You can also open a musical with a lone farm-woman on stage churning butter silently and a male voice singing from off-stage. They just don't write 'em like they yoosta!
This song is one thing you really have to appreciate about The Music Man. With this song, every production of this show lets you know almost immediately whether or not it's going to absolutely suck.
I wouldnt know why. Nobody sings. Everyone is a guy - no women. The guy who really carries the picture, Robert Preston, hardly appears at all. Not sure what this tells you then.
What I always loved about this song is how it establishes Hill as almost impossible, like a hero from an urban legend, just absolutely setting him up on a pedastal so high that surely it's impossible that he'd meet the hype. Then you actually see Hill work and realize that if anything this song *sold him short*.
My teacher made us memorize this whole song and reenact it in my 7th grade music class. Four years later and basically everyone in my school still remembers the lyrics lmao
I played the role of the Music Man in the 5th or 6th grade in 1965 (I think) and remember my lines even to today and I'm 68 years old. Also remember how our music teacher and school skirted the part in which I was supposed to kiss Marion. Back then in the 60's even in NYC white and black intimacy perceived or otherwise was frowned upon. All in all it was a great lifetime experience and hopefully will see it on Broadway this year.
Well it seems like it's nothing but credit now in 2020. Very seldom do see someone pay with cash it's either credit or debit card or even just use the app on you phone. I almost freaked out to see a teen actually paid with cash then threw the change in the trash can saying he didn't want to carry it around in his pocket. You can tell he definitely didn't have to work for that money or he wouldn't have thrown the change in the trash. He could've left it on the counter or put it in the charity box by the register. He definitely didn't have a father like the one at the ice cream shop he yelled at his kids for leaving $0.06 on the table saying don't you appreciate the value of money and how hard I had to work for it. WOW I was in shock to see that kind of reaction over such a small about. Specialist say the average person within three months of losing a job would be bankrupt because they're so far in debt and have nothing to fall back on. Also if you only pay the minimum payment on a credit card it takes an advantage of 25 years to pay it off.
In case anyone was wondering, he says "Credit is no good for a notion salesman" Notions: small, useful articles, as needles, thread, etc., sold in a store (collinsdictionary)
So the line "seegarettes illegal in this state" prompted me to look up the history of Iowa's cigarette ban. It was the first state to ever pass such a ban in 1897, and many other states including Indiana, Michigan, and Washington followed suit. I wasn't able to figure out when it was overturned. I learned something from a musical today.
Imagine sitting in the theatre in 1957 and this is what the happens when the curtain raises. I can only imagine the reaction at seeing something so completely different for the opening of a big Broadway musical. Completely Brilliant!
I played Charlie Cowell in our high school production of this play. All of our actors that were in the opening scene on the train were responsible for pushing the train prop of stage when it was finished. On our opening night as we were pushing the train off stage, we accidentally hit the fire alarm.😂 We had to evacuate the entire auditorium and everybody had to stand outside, waiting to go back in and we had to start the play over again😂😂. Some of the actors were still in mid costume and make up at the time and had to stand outside half dressed 😂😂
This opening shows you how much depth The Music Man had. I mean, Robert Preston just sits there through the entire song and never shows his face. Yet he dominates the movie otherwise. So clearly, the movie was a lot more than just a vehicle for Preston. It had a great ensemble cast and you really can't find any weak characters. Hollywood at its very best.
True ... but remember that Robert Preston had performed the role of Harold Hill ,,, about 700 times ... on Broadway ... and when Warner wanted some one else for the movie role (Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant were considered) ... Meredeth Willson said "Either Robert Preston gets the part ... or you don't get my movie." Interestingly though ... in the movie ... Harold Hill never did anything wrong ... and he never broke any law. He promised them instruments, uniforms, and instruction booklets ... and he delivered on that promise. He promised to form a boys band ... and he did. He did everything he said he would do ... and never broke a single law ... and yet they arrested him ... held him against his will ... and threatened to tar and feather him.
