Remembering Charles Strouse + Sammy Davis, Jr. Centennial Special

“What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” (Or, The Greatest Show Tune Ever That You Can’t Believe Isn’t Also a Jazz Standard)

In 1966, Saturday morning cartoon mega-moguls Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera produced a one-hour TV musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. Whatever the numerous flaws of Hanna-Barbera’s productions - the dozens if not hundreds of animated TV series, specials, and feature films—they always had good music, and hired top drawer composers and musical directors for songs and underscoring, as well as great voice actors and singers. (In my opinion, the soundtracks are superior to the films themselves, but there seems to be a cult of H-B buffs out there. PS: My buddy Greg Ehrbar has done a lot of valuable research on the history of H-B music and soundtracks.)

For this 1966 special, they commissioned a fresh score from the team of composer Charles “Buddy” Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams. By 1966, this team had done three Broadway musicals: Bye Bye Birdie (1960), a mega hit and a Tony winner (that had also made into a mediocre Hollywood movie), All American (1962), a flop show but with a book by Mel Brooks and a few absolutely classic songs, and Golden Boy (1964), which starred Sammy Davis, Jr., and if not a blockbuster, certainly was a significant hit in both New York and London, and has long been regarded as a classic of the American musical theater.

Coincidentally or not, Strouse and Adams had two major projects drop within 24 hours of each other: their latest Broadway musical, It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman, directed by Hal Prince, opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on March 29, 1966 and, with an even longer title, Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid like You Doing in a Place like This? was broadcast on ABC-TV on March 30.

George Sidney, who had worked with Hanna and Barbera on the 1945 Anchors Aweigh (the iconic, innovative number in which Gene Kelly dances with Tom and Jerry) had been the director of the film version of Bye Bye Birdie, was also on the H-B board of directors. As Mark Evanier has theorized (see his story here), Sidney was most likely the connection between Charlie and Lee and Bill and Joe. (Regretfully, I didn’t find out about this project until relatively recently, and in all my conversations with Charlie, I never thought to ask him about it.)

Likewise, the great jazz-pop orchestrator, Marty Paich, likely came to the project through Davis; he had already done numerous albums for Sammy, as well as Mel Tormé, Ella Fitzgerald, and others including a session with Sinatra.

Essentially, Charlie and Lee wrote five major songs: “Life’s a Game,” “What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” “They’ll Never Split Us Apart,” “Today’s a Wonderful Day,” and “I’m Home.” We don’t know if Charlie and Lee were working with a song name provided to them when they wrote “What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” or if they came up with that name and H-B decided to use it as the title for the whole production.

The song fit that general concept - a modern swinging-sixties Alice in Wonderland - which is not slavishly held to throughout the entire production. At this time, the book had just passed its centennial, having originally been published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). At times the Alice character (voiced by Janet Waldo and sung by Doris Drew) acts like she knows she’s in the familiar story and has read the book; at other points they seem to forget about that conceit and present a more faithful, if half-assed, adaptation of the Carroll story.

The production’s most successful asset is the Cheshire cat character; it was a logical step from Carroll’s mysterious, grinning feline to the word “cat” standing for a cool dude in jazz musician / beatnik / hippy slang. (As in “We The Cats Shall Hip You” or more recently “Three Cool Cats” by The Coasters, vis-á-vis Lieber & Stoller, and, more recently, The Beatles.)

Sammy Davis Jr. truly makes the character and the song, and, to me at least, his three-minute scene is the only reason to watch the whole thing today. His performance is brilliant, and the animation team seems to recognize this by making this sequence the most visually interesting part of the film.

Here’s the sequence - and yes, I admit that it’s awesome:

And now here’s the mystery: Davis loved Charlie and Lee - in addition to working with them on Golden Boy, which is a major chapter in the Sammy success story, they also gave him what became his theme song, “Yes I Can” (which in some accounts is listed as originally having been written for Golden Boy), also the title of his major autobiography. But even though Sammy was making tons of recordings, somehow he never made a proper studio master of this song - more’s the pity.

For years I only knew the song as part of a medley on a Sammy Davis Jr. live album - in this period he was making tons of those, almost as many as Ella Fitzgerald - one of his extended medleys in which he works only with drummer Michael Silva and goes from song to song, usually a short chorus of each.

Medley:
“I've Got You Under My Skin” (very different from Sinatra, with percussion)
"What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?”
”Dang Me” (the Roger Miller hit)
”Big Bad John” (another country song, this one a 1961 hit by Jimmy Dean)
”The Girl from Ipanema” (already one of the most performed songs ever)
”Ugly Chile” (a rather brutal archaic New Orleans number, famously recorded by Johnny Mercer. I’ll do a story on this one some day.)
”On the Road to Mandalay” (in the Oley Speaks adaptation, probably inspired by Sinatra and Come Fly With Me)
”What I'd Say?” (Ray Charles, yes!)
”Hello, Dolly!” (Louis Armstrong, double yes!)
”I've Got You Under My Skin” (reprise)

(to skip directly to the song in question, click below)

It’s a great medley (taped 59 years ago in May 1966, at The Sands in Las Vegas, about five weeks after the special was telecast) - I only wish that Davis had also done a formal studio version with a full band and a full Marty Paich orchestration.

