Dancing Through Life
Aaron Tveit has established a pretty nifty career for himself of late. The native of Middletown, NY, has gone from roles in Next to Normal to Saved to Broadway blockbuster Wicked in just a matter of months. He has also been involved in the workshop of Catch Me If You Can, the anticipated Terrence McNally-Scott Wittman-Marc Shaiman musical. He even has a small role in the upcoming Dreamworks film, "Ghost Town," in which he got to clown around with Ricky Gervais and "SNL" star Kristen Wiig. Tveit has all the makings of a rising star, but for now, he's firmly focused on being the best Fiyero he can be.
Question: How has it been becoming a part of the Wicked phenomenon?
Aaron Tveit: It's very interesting joining a show where the train is already running — you just kind of go with it. This is one of the easiest transitions I've ever made into a company. It's a great group of people. They make you feel really welcome, and the cast is really amazing. You don't feel like there is any judgment. Kerry Ellis, who just came over from London, she and I had a week of rehearsal together, even though she started the week before me, so we got to know each other a little bit before we started in the show.
Q: It seems like a show with a lot of technical aspects to get used to.
Tveit: I got a chance to trail David Burnham, who was doing the show before me, so I watched from backstage after I'd already figured out what was going on onstage, and that's a whole different thing, trying to figure out where to stand backstage and where not to stand because there are huge set pieces moving off and on at all times. But the stage managers are great at directing me: "You may not want to stand there." [Laughs.] Learning where you are going to be safe offstage is almost as tough as learning what you are doing onstage.
Q: How do you spend your time when Fiyero is not onstage?
Tveit: I sit in my dressing room. I like to read, so that's nice. I usually just sit and watch TV with the folks in the hallway. It has been nice that the Olympics have been on. I watched a lot of those.
Q: That brings up an aspect of you I had heard about, that you grew up a huge sports fan.
Tveit: Sports were my life, basically. When I was in high school, I played three sports, but I was also involved in theatre, show choir and chorus. What was really nice about my high school is I never once had to choose between theatre and sports. I was always able to do everything. I would miss basketball games if we had a chorus concert. I would miss practice for our musical if I had a basketball game, so everyone was always very willing to let me spread myself all over the place, which is amazing because at the time, I didn't really know that this was what I wanted to do, so it was nice to pursue everything and decide later. Q: Being from upstate New York, did you come down to New York City to see shows?
Tveit: I did. I got a chance every year. We came down with my chorus in high school and saw at least one Broadway show. And, in a couple of the academic programs I was in as an upperclassman, we would come down and see shows, too, which was amazing to be exposed to New York theatre from a young age.
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| Aaron Tveit |
Tveit: I saw Rent my senior year of high school with my chorus. I'd seen other shows, but that was really the first super-contemporary rock musical I had seen…That was the first time I was like, "Maybe I could do that," which was funny because I was 18 at the time, and two-and-a-half years later, I was on the road doing Rent.
Q: You went to Ithaca College. You cannot walk down the street in New York without bumping into some Ithaca grads on their way to an audition.
Tveit: I know. There are so many people in all aspects of the industry. Actors, tons of stagehands…There's something about that place. It's a special place, Ithaca. It's this crazy-cool liberal arts town that has two huge colleges and tons of local restaurants. They really do good work in the theatre program there. Also, their communications school is amazing. Tons of people who are producers and work in television behind the scenes went there, too. I went there as a music major. I was a voice major my first year. That's when I realized I really wanted to do theatre, because I was away from it for the first time since I had been about 14, and that solidified for me that this is what I wanted to do. I auditioned for the theatre school there, and it was a miracle that I didn't have to leave the college I was at when I decided to change my major. They have a great music school and a great theatre program, so it just worked out very well. I was glad that I didn't start school there as a theatre major because I wasn't sure coming out of high school what I wanted to do. It was nice to be away from it, and that made me realize that I missed it and that is what I needed to be doing with myself.
Q: Your career has been something of a whirlwind. Let's just touch on some of the projects you've done of late: Next to Normal, the musical that dealt with the issue of manic depression.
Tveit: I still get stopped by people who saw the show and say, "Thank you. Thank you for speaking to that." I can't tell you how many people came up to us after each show and told us, "Wow. I just saw so much of my life onstage." [Depression] is something that seems really obscure when you see it in a theatre, but when you talk to people who come to see it and hear their reactions, you realize that it is such a prevalent part of life and our society today that it really needed to be told, and still needs to be told.