My great uncle played one of the traveling salesmen in the original broadway cast. Sadly he died around the time I was born, I wish I could have heard some of his stories about Broadway!
Woah, that’s so cool! I love the music man, saw a live production once visiting my grandma in California as a kid. Do you know if there are recordings of the original broadway production? I don’t actually know how old this play is.
That’s awesome. My mum played the soundtrack from as far back as I remember. By the time I saw it onstage for the first time as an 8th grader (the local high school, annual musical) I knew all the music by heart. My mum saw it in the 50s, original cast.
"[After] Meredith Willson's startling use of rap for the opening number in The Music Man ... I would have expected more songwriters to pick up on it, including myself. But not until rap became omnipresently popular did I try to make it work: I imitated it in a passage for the Witch to sing during the opening number of Into the Woods. But I was never able to find another appropriate use for the technique, or perhaps I didn't have the imagination to." -Stephen Sondheim
The Witch's Chant was the first rap song I ever listened to, during a lifetime of listening to classical (into which category I place Sondheim). The quote above led me here.
@@Person1865lol WELL after it became mainstream. It doesn't really require imagination at that point. That was Sondheim's point, that Meredith Wilson innovated, Sondheim did not (and on a grand scale, neither did Lin Manuel Miranda).
At 1:53 you can see Prof. Hill turn his head slightly and glance suspiciously at the guy who said his name. It's a cool detail that you don't even notice until you know that it's him.
For my my money, this is one of the best moments in the history of film musicals. The changing commerce of turn of the century America is charmingly encapsulated in the rap like chants of the salesmen. This film has so many dimensions-romance, comedy, cultural commentary of a changing America.
For sure! Particularly the rise of marketing as a profession that manufactures demand for a product through psychological tricks, rather than mapping & then supplying existing demand. Harold Hill representing the former, the "Ya gotta know the territory!" guy the former.
I had the honor of meeting Mr. Willson once when I was called to go to his house to help present the idea of a program similar to Side By Side By Sondheim only with Willson’s works. I sang, among many other things, My White Knight and told him it was the song I always sang for auditions. He was in the throes of Alzheimer’s then but still so sweetly said to me, “Well I’ve never heard it sung better!” I cherish the memories of that afternoon.. unfortunately the production never got off the ground. But we had a wonderful afternoon, singing his songs to him.
2:06 Saying that line, on a sound stage that's bouncing that much about 2 inches from another actor's face... I don't care if that was the guy's only part in the musical, give that guy an award. NOW.
Saying that line at all it award-worthy itself. As someone who once memorized the entire song, that is ALWAYS the hardest line to say. I puts the "Picky People" warmup to shame.
When I was a kid, I thought the train's shaking was making him speak gibberish at that line! 😂 Something like "He's just a bang-beat, brecker-neckin, brip-bluh, cracker-breckin', every time a bullseye salesman!"
Hill: "Gentlemen, you intrigue me. I'm going to have to give Iowa a try." Charlie: "Don't believe I caught your name." Professor Harold Hill: "Don't believe I dropped it." (As his suitcase reveals his name, he jumps off the train just as it starts going leaving behind a train car full of very angry Traveling Salesmen)
Indeed further proof that white folks invented rap. ☺ Tho before this 1 there was Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comb and before that there were square dance callers. ☺
WytZox1 Actually, this is related to rap, but it is called patter. Patter was perfected by Gilbert & Sullivan in such "musicals" as Pirates of Penzance, Ruddigore, The Mikado, and others. Go listen to The Nightmare Song from Iolanthe.
It doesn't get more brilliant than this - Meredith Wilson, the cast, the direction, set, photography, and the editing. An exquisite example of the American musical in film.
***** for the record, I never said that this meant white people invented rap. I was only saying that this meant rap was cool to do before it was made popular in the late 1900's.
