My Dad, My Son, and the Parade of Musicals Between The Music Man and Hamilton

There was a time when it was embarrassing to say I loved musicals. In fact, it may have never before truly been cool to admit a love of musicals, until this moment right now. I have run in circles cooler than that. It was cool to travel around the world, not to vacation at Club Med (which I super happily did twice in my early 30s). It was cool to see U2, not Elton John and Billy Joel. (Actually, I saw Neil Diamond too, at age 27. Talk about uncool! But I sang along to every song.)

I love musicals, even when I don't even really like them (like Wicked. It just felt to me like it was trying too hard.) I love Guys and Dolls, and She Loves Me and Dream Girls.

I love old school musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Camelot, West Side Story and My Fair Lady that I know from singing along to the original cast albums as a kid. (We sang along to a lot of Neil Diamond in my house too.) 

Last year, for my mom's birthday, Miles and I took her to see The Music Man at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. At intermission, Mom made an admission I had never heard before. She said that my father had courted her with The Music Man soundtrack. What?! Leaning over to check on her when the lights came up - was she enjoying the high school production? - I found my mother unexpectedly happy and wistful. I had no idea there was history there.

While my parents were dating in the summer of 1959, my dad invited my mom up to a friend's apartment to listen to the original Broadway cast album from The Music Man. My father wooed my mother with Lida Rose!  Well, that's the song she specifically remembers him sharing, but when she mentioned it I immediately remembered that Lida Rose slips into the beautiful love song, Will I Ever Tell You, and ultimately ends in a lovely layered duet. There are some serious love songs on this album!  

From Till There Was You: 
There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all
Till there was you!

I never knew this about my father - and yet it makes so much sense. Of course he loved this album! The Music Man is a story of optimism and hope and dreaming big. It's about love and family, community and Irish immigrants, pool halls and marching bands! I have no doubt my dad was head over heels in love in the summer of 1959, and as he was not easily demonstrative with words, The Music Man gave him the sentiments and the instrumentation he lacked.

Here from the original Broadway Cast Album are the Buffalo Bills and Barbara Cook singing Lida Rose and Will I Ever Tell You by Meridith Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbbB2gCStg&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZhcxS2yRNDmbpYR04K696T&index=15

Lida Rose 
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
To get the sun back in the sky.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
About a thousand kisses shy.
Ding dong ding
I can hear the chapel bell chime.
Ding dong ding
At the least suggestion I'll pop the question.
Lida Rose, I'm home again, Rose
Without a sweetheart to my name.
Lida Rose, now everyone knows
That I am hoping you're the same
So here is my love song, not fancy or fine
Lida Rose, oh won't you be mine
Lida Rose, oh Lida Rose oh Lida Rose.

Will I Ever Tell You 
Dream of now, dream of then.
Dream of a love song that might have been.
Do I love you?
Oh, yes, I love you.
And I'll bravely tell you
But only when we dream again.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
How sweet that mem'ry how long ago
Forever?
Oh, yes forever.
Will I ever tell you?
Ah-- no.

Having both Wikipedia and YouTube at my fingertips I learned that in 1958 The Music Man was a "whopping hit" winning five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Actor. Its original cast album won the very first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Hamilton won the most recent Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and with 16 Tony nominations, is sure to win Best Musical and a slew of other Tonys on June 12th.

How wonderful it would be if my dad could see that his grandson is also swept away by the music in musical theater. Who knew that my love of musicals stretches forward and back in time through my father and my son.

Miles has a personal tradition of wearing costumes and wacky clothes the last week of school. As I dropped him off at school the day before he graduated, dressed as a doughnut, with a grey felt top hat, I thought of how remarkably brave he was. A 14 year old boy, wearing a doughnut costume and top hat to his big city public middle school. 

"Oh Miles! The doughnut!" I heard kids yell smiling as he climbed the front steps of the school. This kid must know who he is, I thought. This kid is trusting his instinct.

It turns out I have a love of marching bands and, thinking about my dad and The Music Man, I wonder if that's how it came about. When we wrote our "senior quotes" to be included under our formal portraits in our final high school yearbook, one of my "likes" was marching bands. I was Senior Class Vice President, a carefree, constantly smiling, non-instrument-playing teenager, saying in print that I liked marching bands. This was not cool, but it was true and it was me.  

I am looking at the threads of connection here, from my dad, to me, to Miles; threads of exuberant optimism that so typify the man my dad was, moments of goofiness, or not really giving (that much of) a damn. From a young Irish-American man wooing a pretty Italian-American girl with songs from a Broadway show they would never see, to his grandson almost 60 years later dressed as a doughnut as he walks into school. And me too, at 17 publicly acknowledging my love of marching bands, and choosing a cheesy, yet resonating Styx lyric in my senior yearbook quote! Oh I was so aware of how uncool that was at the time!

I don't think any of us always acts on our truest impulses and desires, but at best we are most of the time marching to the beat of our own drum. And ideally, it's a snare.

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