Happy New Year, Part 2: “The Ballad of Sheldon and Shecky (who was also Sheldon)”
Or “Sheldon and Shecky Happen to Folk Songs” (Featuring some rare video. Check it out, hey.)
I didn’t get the chance to write as much as I would have liked to about Sheldon Harnick, who died in June, roughly nine months before he would have reached his 100th birthday.
Sheldon’s musical theater legacy was so vast - truly his entire career could rest on the six productions he had on Broadway between 1959 and 1970: Fiorello! (1959), Tenderloin (1960), She Loves Me (1963), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), The Apple Tree (1966), and The Rothschilds (1970) - that it’s easy to forget that he worked in other areas beyond musical theater. But even before he had his first successful shows, he had already written two songs that were widely heard in folk music circles: “Merry Little Minuet” and “The Ballad of the Shape of the Things.” Most folks reading this will probably have first heard “Shape” as played and sung by Blossom Dearie and “Minuet” by Tom Lehrer; both were also played by The Kingston Trio. (Yes, I know that describing “Merry Little Minuet” as something from outside of Sheldon’s musical comedy experience isn’t quite accurate, since he did, in fact, write it for a Broadway show.)
I know there might be some readers who only know Sheldon’s Broadway songs and not his so-called folk songs, so I wanted to share these with you:
Here’s Blossom Dearie doing “The Ballad of The Shape of Things”:
Here’s one of several versions that the Kingston Trio recorded, live and in studio, of “Merry Little Minuet” (they actually shorten the title as well as the song itself):
Here is a very thorough history of the song, looking at it mostly from a folk music perspective. As a side not, “Minuet’ was actually written for the 1953 edition of the revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. The song apparently was heard in the show on opening night, but dropped at some point during the run. It was one of Sheldon’s very first notable songs in any venue.
https://compvid101.blogspot.com/2011/03/la-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme.html
What I wanted to share - both in honor of the New Year and for Sheldon’s memory - is a video of the composer-lyricist himself performing the song. This was part of a series produced by Sonny Fox (who many will remember from the local NYC TV children’s show Wonderama), and it roughly follows the format of the early shows in the long-running “Lyrics & Lyricists” series at the 92nd Street Y (now 92NY). This was a rare series that the resourceful Steve Kramer unearthed about five years ago; lucky for everyone, a year or so ago, someone posted a copy on the youtubes:
I encourage you to watch and enjoy the whole program, but to cut to the chase, here’s Steve’s copy of “Merry Little Minuet.”
This is worth sharing, not least because of Sheldon’s intro: “Bear in mind that these lyrics are 27 years old. Some of the topical references, of course, are no longer topical. But it’s appalling how many of the lines are still relevant.” Does that sound overly simplistic - to imagine that we could eliminate poverty and war and bigotry in a mere 27 years? I don’t think so. No, Sheldon wasn’t naive; he just expected better from us.
Shecky Greene, who was also Sheldon (his name at birth was Fred Sheldon Greenfield) was born about two years after Sheldon Harnick and died six months after him. Where I did get to know Sheldon fairly well, I only met (and interviewed) Shecky very briefly and only got to see him perform informally. Still, no one who was at Keely Smith’s opening at the old Feinstein’s at the Regency circa 2002 will forget Shecky’s impromptu performance. He leaped on stage at the start - as if he had been hired to serve as her opening act, which he hadn’t been - and immediately started giving forth with the comedy. The line everyone remembers is a riff on the singer’s Native American heritage; it wouldn’t fly today, but Keely herself thought it was hysterical at the time, along with the rest of the house: “I remember when you used to sing,” he said, “It would rain like a son-of-a-bitch!”
That incident had overtones of one of Shecky’s first very-high profile gigs, when he opened for Nat King Cole at the old Copacabana in 1955 - Shecky would have been 29. In his own telling, he went over great, so great, in fact, that he continued long after his allotted time slot. He simply refused to leave the stage; joke after joke after joke. The crowd is roaring but the management is pointing at their watches. In the end, the Copa had to send a few of their security guards and bouncers to literally drag him off.