The Stupendium sneaked some references to this into his new song AD INFINITUM, which is about a character from Toby Fox's game Deltarune Chapter 2 who is the literal personification of advertising. I'm glad I decided to look up the references, this was cool to find and it's really neat that he hid some of the lines from it here!
Well are you a senior this year getting ready to graduate high school this year? Wow how time flies. I hope you still like this musical. I keep getting people to watch this and tell them they had rap back in 1957 when this was a Broadway play and the movie premiered in 1962.
This musical takes place in the 1910s. This song mentions how salesmen don't have to actually change, they just "gotta know the territory." A century later, the song is more accurate than ever.
OMG this song has been in my head for at least 10 years and the only lyrics I had in my had were "big bass drum and the piccolo" and I finally found it ahhh I'm so relieved!
The first musical I ever saw on broadway. Also the second play I was ever in as a child. This still brings so many memories back. My all time favorite play!
That was the main idea for this song. It's called a "Patter Song". That means that the lyrics are spoken instead of sung. A good musical to listen to with Patter Songs would be "My Fair Lady". But yes, the rhythm of the train signified the temp of the song, therefore, when the train sped up, so did the lyrics, and the same when the train slowed to a halt. So yes, I guess you could say that Patter Songs help create rap.
I love how this ignores that Brighton, IL is a least a couple hours' train ride away from Iowa and that there's a giant-ass river between Iowa and Illinois.
@@Enterprise-D666 He's a what? He's a music man and he sells clarinets To the kids in the town with the big trombones And the rat-a-tat drums, big brass bass, big brass bass And the piccolo, the piccolo with uniforms, too With a shiny gold braid on the coat and a big red stripe runnin'...
@@LogoMan7777 Well I don't know much about bands but I do know that you can't make a living selling big trombones. No sir! Mandolin picks perhaps, and here and there a Jew's harp.
@@Enterprise-D666 No, the fellow sells bands, Boys' bands I don't know how he does it but he lives like a king And he dallies and he gathers and he plucks and he shines And when the man dances, certainly, boys, what else? The piper pays him! Yes sir, yes sir, yessss sir, yesssss sir When the man dances, certainly, boys, what else? The piper pays him!
Here's something especially ironic: Meredith Willson - who wrote "The Music Man" - despised rock 'n roll. Along with Frank Sinatra and quite a few other figures from the Big Band era, he considered it the destruction of all that was good about popular music, and described it as "garbage.... a creeping paralysis." And yet he invented rap!
I've watched a few versions of this scene on RU-vid, and by far this is the most emotional of them. I have this movie on tape, and it's pure awesomeness.
Someone named Grace Spelman on twitter did a video to this while quarantined and now I’m watching the original...thanks lady. Now I’m going watch this whole damn musical.
"Gone with the hogshead, cask and demijohn. Gone with the sugar barrel, pickle barrel, milk pan, gone with the tub and the pail and the TIERCE!" Is the container salesman dead?
I have The Music Man paperback book, with all the lyrics at the end; the rock island "song" is more complete, saying the milk pail, and those barrels are gone, because stores are trying to have more things sanitized.
And that people would rather get an airtight packet of crackers from the grocery store than a whole barrel, So I think he's saying that people will get smaller amounts of convenient goods than large qtys to last for awhile?
I had to learn this with my class in our Year 9 music class... in 2007. Today, I randomly get the lyrics stuck in my head and I haven't listened to this since 2007! Had to come and find this again. Amazing what our brains retain 😂😍
The locomotive is an outside-frame narrow gauge locomotive, not an inside-frame model that you would find on most of the U.S. railroad system. Maybe they shot that B-Roll at Knott's Berry farm?
They literally mention cigarettes being illegal in Iowa. If you really want to be a nerd, one could argue that when they mention hogsheads casks and demijohns that they’re referring to large bottles used to ferment alcohol such as ciders, wine and malt beer.
This song contains one of the most amazing feats of cinematic geography: Getting the train from Illinois to Iowa without crossing the Mississippi River. Always brought a chuckle to my Iowa family.
