Theater News

Give Me That New and Blue Note

Wonderful Town has "The Wrong-Note Rag," but it’s not the only show to contain some surprising music.

The company of Wonderful Town performing"The Wrong-Note Rag"(Photo © Paul Kolnik)
The company of Wonderful Town performing
"The Wrong-Note Rag"
(Photo © Paul Kolnik)

Martin F. Kohn, the theater critic for the Detroit Free Press, wrote me, “How about a column on The Musical Theater Songs that Deliberately Use Wrong Notes? There’s ‘The Wrong Note Rag’ from Wonderful Town,’ where the discord is used for comic effect. There’s ‘Follow the Fold’ from Guys and Dolls, in which an earnest Salvation Army band goes sharp, as if to suggest higher aspirations. In West Side Story’s ‘Dance at the Gym,’ there’s that rinky-tinky tune when the kids dance in a circle to pick new partners. It goes as flat as the scheme to get the Jet boys to dance with the Shark girls and vice-versa. There’s ‘I’m Calm,’ from A Funny Thing Happened, where the character’s nervousness makes him hit those bum notes. Seems our heaviest hitters use this device: Frank Loesser, Stephen Sondheim, and Leonard Bernstein (twice).”

Actually, I had this idea many moons ago, and I had planned to start it as follows: “Well, I for one am sorry to see Wonderful Town close. No more ‘Wrong Note Rag’ — which means that if we want some wrong notes, we’re just going to revisit cast albums where some purposely wrong notes are hit.” Needless to say, the reason I didn’t run the column is that Wonderful Town, though high on Broadway’s Endangered Species List for this whole year, hasn’t shuttered and may not for some time now, what with Brooke Shields getting a warm reception from both critics and audiences.

Even as I was compiling wrong notes for the article, I was wondering if I should write it at all. For on July 8th of this year, someone pseudonymously named Spelvin wrote about me on a chat board, “He has descended to what are absolutely the most trivial articles ever written on the subject of musical theater — things like the 50 greatest musicals that mention cows.” When I read this I thought, “Hmmm, musicals that mention cows: Gypsy, Into the Woods, Candide, Greenwillow, Arms and the Girl …” But may I add that a mere 17 days later on that same website, the same person wrote (and note his referring to himself in the third person): “A lot of people — Peter Filichia and Spelvin among them — think the best performance in a movie musical by a person who played the part on the stage was given by Robert Preston in The Music Man.” Ah, the devil can cite scripture to suit his purpose! So for better or worse, here’s a short and undoubtedly incomplete History of the Wrong Note in Musical Theater to augment Martin F. Kohn’s list:

“The Physician,” Nymph Errant (1933). “He took a fleeting look at my thorax, and started singing slightly off-key,” sang Gertrude Lawrence, purposely off-key. At least we assume that she intended to do it that way; there have been so many stories about Lawrence’s shaky and uncertain voice that, for all we know, she sang this note believing that she was on key.

“Zip,” Pal Joey (1940). Does this count? After Melba mentions Stravinsky, we hear a particularly dissonant chord. But, in the world of Stravinsky, can that be considered “wrong”?

“I’m Blue,” On the Town (1944). Kohn listed two Bernstein songs, and I think there may be a third with its wildly “blue” note — though, truth to tell, I’m still not sure if this is the actual melody that the Nightclub Singer is warbling or if she purposely stinks.

“The New Ashmolean Marching Society and Student Conservatory Band,” Where’s Charley? (1948). The band is said to “play just a trifle out-of-tune.” Well, come on! It’s a student band, so they’re still learning. Give ’em a break.

“Doin’ What Comes Naturally,”Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Yes, yes, I know — and you do, too — that this Irving Berlin classic opened in 1946. But as I mentioned the other day, on that year’s original cast album, Merman doesn’t sing off-key when she sings the words “off-key.” Neither does Mary Martin in her studio cast album with John Raitt. (Howard Rogut, the world’s greatest Martin fan, wrote in to say that “Mary couldn’t hit a wrong note if she tried.”) I suggested that Vivian Blaine might have been the first to do the “off-key” bit on her album of the score. David Levy then wrote in to say that he thought Betty Hutton first did it in the 1950 movie. I checked, and while Hutton doesn’t quite make the commitment to an off-key note, she does, you can tell, lean a little on the side of singing flat. So we’ll count this.