Q: On a goofier side, Hairspray. Did you have fun as Link?
Tveit: I sure did. That was a show I saw a few years ago, like Rent, and thought, "This is great." Then I found myself in it about a year later. I got a chance to do that on the road for a year and had such a blast. And, making my Broadway debut in that was incredible, too, because it was a show I was already familiar with, so I wasn't worried about that part of it. I had about 75 people to see me on my opening night, and that was one of the craziest experiences. It was like a rock concert in there that night.
Q: What about Saved Off-Broadway?
Tveit: I had a blast there, too. What an amazing group of people to work with! Everyone worked so hard on that piece, and the creative staff was incredible. That's another one, a story that hasn't been dealt with: teen pregnancy and teenagers finding their faith. That was stuff that hadn't been touched on either, so it was really awesome to be part of that and see the reactions it elicited from the people who saw it.
Q: And, are you still attached to Catch Me If You Can?
Tveit: Yeah. Actually, we just did another reading about a month ago. We're waiting to hear what the next step will be, but everything seems to be very positive, and the last reading was myself and Tom Wopat again, and Norbert Leo Butz joined us, so that was amazing. It's an incredible piece, and I pinch myself every day that they still want me to be a part of it.
Q: Did you share Fiyero stories with the original Fiyero, Norbert?
Tveit: We sure did. We laughed about that a little bit. He told me some things [laughs]. You know, that's a totally different thing when you open a show like he did, so I got to pick his brain a little bit.
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| Aaron Tveit | ||
| photo by Hoebermann Studios |
Tveit: I got tons of those! Recently, in my first week in Wicked there's a scene in the second act where Elphaba comes back, and I decide that I'm going to leave with her, and I grab her to run offstage, and I say, "Let's go! Let's go!" I say it twice, and the first time I said it, bang! I bit it. Fell right onto the floor. I stood back up, and the audience was laughing. I said, "Let's go!" and we ran off, so that was one here so far. I just bit it so hard on stage.
Q: Finally, what do you think makes Wicked endure?
Tveit: You're looking at magic on Broadway, I think. It sounds cheesy, but this show is just so big that it elicits such strong reactions from the audience. And, also, they are so committed here to maintaining the show. They are constantly putting changes in. The show is very different now than when it opened. Whenever they find something that works a little better, they aren't afraid to go in and tweak things. The show is just really pristine and really precise and still kicking because of that. They get really dedicated people to be in the show. This ensemble is amazing. The dancers are incredible. From top to bottom, everyone is so committed and going for it every night, and I think it pays off. You have to make sure it is like that when there are 1,850 in the audience every night.
[Wicked is playing the George Gershwin Theatre. Tickets are available by calling (800) 755-4000 or by visiting www.TeleCharge.com. The George Gershwin Theatre is located at 222 West 51st Street in Manhattan. For more information on Wicked, go to wickedthemusical.com.]
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| Rob Sutton |
It is September, which means the New York Musical Theatre Festival is nigh. Running Sept. 15–Oct. 5, the Festival features tons of shows, workshops and readings, all with the idea of giving fresh musicals a chance to be seen. Altar Boyz, [title of show], the aforementioned Next to Normal, all got a boost from being produced through the Festival. I talked with Rob Sutton, who will be making his NYMF debut as Whip Masters in Idaho!, the musical Rodgers and Hammerstein might have made if they were obsessed with potato farming and life in the state that gave us Napoleon Dynamite. Sutton has been in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, Mamma Mia! in Vegas and now a pig farm in Queens, as you shall read...
Question: Tell us about Idaho!. It sounds wild.
Rob Sutton: We've only done readings so far, but it is without a doubt the most fun I've had in my career. It is one funny show. We're definitely paying homage to those classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. The characters are definitely created with a twist, and we do it in kind of a bawdy way.
Q: Is it primarily Oklahoma! being spoofed or are others referenced?
Sutton: You'll definitely recognize some of the characters from all of those R&H musicals. I guess it does stick closer to Oklahoma!, but it is its own show and stands on its own. The characters are created from scratch in their own way. Our writer, Buddy Sheffield, could not be funnier.
Q: How much of a part do potatoes play in the proceedings?
