By Kenneth Jones
In general, was Milk and Honey a "quick write" for you?
Are there a lot of trunk songs from Milk and Honey? Was there any "fat"?
Tell me about the hora. To my ear, it's one of the most exciting instrumentals captured on a cast album of the 1960s.
17 Oct 2011
Choreographer Donald Saddler
JH: Yes, it was. It was a quick write because the excitement in my head and my heart was palpable. I think I wrote "I Will Follow You" in about 15 minutes. I know that I wrote the basic "Milk and Honey" song in an hour at the very most. Finding the places for songs was the biggest job. I wanted to make sure I was hitting the emotion of the particular scene on the head, and not writing about something extraneous. I wanted the music to top the scene. Don was a very simpatico collaborator who helped me find the right places and the right tone. I wrote this all on an upright piano that was my mother's piano in an apartment on East Tenth Street.
JH: No. I have trunks songs from every other show, but I don't have one from Milk and Honey.
JH: Donald Saddler is a great choreographer, period. He was one of the great heroes of Milk and Honey and was not nominated his choreography. That has always bothered me, because when he heard the hora, he said, "Jerry, just wait 'til you see it." When I went to see rehearsals and he started to do the dance — which was really, really as masculine and as powerful as any choreography I've ever had in a show of mine or seen — I just knew that was going to be a great experience [in the theatre]. When we were in Israel we saw a lot of hora. Donald Saddler really captured that.
JH: Oh, yeah, I would play at rehearsal. I played all kinds of things and then our dance music arranger, Genevieve Pitot, embellished everything.
Tommy Rall's "I Will Follow You" included a dance, the music of which is not heard on the cast album.
JH: [Donald] did extraordinary choreography for Tommy Rall, who was suddenly so admired by the audience that [the producer] put his name on the marquee under the three stars. It was very, very earned by him. He was a terrific singer and dancer. "I Will Follow You" was another show-stopper.
If Milk and Honey didn't come along for you, do you think you would have written your other shows?
JH: I don't think it would have happened as quickly as it happened. Milk and Honey certainly gave me that push, that start. Being nominated for a Tony Award [in 1962, in the category of Best Composer, a category now known as Best Score], I'll never forget the night my name was called out with [Frank Loesser] and Richard Rodgers…to hear my name called out with those guys just put me away. I was still this boy from Jersey City. I hadn't changed. It was an extraordinary adventure, filled with love.
Follow Playbill.com managing editor Kenneth Jones on Twitter @PlaybillKenneth.