There was an album release attached to the production, but as Greg Ehrbar details at length, this was a completely different set of performances from the actual soundtrack. Sammy Davis, Jr. was then under contract to Reprise Records, and rather than deal with that, the H-B production crew decided to replace him with another hip-sounding African American male voice, Benjamin "Scatman" Crothers, who had not yet launched what would be a well-known career as an animation voice actor. He was successful enough on the soundtracks of film and TV cartoons that it’s kind of forgotten that he was also a valuable, if under-recorded, entertainer in the world of jazz - and had even shared the screen with both Slim Gailliard and Nat King Cole. (Note to self: Let’s do a Substack story on Scatman Crothers at some point in the near future.) (Another note: Sammy had already been replaced on another major film tie-in album, when Cab Calloway sang the Sportin’ Life numbers on the record release of Sam Goldwyn’s Porgy and Bess in 1959.)

Here’s Scatman on the HBR (Hanna-Barbera Records) album (courtesy Greg Ehrbar):

Daniel Weinstein on the song itself:

“"Like, wow, man!" I remember this song, though I hadn't heard it since childhood. I was born on Sep. 10, 1954, so I remember this song clearly from when it was new. The calypso-like rhythmic underpinning is what I call "half clave," meaning the "3 side" (accents on 1, the "and of" 2, and 4) reverts constantly, with no "2 side" (accents on 2 and 3) stated explicitly. Another "half clave" music is the Jewish klezmer freilich beat. Sort of like "shave and a haircut" with no "two bits." (Thanks, Daniel!)

Lastly, here’s something new - I had never heard this before I stumbled upon it while putting together this column - ““What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” as sung in Dutch, and with a much shorter title, to boot.

Het Is Gek (Bonus Track)

Surprisingly, this is pretty much all there is - it’s a great swinging tune by Charlie, with hip and funny lyrics by Lee - this is the same team that gave us such jazz standards as “A Lot of Livin’ to Do,” “Night Song (Golden Boy Theme),” “You’ve Got Possibilities” and the Tony Bennett classics, “Talk to Me,” “Once Upon a Time” and “Think How It’s Gonna Be.” In the latter part of Charlie’s life, there were numerous tribute concerts - including an excellent concert presented at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall by the Mabel Mercer Foundation - but I still don’t think I’ve ever heard “A Nice Kid Like You” performed live.

Seth McFarlane, Nicolas King, Veronica Swift, Ekep Nkwelle, Champian Fulton, Deborah Silver, Anais Reno, Tyreek McDole, Hilary Kole, Kurt Elling: what are you waiting for?

PS: Sammy Davis, Jr. was apparently the only performer to star in two completely different made-for-TV musical adaptations of Alice In Wonderland. The second was a 1985 two-part mini-series, with a score this time by Steve Allen. Sammy played “The Caterpillar” (as pictured above) and “Father William.” I don’t remember it as being particularly good, except for Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormé as “Tweedledum” & “Tweedledee.” (Now that’s even better than Fred & Barney…)

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Additional reading: here are two stories by Greg Ehrbar about the H-B Alice In Wonderland, here and here, and Mark Evanier here.

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Here’s an episode of Sing! Sing! Sing! from 2023 in which we featured a jazz-and-pop mixtape of Charlie’s songs - and we only got up to Golden Boy!

The Charles Strouse Jazz & Pop Mixtape (RIP 1928-2025)
(SSS #062 2023-09-02)
download: <or> play online:

also highly recommended: The Charles Strouse Tribute by our buddy Larry Maslon on BROADWAY TO MAIN STREET! click here

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(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!)

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Coming on Wednesday June 4 @ 7:00PM, THE NEW YORK ADVENTURE CLUB presents DEAN MARTIN - KING OF COOL webinar (All presentations are available for replay viewing for one week after the live event. For more information & reservations, please click here.)

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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; 1:00 PM 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.

SING! SING! SING!

Let's Spring One! (Sing Sing Sing goes Spring Spring Spring!)
(SSS #149 2025-05-24 - Spring 2025, Part 2)
download: <or> play online:

The Charles Strouse Jazz & Pop Mixtape (RIP 1928-2025)
(SSS #062 2023-09-02)
download: <or> play online:

Mother's Day - Mama I Wanna Make Rhythm!
(SSS #148 2025-05-17)
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SSS #146 2025-05-03.
Download: <or> play online:

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download: <or> play online:

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Download: <or> play online:

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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