Sutton: [Laughs.] Potatoes play a huge part, and there is a big, big plot twist involving some potatoes. They are definitely one of the stars of the show.
Q: Tell us about your character, Whip Masters.
Sutton: He's one of these classic Rodgers and Hammerstein heroes — a spud-buster who works hard and a good ol' boy with a big smile who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He likes the girls. He likes the cows and the pigs. Growing up on a farm in Arkansas myself was research for all that.
Q: What songs do you get to sing?
Sutton: There is a song called "Idaho!"— the big number. That's the other thing: Keith Thompson's score is at once like something you know and love, but at the same time, it's completely new and fresh. It's completely accurate in terms of the style and sweeping nature and vocal arrangements of all that great, great Broadway music. And you go out humming it, and yet it is completely new and wonderful and so much fun to sing. That song "Idaho!" is a great big song. I have a nice love duet with my leading lady, Elena Shaddow. It's going to be fun to get to know her.
Q: How did you become involved with the project?
Sutton: I met Keith Thompson back in, gosh, 2003, when he was casting for a show he was doing called Kooky Tunes. We became friends during that process, and about a year later, I went to do We Will Rock You in Las Vegas, where he was the musical director and conductor, so that put us back in touch on a day-to-day basis. That's when he mentioned Idaho!, and he wanted to put a reading together, and to my knowledge, that was the first formal reading, and we did it then with a lot of the cast members from We Will Rock You in a small theatre in Las Vegas at UNLV, and I have done all the readings since then.
Q: I know the West is much bigger than people here realize, but while in Vegas, did you ever make it to Idaho?
Sutton: You know I have never been to Idaho [laughs]. I haven't added that to my list yet — although we did do a photo shoot on a farm in Queens last week with some pigs and chickens.
Q: There's a farm in Queens?
Sutton: This place was a hoot. The Queens County Farm Museum, I think, is the name of it, and I think it's actually a preserved farm with all these barns and chickens and pigs and old farm equipment. We had a great time out there in the mud with the pigs.
Q: What is the theatrical "scene" like in Vegas. Do you see people from other shows? Is there a sense of a theatre community?
Sutton: There is a definite sense of a theatre community. The thing about the Vegas shows, and I'm talking about the Broadway-transfer shows, is that we're all on a different schedule, so it makes it a little difficult to get together, but there were events created. We did a composer's showcase once a month after all the shows came down like at 11 PM, which brought everyone together. I think because we're all there working away from our homes for the most part, it fosters that community even more so in that we don't have our own apartments or our own lives or our own significant others or whatever. We're kind of just there, doing our job, and that puts us all together in a different way. As far as the scene and the shows, I think there is never anything wrong with bringing theatre to more people, and I hope that Vegas continues to support the need for that. There are some challenges inherent in Vegas like the casinos right outside the lobby door and cup-holders in the seats [laughs], but I had a great time there.
Q: Talk about your Broadway time with Beauty and the Beast. Did you get to go on much?
Sutton: Yes. I was with Beauty and the Beast for a little over a year, and I understudied both the Beast and Gaston and went on many, many, many times. Steve Blanchard, who was playing the Beast while I was there, was wonderful, and I wish to follow in his footsteps. He actually took a short leave of absence to work on a project, so I got a three-week stint as the Beast, which was great and something I never expected, but to have that kind of repetition as an understudy was pretty special. There was one night there were about 25 people from Arkansas in the front row of the mezzanine. That was kind of cool.
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| Idaho! co-stars Rob Sutton and Elena Shaddow | ||
| photo by Richard Termine |
Sutton: I met a few people at the photo shoot. Some people are returning from the readings of the past, such as myself, Stacy Todd Holt, Jen Perry and Jay Rogers, so I know those guys, and we've had some amazing additions: Elena Shaddow, who I mentioned, and Beth Curry and Ramona Keller, among others. We haven't really gotten together at any length yet, [but] we start rehearsals soon, and I expect to be rolling on the floor laughing every day.
[Idaho! is part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival and will be playing at Off-Broadway's 37 Arts Theatre Sept. 25-Oct. 4. Tickets are available by calling (212) 352-3101 or by visiting www.nymf.org. 37 Arts Theatre is located in Manhattan at 450 West 37th Street. For more information visit www.IdahoMusical.com. For info about other shows in the festival, check out www.nymf.org.]