The New York World Herald Tribune gave Shecky exactly one sentence in their write-up of the show: “Shecky Greene, the comedian, reminds the audience that he should get an A for effort. I guess they agree.” (I wonder if he did the same thing when he shared a bill with Elvis Presley and Freddie Martin’s Orchestra at the Frontier in Las Vegas in 1956.) Variety described the Copa opening as “The gala night of his career.”
There’s disappointingly little Shecky on youTube, although several of his five appearances on the Hollywood Palace are readily viewable. He was on The Ed Sullivan Show about half a dozen times, but so far the Sullivan heirs have not released any of those segments on their youTube channel. (However, the audio from one show in 1959 is out there):
In honor of his 97 years of making us laugh, I wanted to share what might be my favorite clip of Shecky, at least among the few that I have been able to get my hands on. Shecky was a very musical comedian - perhaps one of the reasons that Dean Martin was so fond of him. He had a running series of riffs he would do on certain pop singers, notably including Frankie Laine. Most of this particular 1968 routine is a riff on folk singers, starting with Harry Belafonte. This is an appearance on The Dean Martin Show that has been issued commercially but in edited form; for some reason, they cut about 90 seconds out of the middle of Shecky’s spot. (No, it wasn’t for copyright reasons, as it so often is, Shecky doesn’t sing any kind of song that would have necessitated a royalty or anything like that.) Thankfully, Anthony DiFlorio III - whom we call St. Anthony, patron saint and finder of lost video, had a copy of the episode that was also incomplete and in lesser quality, but seemed to contain Shecky’s entire routine. I rather crudely spliced the two versions together, editing in the missing 90 seconds. I think it adds a lot; in toto, this is one of Shecky’s funniest segments ever.
Lastly, tonight we’re doing a special Clip Joint in honor of mostly Shecky Green (among other things, we’ll show at least four out of his five appearances on The Hollywood Palace), but also Maurice Hines and Les McCann as well. There’s no “cover charge” as we say. (Not coincidentally, it will be preceded by our new presentation on three pioneering Jewish singer / comedian / entertainers: Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, and Eddie Cantor.)
Wednesday, January 3
7:00PM (EST) - THE NEW YORK ADVENTURE CLUB presents:
A BRAND NEW PRESENTATION FOR A BRAND NEW YEAR!
'Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor: Three Jewish-American Show Biz Pioneers' Webinar
click_here
Wednesday, January 3
9:30PM (EST) - Will Friedwald's CLIP JOINT presents:
Honoring the Fallen:
Remembering SHECKY GREENE, MAURICE HINES, & LES McCANN
click_here
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com, click here.
SPECIAL ENCORE PERFORMANCES!
December 31: The Early Years 1935-42 hosted by Will Friedwald
January 1: The Columbia Years 1943-’49 hosted by Ken Poston
January 2: The Radio Years: hosted by Chuck Granata
January 3: The Fall and Rise (1950-’54) hosted by Will Friedwald
January 4: Frank and Nelson hosted by Will Friedwald
January 5: The Capitol Years hosted by Loren Schoenberg
January 6: Bonus! Sing! Sing! Sing! Some Frank Conversation with Adam Gopnik
January 7: The Movies: Hosted by Chuck Granata
January 8: The Early Reprise Years 1960-'65 hosted by Loren Schoenberg
January 9:The Concert Years hosted by Ken Poston
January 10: The Rat Pack hosted by Ken Poston
January 11: Inside the Studio hosted by Chuck Granata
January 12: Bonus! In the Wee Small Hours with AJ Lambert (Sinatra’s granddaughter)
January 13: 1965-1974 The Main Event hosted by Will Friedwald
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a subStack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Beth Naji & Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)
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