’t carry stuff like that.”
Once I was old enough to get my driver’s license, I turnpiked my way to Fitchburg (The Littlest Revue), Nashua (Mrs. Patterson), and Newburyport (Mr. Wonderful) — where a friend noticed I’d just found My Square Laddie, a parody of My Fair Lady. “Oh,” he said, yanking it out of my hands, “I’ve always wanted that!” Because it was just a for-the-record musical rather than a produced show, I didn’t much care about it; but believe me, if it had been a Flahooley album, we would have dueled to the death. From then on, I only went record-hunting with friends who liked rock. I’d keep my eye out for the Beatles’ Butcher Cover, they’d be on the lookout for you-know-what.
I started visiting appliance and sheet music stores that looked as if they once might have carried records; perhaps they still had a few hanging around. Next came thrift shops, where I rummaged through records while enduring the stale smell of old clothes. No record store was passed by, as proved by my stop at a West Roxbury storefront called “Soul on Wax.” (As Cole Porter said, “You never know!”)
By the late ’60s, I’d exhausted every New England haunt and had expanded my horizons to Philadelphia (Texas, L’il Darlin’), Wilmington (Happy Hunting), and Reisterstown, Maryland, where a woman, fingering through original cast albums in the bin next to the one I was mining breathlessly said to me, “Records are worse than heroin. Do you have Greenwillow?” Sure, I did — but still no Flahooley.
Then, in August 1970, while I was in a Boston record store reading the back cover of the London cast album of The Four Musketeers, a young man saw it in my hand and decided that I was worth knowing. Soon we were comparing our original cast album collections and I was asking him, “Do you have Flahooley?” He looked very proud while reporting, “On tape.” And I didn’t blame him.
Within an hour, I had a tape of his tape. And Flahooley indeed was a score of great charm — not to mention fun, with such quintessentially Harburgian lyrics as “The Springtime Cometh,” which notes, “Lad and lass / In tall green grass / Gaily skippeth / Nylon rippeth / Zipper zippeth / Ding dong day!” Too often, the rare recordings we want aren’t really worth having — The Athenian Touch and Sing, Muse come to mind — but Flahooley wasn’t one of those dim bulbs.
Now that I had a tape, who needed the record, right? On the contrary, my pursuit accelerated. Collectors will understand my desire to have the actual cover with the vinyl record bearing the rare red Capitol label safely tucked inside. By now, I knew what Flahooley’s jacket looked like thanks to “The Record Undertaker,” a used disc mail-order broker who included photographs of rare album covers in his catalogue. There was leading lady Yma Sumac in a circle, with dolls (which is what Flahooleys were) in accompanying circles. The Record Undertaker even had Flahooley for sale — for $150. Needless to say, had I factored in gas and wear and tear on my Mustang, I would have been better off paying the money. But that wasn’t the way I wanted to get this record. Would Jason have written a check to get the Golden Fleece? No, he wanted the thrill of finding it — and I had to find Flahooley.
I was shameless. My job as a high school teacher meant that I’d be in front of four classes of students, each of whom I gave a mimeographed want-list. I urged the kids to search their parents’ attics and basements for any records I needed “but especially Flahooley.” One day, I came into homeroom and there was Joel Hall holding Ankles Aweigh. The kids were startled by my shriek of glee. Now that I actually had acquired something from a student, I made an impassioned speech to each class to go home and really search. I’ll never know whether or not they did but no one ever showed up with another cast album, let alone Flahooley.
By the mid ’70s, whenever I entered a record store, I looked to see where the stairs to the basement were so I could slip down and quietly go through the stock of long-abandoned discs. That’s how I found By the Beautiful Sea in Quincy and Blitz in New Haven. But that approach didn’t always work out. Take the time I snuck downstairs in a store on Baltimore’s North Howard Street and walked in on a scene very reminiscent of what the then-trendy movie Deep Throat had Linda Lovelace doing.
The recipient of the love act suddenly looked up from his innamorata. “Hey!” he yelled, causing the young woman to stop and turn around, too. I assured them that it was okay, to just continue with what they were doing, for I was just browsing — but as the guy pushed the young lady aside and bolted from his chair, I knew enough to take the stairs two at a time. Upstairs, three of the store’s bigger clerks who’d heard the commotion below grabbed me and threw me out with such force that I stumbled, fell, and skidded across the sidewalk. That scar I have to the left of my lower lip? My battle scar from Flahooley-hunting in Baltimore.
Finally, on September 20, 1976, after nearly 15 years of searching, I walked into a recently opened used record shop in Harvard Square, Cambridge and got into the familiar on-all-fours position to comb underneath the bins. I pulled out about 40 records before coming across one that displayed Yma Sumac in a circle. At last, Flahooley! But my joy at finding it was tempered by the fact that it didn’t have a price tag attached. Because many other records in the store were priced at $10, $30, and $50, I knew this wouldn’t be easy. I wished I’d spent my adolescence with my card-playing friends because, oh, did I need a poker face right then.
“This one’s pretty rare,” the clerk said coolly. I merely shrugged but, as he pursed his lips, the seconds that passed seemed longer than Camelot’s tryout in Toronto. Finally, he said “20 bucks,” and I refrained from screaming with joy. Sure, it was more than I’d ever paid for any record; but there it was, and I wasn’t going to let it slip through my fingers.
When I got home, I almost felt like mounting Flahooley over my mantle the way hunters do with their moose heads. But a record is meant to be played, not displayed. I listened to Flahooley three times that night. As I happily crawled into bed, I knew I’d get a nice, satisfied sleep. Good thing, too, for the next day I’d have to begin my search for Top Banana, Capitol S-308. And if someone had told me in 1975 that that album would be re-released not once (on a Capitol LP in 1977), not twice (on a 1993 Broadway Angel CD), but three times (now on a DRG CD) in 29 years, I would have never believed him, either.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]