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| Jim Caruso | ||
| photo by Bill Westmoreland |
What's Jim Caruso got going on? Let's see, Monday nights, he hosts the most freewheeling gathering of musical talent since Ted Mack went off the air. His Cast Party at Birdland is the perfect place to see/be seen, hear/be heard, chill/get chills: an open mic that brings out all manner of talented Broadway and cabaret stars and newcomers, all tied together with Caruso's self-effacing charm. Also at Birdland, Caruso produces the Broadway at Birdland series that brings great stage talent to the hallowed jazz hall on a regular basis. Oh, did I mention the worldwide tour he has been on, dancing and singing behind Liza, re-creating portions of the much-revered nightclub act of Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers? As Liza indicated at the Tonys, it just might be setting up shop on The Great White Way.
Q: So, how's it going?
Jim Caruso: Really? Is that how this is going to go? [Laughs.]
Q: I mean everything. So much brewing for you right now.
Caruso: I'm absolutely enchanted at how things are going at Birdland. It's the most fantastic time in my career, and I've never been as excited about all the things I have going on.
Q: How do you manage the touring you do with Liza and the scheduling of the Broadway at Birdland concert series and your weekly Cast Party at Birdland?
Caruso: There's this thing called the interweb that all the kids love, and I'm able to do all my Broadway Birdland Cast Party promotion stuff on a laptop while I'm on the road with Liza. And, the Birdland staff is fantastic, and I have a great publicist that works on the Broadway at Birdland series. Essentially, I can be two places at once. The only thing I can't do when we're on the road for a long period of time is host Cast Party, but that's only happened a handful of times, and I get fantastic guest hosts like Christine Lavin and Christine Pedi and Scott Siegel, who understand the evening very well. They each have great followings of their own, and they all bring a lot to the hosting table, so we're in good shape then.
Q: Tell me about a typical Cast Party.
Caruso: This last week was insane. It was really wacky. Liza came in and sang two tunes with Billy Stritch. She brought her friend Mary-Louise Parker. Hello? [Liza] dedicated "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" — which she does with Billy — to Mary-Louise, who was totally into the night, screaming and yelling for everybody. We had LaLa Brooks, who is a newcomer. She was the lead singer from The Crystals, and in 1963, she had a little hit called "Da Doo Ron Ron," and she looks like she's 25 years old. I don't know what she's done to keep that amazing body and face. She's just spectacular looking. She came in and just ripped the roof off of Birdland. Laurel Masse, who was one of the original girls in the Manhattan Transfer was there. We had Liza, Laurel, LaLa, and all we needed was Lucy Arnaz to complete the "L" thing. We had the cast of Altar Boyz, which always goes over like gangbusters. The cast of Enter Laughing [was also there]. I love being able to present and promote shows here in town and celebrate casts of shows. That's really thrilling to me because my background was kind of in the theatre, so any time we can help promote shows, I'm just over the moon. Q: What are the nuts and bolts of setting up such an evening?
Caruso: For the open mic of it all, we end up with about 30–40 performers every Monday night, and obviously not everybody gets on, but I try to get everybody up to sing. Cast Party kind of runs itself as far as people knowing about it and coming in. Every once in awhile we have to goose it a little bit. Certainly, a night with Liza helps business. The Broadway at Birdland series is certainly time consuming, booking and promoting and keeping that as high-end as I can, with concerts: people like Chita Rivera, Christine Ebersole is coming back for a week, Jason Robert Brown. The best of the best that I can get onstage.
Q: Talk about Birdland itself, a throwback to when New York had a lot more such nightclubs.
Caruso: Listen, I stepped in it when I walked into Birdland. I kissed a lot of frogs to get there [laughs]. To me it's the best musical room in the country. I have sung in most of them. Just as a performer, it's thrilling to work that stage. There's a nine-foot Bösendorfer Concert Grand onstage, which is an extraordinary instrument. The sound is the best, the lighting is great. The staff is over the moon. I'm not just sucking up here, I honestly think it's the best musical room I've ever played in my life, and I am thrilled to be there but also to be able to open it up to performers I think are deserving of it. I go to a lot of nightclubs, and I think these performers deserve the highest-end room possible, and that's what we're giving them. I just went out today and bought red lacquer paint for the dressing room door. A couple years ago, we jazzed up the dressing room. My friend Doug Wilson, who's on "Trading Spaces," helped me jazz up the dressing room, and I mean, jazz up is exactly what we did. It is bright red and white and swanky looking. I decided that the door needed to be bright-red lacquer, so we're doing that today. We're a full-service production company here. We paint the doors, we installed the toilet [laughs]. Whatever we have to do to make the room the best we can muster is what Birdland does and what I like to do. I love to treat the performers like gold — because they are!