“Goodnight, My Someone,” The Music Man (1957). Well, not really — at least not on the cast album. There, Amaryllis plays the piano lesson correctly. But twice before the song begins, both Mrs. Paroo and Marian must correct her half-tone-too-high last note.

“Together,” Gypsy (1959). Not on the original cast album, but subsequent revival recordings include the section where Rose, Louise and Herbie sing, amidst many wrong notes, “If I sing B-flat / We both sing B-flat / We all can be flat / Together!” Nice, those two different uses of B(e) flat. That’s Sondheim for you.

“Healthy, Normal American Boy,” Bye Bye Birdie (1960). The Sweet Apple teens start “We Love You, Conrad” sweetly, but it’s strictly Sour Apple Time when they hit the final “you.” Maybe they feel it’s important to show they have less talent than their idol.

“Beautiful People of Denver,” The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960). Considering that Molly is a backwoods girl, we could expect her to commit a musical faux pas. But in this song, she’s in tune; when she says something crude, it’s Don Walker’s orchestration that hits some purposely wrong notes.

“The A.B.C. Song,” Stop the World — I Want to Get Off (1962). I’d say that this show sets the record for the show to most quickly introduce The Wrong Note into its score. It takes only seven notes before we hear a clunker and only nine more before we get another; the chorus is purposely off pitch on “G” and “P” in “A-B-C-D-E-F-G; H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P.” Perhaps songwriters Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley did this to thematically suggest that their central character will be making plenty of mistakes.

“I Don’t Know Where She Got It,”Hallelujah, Baby! (1967). There’s
Momma referring to her daughter Georgina’s considerable talent, claiming that “She sure didn’t get it from me” for it “seems like I’m always off-key.” This is the song that won Lillian Hayman her Tony Award.

“Nobody Does It like Me,” Seesaw (1973). I really shouldn’t count this, for when Michele Lee sang, “If there’s a wrong note, I sing it,” she didn’t. But when Randy Graff did the song for her Cy Coleman album, she hit a clam for comic effect — and that’s the way I think all Gittels should do it.

“Sing,” A Chorus Line (1975). Kristine proves that she really can’t sing by
murdering “Three Blind Mice” and “Jingle Bells.” But did you know that when the show was trying out downtown at the Public Theater, she also sang wrong notes in “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and “Do Re Mi”?

Merrily We Roll Along (1981). Leave it to Sondheim to give us a little something extra; he included at least three purposeful wrong notes in this score. The 1981 LP includes only two, both of them in “Opening Doors”: First, producer Joe Jefferson screws up the last note when humming “Some Enchanted Evening.” Then a female auditioner for Frankly Frank butchers substantially more notes in “Who Wants to Live in New York?” The CD edition of the cast album, released in 1987, includes the previously omitted “It’s a Hit,” in which Jonathan Tunick’s orchestration comments on the lyric “No more second-hand pianos with six broken keys.”

“Happy Birthday,” The Human Comedy (1984). Teenage Homer desperately needs a job at the telegraph office, and his prospective employers make him sing “Happy Birthday” — a skill he’ll need when delivering singing telegrams. Well, the kid hits a slew of wrong notes, but he’s so sincere and hard-working that he gets the job. (Very smart of songwriters Galt McDermot and William Dumaresq not to use the classic “Happy Birthday to You” song, which would have cost royalties eight times a week.)

“The Ballad of Jack Eric Williams (and Other 3-Name Composers),” Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003). William Finn reports that at the memorial service for Jack Eric Williams, Quentin Crisp said, “I never understood his music and why the melodies
went where they we-n-n-n-n-t” — adding in a particularly curdled melisma for good (or bad) measure.

Okay, friends, what did I forget? Do let me know.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]