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This final chapter surveys the separate professional lives of Bock and Harnick since their partnership dissolved in the early 1970s. Jerry Bock has worked as his own lyricist and written songs for concept albums and a feature film (Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us). He has worked on two major musicals that were never fully staged, one a murder-mystery (with author Evan Hunter), the other based on the tax code (with Jerry Sterner). He also wrote a successful series of musicals for young audiences (with Sidney Berger). Sheldon Harnick has branched out into opera (with composers Jack Beeson and Henry Mollicone) and translations (of Ravel, Bizet, and Lehár). His activities in the musical theater since the 1970s include writing lyrics with Richard Rodgers (Rex), book and lyrics with Michel Legrand (A Christmas Carol) and Joe Raposo (A Wonderful Life), and book, music, and lyrics for Dragons, based on Yevgeny Schwartz’s political fable.

In the mainly non-musical years of 1931 and 1932, a few filmmakers attempted to disregard the moratorium, sometimes with success. Among them was Ernst Lubitsch and Maurice Chevalier with The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You and Fox with Gershwin's Delicious. The team of Eddie Cantor and Busby Berkeley also fared well, while Rouben Mamoulian directed the sublime Love Me Tonight — not a financial success but still a high-water mark for musical cinema. Other films — The Phantom President, The Big Broadcast, Hallelujah, I'm A Bum — seemed to herald the fact that musicals might return.

This introductory chapter considers the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific (created by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II). The enthusiastic reception of this production suggests the show’s unabated ability to entertain as well as its continued relevance to problematic issues in American culture. Further, this production has reinstated much material cut from the original production before it opened in 1949 and thus provides an example of a musical as an “open text,” or a text that has changing content and meaning due to its not having a definitive version. This in turn invites consideration of earlier forms of the show during its developmental period and in subsequent productions, and it supports the investigation of drafts and sketches for the show that were rejected for various reasons. After stating the purpose of the book, which is to investigate the musical’s thematic concerns and how they were developed or altered, the chapter concludes with a summary of subsequent chapters.

Rodgers and Hammerstein brought liberal sensibilities to work and life from the 1930s through the late 1940s. Although Rodgers was perceived as less political than Hammerstein, the 1932 film The Phantom President, written with Lorenz Hart, was a satire about a presidential election, and their stage hit Babes in Arms (1937) endorsed Jewish liberalism. Hammerstein’s liberal leanings were present in his life and his art: from his early days in Hollywood, Hammerstein was involved with the Anti-Nazi League, which drew the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and during World War II, he was a member of the Writers’ War Board, a group that was responsible for the American Red Cross ending its practice of segregating blood by race. While South Pacific was the most politically charged of their collaborations, works such as The King and I nonetheless reflect the duo’s beliefs in world harmony and cultural exchange.

After discussing postwar feminism and concepts of gender, this chapter focuses on Hammerstein’s alteration of gender representations from Michener’s novel. The exploration of Nellie, whose characterization signals a change in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s female characters, reveals a musical connection between her and de Becque that contradicts most readings of her character, which suggest that she defers to him and gives up her identity to become his dependent. Close study of the score demonstrates otherwise, and this chapter provides a reading of Nellie that equates her emotional status with de Becque’s. Drawing on recent work in the field of men’s studies, the subsequent examination of de Becque and Cable, reveals that Hammerstein altered their masculinity, feminizing Cable and turning de Becque into an American warrior by sending him on a suicidal mission and having him return in full military regalia. After this establishment of his masculine credentials, de Becque joins Nellie in the musical’s iconic final image, which suggests the postwar nuclear family. This chapter also considers Joshua Logan’s representation of the male body in this and other works for the stage.

This chapter examines the dawn of Cajun recording. The Cajun community’s relationship to recording technology, the evolving nature of America’s recording industry, and Cajun music’s relationship to the ethnic, race, and hillbilly markets, are examined to illustrate the cultural intersections between the Bayou Country and America writ large. The pioneering recording careers of Joe Falcon, Cleoma Breaux Falcon, and Leo Soileau are also offered as further examples of the recording industry’s impact on local traditions and perceptions of Cajun music.

Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, and Herbert Fields had been working intermittently on a show called Winkle Town, in which a fellow invents an electronic system that renders electric wires obsolete and tries to sell the idea to the city fathers of the eponymous town. Taking their chutzpah in both hands, they decided to ask their old pal Oscar Hammerstein II for help. When the triumvirate got through with it, the story had turned into a satire on Tin Pan Alley called The Jazz King. To their delight, Lew Fields not only liked the play but decided to put it into production. The authorship of the play was attributed to Herbert Richard Lorenz, a pseudonym which seems to have succeeded in fooling hardly anyone. The critics split: Woollcott liked the show, and Quinn Martin thought it “tremendously funny.” However vitriol-tongued George Jean Nathan put an end to the newborn career of Herbert Richard Lorenz.

This chapter examines the work of Adam Guettel. Guettel arrived on the scene with a distinct advantage, or a distinct disadvantage. He does not bear a famous name; his father was a midlevel theatrical stage manager-turned-general manager, who at the time was producing second-class road tours. But Guettel’s mother was a Broadway composer, Mary Rodgers (of Once Upon a Mattress fame (Notables: May 11, 1959)), whose stage career ended just after young Guettel was born. The child’s grandfather, though, was arguably Broadway’s greatest—and inarguably most successful—composer, Richard Rodgers. What this meant, in the case of Adam Guettel, was that the boy inherited enormous talent, a substantial inheritance, and an avalanche of expectations that was all but crushing.