Q: For those unfamiliar, give the background of the show you've been doing with Liza. The original Kay Thompson/Williams Brothers act is spoken of in such reverent tones by folks who saw them.
Caruso: Kay Thompson was the vocal arranger at MGM in the forties and the vocal coach to people like Judy Garland and Mel Tormé and Lena Horne. Three nobodies! And, she really jazzed up MGM. I mean, she took the sound of movies from [vocals that were] very angelic choir-y sounding, and she blew that to smithereens — she brought in jazz. She was a huge fan of jazz, and she really brought movie music up to date. She was Liza's godmother, and she also wrote a little book called "Eloise," about the little girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel. She was just a renaissance woman. Everything she did, she did brilliantly, then she'd move on and do something else totally different. I got to know her when she moved into Liza's apartment when she was in her nineties. I had certainly been a fan, but just getting to know her was extraordinary. After she died, Liza and I were talking for years about singing Kay's music, and one day Liza called me and said, "Here we go! Are you with me?" And I said, "Yeah!" So she asked me to be one of the Williams Brothers, along with Cortes Alexander, Johnny Rogers and Tiger Martina, with Billy Stritch at the piano and her brilliant 12-piece orchestra, and we've taken this show all over the world: South America, Scandinavia, all over Europe; we did a week at the Coliseum in London. We killed them in Antwerp. You may quote me. Talk about out-of-town tryouts, this thing has been all over the planet. Recently, at the Tonys, Liza announced that we're taking the show to Broadway, so it sounds like it is really going to happen. My fingers are so crossed I can barely dial the phone. It would be thrilling.
Q: Having heard so much about Kay and the Williams Brothers, it sounds like an incredible show.
Caruso: If nothing else, New York audiences need to see Liza being so brilliant and singing and dancing her fanny off again. And, the Kay Thompson arrangements are life-changing. You can't believe these incredible tight harmonies we get to sing, and Ron Lewis has choreographed it to a fare-thee-well. It is so much fun and crazy high energy. It's so my taste, it is hard to get out of it enough to be really critical of it, but as an audience member, I would flip out, so anyone else like me, they're going to love it.
Q: Has Andy Williams ever come out to see the show?
Caruso: Andy hasn't come, but we just opened the Hollywood Bowl a couple months ago for the season with the L.A. Philharmonic, and Dick Williams was there, who I play! After the show, there was a knock on our dressing room door, and somebody said, "Liza wants to see you." And I went to the dressing room, thinking, "I wonder what I did." I walked in, and there was a guy there with these unbelievably blue eyes, and I said, "Oh my God, you're Dick Williams!" And he said, "No, you're Dick Williams!" And he hugged me and just seemed really thrilled and kind of startled that it was being brought back so well and with so much love.
Q: That had to be an incredible compliment to hear.
Caruso: It was a compliment to all of us, first of all, that he would be there. And, yeah, it was thrilling to be able to entertain him. It was a highlight. And then there were fireworks over the stage…coming out of the band shell thing. Crazy! Just another night in the glamorous life of Jim Caruso.
Q: It does sound like there's some glamour.
Caruso: That was a good night. That made up for all the horrendous nights of my life!
Q: Speaking of which, how about the Jim Caruso life story.
Caruso: My parents were both musicians. In fact, this is a very over-told story, but I had an act with my mother called "Son of a Bitch." She played piano and I sang, and it was horrendous, as you might guess.
Q: Was that here in New York?
Caruso: [Laughs.] No. God, no! It was in Dallas, Texas, where we played happy hours at fish restaurants, and that sounds like shtick, but I have pictures.
Q: How does that not still happen?
Caruso: Shocking, isn't it? We can't find a fish restaurant with a happy hour in New York. Anyway, that got me into the nightclub scene. I put a trio together called Wise Guys, and that took off. We came to New York, Liza came to see us, we were her opening act. Joan Rivers came to see us, we were her opening act. When that broke up, I went to work for Liza, I got involved in TV production and PR. And, I was doing PR for a defunct nightclub, I threw a party one Monday night, everybody came and sang until three in the morning. The club called me the next day, and said, "Would you do that again?" I said, "No." And five years later, I'm still doing it. And that's my life. Good evening.
