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Disc One |
| 1. |
It's Today - Karen Morrow |
| 2. |
Kiss Her Now - Brian Lane Green |
| 3. |
Just Leave Everything To Me / I Want To Make The World Laugh - Jo Anne Worley |
| 4. |
Look Over There - Rod McKuen |
| 5. |
Where In The World Is My Prince? - Nancy Dussault |
| 6. |
Loving You - Kym Hoy |
| 7. |
You I Like - Jason Graae |
| 8. |
A Little More Mascara - Wilson Cruz |
| 9. |
I Will Follow You - Michael McGuire |
| 10. |
Chin Up, Ladies - Charlotte Rae (with Lauri Johnson, Marsha Kramer, Kathryn Skatula, Mary Van Arsdel) |
| 11. |
Song On The Sand - Davis Gaines |
| 12. |
If He Walked Into My Life - Leslie Uggams |
| 13. |
I Am What I Am - Ken Page |
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Disc Two |
| 1. |
Just Go To The Movies - Jane A. Johnston |
| 2. |
Tap Your Troubles Away - Cynthia Ferrer & Reece Holland |
| 3. |
I Won't Send Roses - Rita Moreno |
| 4. |
La Cage Aux Folles - Lee Roy Reams |
| 5. |
Love Look In My Window - Dale Kristien |
| 6. |
We Need A Little Christmas - Gene Harbin & Marcia Rodd |
| 7. |
Tomorrow Morning / And I Was Beautiful - Tyne Daly |
| 8. |
Take It All Off Mary - Mary Jo Catlett (with Melanie Nicholson & Lise Simms) |
| 9. |
I Promise You A Happy Ending / Movies Were Movies - Douglas Sills |
| 10. |
It Only Takes A Moment - Hugh Panaro |
| 11. |
Before The Parade Passes By - Carole Cook |
| 12. |
I Don't Want To Know - Sam Harris |
| 13. |
Time Heals Everything - Bernadette Peters |
| 14. |
Hello Dolly / Mame - Angela Lansbury & Carol Channing (with Orlando Alexander, Peter Beckett, Carlos Carreras, Rick Crawford, Thomas Garcia, Cameron Henderson,Chris Holly, Robert Marra, Daniel Solis, John Vaughan) |
| 15. |
The Best of Times - Jerry Herman & Company |
| 16. |
I'll Be Here Tomorrow - Jerry Herman |
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 | Los Angeles's S.T.A.G.E. organization has for almost two decades been presenting annual winter AIDS benefits, each honoring musical-theatre songwriters. (The forthcoming March concert will pay tribute to Frank Loesser). In recent years, S.T.A.G.E. has joined with the Actors' Fund of America to present an additional fall event. The first of these was a centennial salute to Kurt Weill, released on disc by LML earlier this year. Now LML has issued a double-CD, live recording of the second fall concert, Tap Your Troubles Away, a salute to Jerry Herman.
Staged at the Luckman Theatre in L.A. on November 10, 2001, this gala was notable for the joint appearance of Herman divas Carol Channing and Angela Lansbury. Exchanging Herman signature numbers, Lansbury sang some of "Hello, Dolly!," then Channing warbled "Mame," much to the delight of the crowd.
As you are probably aware, Herman hasn't written a new score for Broadway in twenty years. Since La Cage aux Folles, he's given us only the songs for the television musical Mrs. Santa Claus (starring Lansbury) and the unproduced Miss Spectacular. But there have been countless Herman tributes. Revues have ranged from various incarnations of Jerry's Girls to An Evening with Jerry Herman (seen in New York at Rainbow & Stars, and later in an unsuccessful Broadway engagement). A new Herman revue, Showtune: The Jerry Herman Songbook, was recently produced in Nyack with Donna McKechnie and Martin Vidnovic, and will have its New York premiere next month. Released on video is a Hollywood Bowl salute to Herman, and PBS is currently working on a new Herman documentary.
Because Herman has in recent decades received so many compilation tributes but not written much, these salutes tend to feature familiar numbers, sometimes with the same singers who have done them in earlier Herman concerts. Just about everything in Tap Your Troubles Away can be heard on cast or soundtrack recordings, often in more scintillating renditions. (At this point, the rarest Herman material would be a selection from his unrecorded, 1961 off-Broadway flop Madame Aphrodite.)
Accompanied by seven musicians, Tap Your Troubles Away features, in addition to Channing, several other ladies with Dolly! connections. Channing's first Dolly understudy, Jo Anne Worley, performs a song from the film version. Australia's first Dolly, Carole Cook, is heard in "Before the Parade Passes By." Mary Jo Catlett, the original Ernestina Money, does "Take It All Off." And in "We Need a Little Christmas," Lansbury's three Broadway successors in the title role of Mame --Janis Paige, Jane Morgan, and Ann Miller-- are brought on stage (but aren't heard).
It's always good to hear Karen Morrow (opening the show with "It's Today"); Nancy Dussault (in a Miss Spectacular song); and Charlotte Rae (leading "Chin Up, Ladies" from Milk and Honey). Sounding good are Jason Graae in "You I Like"; Wilson Cruz in "A Little More Mascara"; Hugh Panaro in "It Only Takes a Moment"; Sam Harris in "I Don't Want to Know"; and Davis Gaines in "Song on the Sand," also heard in the Bowl concert.
Leslie Uggams repeats her strong but overly familiar "If He Walked Into My Life," and Lee Roy Reams reprises his tired "La Cage" title-song-with-imitations. Among the less-frequently-heard songs included: "Love, Look in My Window," added to Dolly! when Ethel Merman took over, and here sung by soprano Dale Kristien; "Loving You" from the Mame film (Kym Hoy); and Milk and Honey's "I Will Follow You" (Michael Maguire). The only concert numbers omitted from the recording are Joely Fisher's "Wherever He Ain't" and Valarie Pettiford's "Dancing."
The most rewarding performances are heard in the latter part of the show. Tyne Daly is her usual distinctive self in "Each Tomorrow Morning" and "And I Was Beautiful" from Dear World. Douglas Sills recreates two of the Mack & Mabel songs he did for L.A.'s Reprise!. Preceding the appearance of former Broadway Gypsy star Angela Lansbury is soon-to-be Broadway Gypsy star Bernadette Peters, in a throaty, dramatic account of "Time Heals Everything." And then you'll want to hear the Lansbury-Channing sequence, with the former in especially good vocal voice.
The only one who could follow them is, of course, Herman, who takes to the stage for "I'll Be Here Tomorrow" and "The Best of Times."
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