This chapter charts the early genesis of My Fair Lady, starting with the Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea. It briefly examines the development of this legend, culminating in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The chapter then examines the attempts of various people to make a musical out of Shaw’s play, much to his disgust and his refusal, before looking at the The Theatre Guild’s efforts to produce a musical out of the play following Shaw’s death. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s failed attempt at this is discussed, then Lerner and Loewe’s initial work on the show as a vehicle for Mary Martin called My Lady Liza, in 1952, is examined. The chapter closes with a look at Lerner and Loewe’s unfinished projects carried out in 1953–54, when the pair had gone their separate ways (with Arthur Schwartz and Harold Rome, respectively), and also explains how they returned to the project in the summer of 1954.

This chapter discusses Songspiel and vaudeville, show music, and other popular musical theater forms; Kurt Weill in Europe and Kurt Weill in America; “theater opera” on Broadway in the 1930s and '40s starting with the Thomson/Stein 4 Saints in 3 Acts and continuing with the work of Weill, Gershwin, Britten, Menotti, Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein. The American works of Weill are discussed including Love Life and the so-called concept musical with its long range influence on Blitzstein, Bernstein, William Bolcom, Anthony Davis, and others, including many pop and jazz musicians. The Kurt Weill influence was brought back to Europe by Robert Wilson and Tom Waits in their Black Rider. Limited European influence can also be traced in the work of East German composers, Henze, the Vienna group around Kurt Schwertsik and HK Gruber, Heiner Goebbels, and Christoph Marthaler.

This chapter attempts to refute Rodger's explanation of intertium concerned with granting trials. The discussion of Rodger's theory gives special attention to his conclusions on the order of the subjects in the statute. In terms of syntax, this chapter attempts to examine the phrase in tertium dare as an adverbial phrase as proposed by Rodger. It then looks at the shortcomings in the plan of chapter 84 and the one-to-one relation that Rodger observes between chapter 84, lines 23–8, and chapters 85–90. The main problem is that the plan does not accurately predict the contents of the chapters. The plan also has flaws in the order of events, the different classes of magistrate, and omissions form the list.

This chapter demonstrates how Wicked, the blockbuster Broadway musical that opened in 2003, is an exemplar of musical theatre’s generic conventions put to feminist and queer use. This chapter explores how Wicked combines girl power, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s organizing principles, and megamusicals’ marketing strategy. Wicked ties together other themes explored in the book, such as race and Jewishness, the individual and the ensemble, female duets, and the dispensable male lead, and ends with the formation of a queer female couple. The chapter reads closely Wicked’s structure in relation to that of a traditional formally integrated book musical.

This concludes the series of six chapters tracing how waltzes often became performed as duple-meter tunes, inflected with jazz style, via the collective innovation of performance tradition. Irving Berlin wrote “When I Lost You” (1912) after his first wife’s death, encouraged by his brother-in-law, E. Ray Goetz. This chapter clarifies the chronology of that year’s events and refutes claims about the song’s uniqueness in Berlin’s early career. The tune foreshadowed his famous series of 1920s waltzes starting with “What’ll I Do,” also written while vacationing with Goetz. These, with their intensified intimacy and ready adaptation to four-four jazzy treatment, in turn foreshadowed the famous later waltzes of Richard Rodgers and the modern jazz era. This discussion analyzes the song’s elements, the influences on Berlin, and how his waltz melodies often start with upward moving intervals. One, “Always” (1925) is analyzed as used in the film noir Christmas Holiday (1944).

This chapter presents a tribute given at Lord Rodger's memorial service held in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh on 25 November 2011. Journalist and broadcaster Colin MacKay recalls the start of his lifelong friendship with Lord Rodger. He also describes Alan as very modest and moral person with a legendary work ethic and a mischievous sense of humour.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Americana, which is a genre of music that presumes to include country and western, rock and roll, folk, blues, soul, and bluegrass (among other things). The genre is now more than twenty years old, with its own trade organization (the Americana Music Association was founded in 1999) and Grammy Award category (since 2009). But Americana was happening long before it had a name. The modern history begins with the 1927 recordings of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Then Hank Williams twisted a yodel into 1949's “Lovesick Blues,” and Elvis Presley paired an Arthur Crudup blues (“That's All Right”) with a Bill Monroe bluegrass song (“Blue Moon of Kentucky”) for his 1954 debut. All this inspired recent generations of musicians to make music at the corner of country and rock; and that is Americana.

This chapter discusses the 1927 recordings of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Record producer Ralph Peer spent twelve days in the summer of 1927 recording regional musicians in Bristol, Tennessee; the sessions have been called the big bang of country music because they introduced two seminal acts, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The recording and distribution of homespun American music was not new, but the Bristol sessions confirmed that commercial records would soon supplant an oral tradition that had passed songs from one musician (and generation) to the next. The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers had some things in common but were also quite different. The Carters' repertoire was drawn from and inspired by the folk songs brought to America from the British Isles. Meanwhile, Jimmie Rodgers was a folkie bluesman with a shape-shifting persona suitable for songs that could be randy or pious, silly or sad.

This chapter presents a musicological analysis of the yodeling of Jimmie Rodgers, the so-called Father of Country Music. It categorizes his yodeling styles and melodies into various types, labeled home tropes, derived from the yodel tune of “Sleep, Baby, Sleep”, for sentimental songs, the subdominant trope for songs on the theme of wandering, and blues tropes of various types that appear mainly in the songs with a 12-bar structure. Other features of Rodgers’ yodeling and their relationship to African American singing practices are discussed, including moaning while yodeling, third species yodeling, and harmony yodeling. The chapter discusses a range of influences on Rodgers’ yodeling including earlier yodel songs, African American singing practices, and Hawaiian music. Rodgers is discussed as the paradigm for hillbilly yodeling generally, and the yodeling and singing styles of a number of his contemporaries, including Goebel Reeves, Cliff Carlisle, and Jaybird Coleman are considered.