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| Jim Caruso | ||
| photo by Mark Rupp |
Caruso: I love saying this, but I was at the Kanye West concert at Madison Square Garden a couple weeks ago, and believe me — I love saying that because it makes me sound either hip or mentally imbalanced — but I loved it! Do I sit around listening to Kanye West? No, but the production of that show was so insanely over-the-top and brilliant, if you couldn't get something out of that for your own damn cabaret act, then you are not looking. I think it's weird that people will only go see other acts just like themselves. The interesting thing: We travel so much with Liza, we were in Brazil, in Rio, and Liza knows all those bossa nova dudes. Those original guys that created the bossa nova with Jobim, and they threw parties for us —meaning for her— every night. And there was music till four and five in the morning. What I thought was interesting was, these were the original bossa nova dudes, but also, there were these 20-something guys that were adding hip-hop to bossa nova and rap to bossa nova, and everybody knows each other and everybody got along. And, the old guys are thrilled with the new guys, and the new guys are so honored to know the old guys, it's very impressive. And you don't see that here. You don't see Mary J. Blige at a Margaret Whiting concert much I don't think. I think that's really too bad. I mean, why not?
Q: People like to stay in their comfort zone.
Caruso: The Great American Songbook lives on, folks, and it is being written by country writers and pop singers and stars and R&B. That doesn't mean I have to sit around and listen to Kanye West all day, because I certainly don't. But I like knowing he's out there and knowing what he does. It keeps me a little ahead of the game, pop culture-wise. I was talking to Phyllis Newman the other day. I was amazingly surprised when I told her I went to the Kanye West concert and she was like, "I love him!" She went up like a thousand points in my estimation of her intelligence, that she knows who he is. I think it makes you more of an interesting person, and that's my goal: To someday be mildly interesting.
Q: Well, I'm all for that.
Caruso: [Laughs.] Wait. What did that mean?
[Birdland Jazz Club, where Broadway at Birdland and Jim Caruso's Cast Party happen, is located at 315 West 44th Street. Cast Party takes place every Monday from 10 PM-1 AM. Go to birdlandjazz.com or castpartynyc.com for more information or call (212) 581-3080. Check out officiallizaminnelli.com for her tour schedule.]
Hither and Yon
Announced performers for Scott and Barbara Siegel's tribute to Lerner and Loewe at Town Hall on Oct. 17 include Brent Barrett, Euan Morton, Daniel Reichard, Max von Essen and Jim Caruso himself. ("Somebody must have lost a bet," he surmises.)…Michael Kostroff and Adam Wylie will be Max and Leo, respectively, in Long Island's Gateway Playhouse production of The Producers. For tickets call (888) 4-TIX-NOW, or look on the web at www.gatewayplayhouse.com…Names from other shows happening as part of NYMF this year: Jim J. Bullock in The Fancy Boys Follies, Brandon Espinoza in College, Kevin Cahoon in Bonnie and Clyde, Austin Miller in The Jerusalem Syndrome, Gavin Creel and Aaron Tveit in a concert featuring the songs of Benj Pasek and Dustin Paul and lots more. Again, check out www.nymf.org for full details… True original musical theatre absurdist, alchemist, and sometimes Lamb's Club Lo-Jinx host Peter Dizozza has two appearances at Sidewalk Bar and Restaurant scheduled for September: Sept. 10 and 28, the latter at which he will be trading tunes with Preston Spurlock. Sidewalk is located at 94 Avenue A and 6th Street. Check out www.cinemavii.com for details… Lots of nominees for best vocal group LP of show music that I asked about last month. Someone mentioned one of my favorites, The Kirby Stone Four's My Fair Lady LP. "Four on the Aisle" by The Four Lads came up, although I prefer their LP of all Frank Loesser material. Someone mentioned the Indigo Girls involvement with "Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection," a collection of songs from that show which I was not aware of and now must investigate...Your audiophile question of the month: What is the rarest show recording you have (not counting cassette recordings of your high school performances, but anything else you've run across out there in the audio jungle)? Do tell. I shall share some rarities next month. Take care!
Tom Nondorf can be reached at [email protected].
