SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Decades before the modern Civil Rights Movement, Broadway musicals were bringing integration to American eyes and ears.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) Then you're just wild about Harry.
LOTTIE GEE: (Singing) And Harry's wild about me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I GOT PLENTY OF NUTTIN'")
TODD DUNCAN: (Singing) Oh, I got plenty a nuttin', and nuttin's plenty for me. I got my girl. I got my song. I got a hymn the whole day long.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES P. JOHNSON'S "CHARLESTON")
SIMON: Two distinguished scholars - well, one distinguished scholar, the other is a bandleader - have collaborated on a new book, "Broadway In Black And White: The Untold Story Of The American Musical." And we're joined by the authors, Maestro John Mauceri, former leader of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, winner of Tony, Olivier and Grammy Awards, music director of the Washington Opera and Scottish Opera. Thanks so much for being with us, Maestro.
JOHN MAUCERI: Thank you, Scott. Good to talk to you.
SIMON: And John McWhorter, the Columbia University professor of linguistics and author of more than 20 books and a columnist at the New York Times. Professor, thank you so much for being with us.
JOHN MCWHORTER: Happy to be here.
SIMON: And they join us just a couple of blocks off Broadway, from our studio in New York. Professor McWhorter, you say Broadway's very essence is one part Black, one part white. How so?
MCWHORTER: Well, I think the whole premise of the book is that we think of the show tune as something probably white. It's a white enterprise, and you think of "Hello, Dolly!" and maybe "Chess" and "Carousel." But the truth is, if you look at the archaeology of it, it's what happens when Black and white art forms come together, such that if there hadn't been a Black presence in the United States in the 19th century, then our show music, so to speak, would be nothing like it is and, frankly, have no international influence and really wouldn't be as good.
SIMON: John Mauceri, could you bring us back to 1949, "South Pacific," and what the song, "You've Got To Be Taught" (ph) meant to you?
MAUCERI: Well, yeah. I mean, of course, I didn't see it in '49 'cause I was 3 1/2 years old, but I did see it when I was 10 years old. I grew up in a white community on Long Island and also in Queens. But when I was a freshman in high school, Rodgers and Hammerstein had licensed "South Pacific" for stock and amateur, which meant kids could do it. So high schools that could were doing it all over the United States of America. I was rehearsal pianist, and I got to play every part in the show that didn't have a line. But the important thing is that we would learn the show.
And in the climax of Act 2, there is the song, "You've Got To Be Taught," where Oscar actually put the words that were implied, you know, up until 1949, right there on the stage. And, you know, in two and a half minutes, a character actually tells you about how children are, really, race-free but that you have to be carefully taught.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE TAUGHT")
WILLIAM TABBERT: (Singing) You've got to be taught before it's too late, before you are 6 or 7 or 8, to hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be carefully taught.
SIMON: Was Hollywood sidestepping race and racism in American life while Broadway was putting it into story and song?
MCWHORTER: Absolutely.
MAUCERI: Yeah. Because it's a commercial thing. You could put a Black number into an all-white musical, let's say, because you could cut it out if it were not an actual character in the show, in the movie. So you could show it in the South and just cut out a song. In "Centennial Summer," for example, where Avon Long sings a wonderful song, "Cinderella Sue," but it just goes away. If you saw a Black person in a movie, they were usually a maid. And it took Hollywood a long time to catch up. Broadway was doing that from the beginning.
SIMON: Let me ask you about what you call the most complicated work you explore in the book...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BESS, YOU IS MY WOMAN NOW")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (Singing) Oh, Bess, my Bess. The real happiness is just begun.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (Singing) Porgy, I's your woman now. I is.
SIMON: ..."Porgy And Bess," of course, written by two white, Jewish men, The Gershwin Brothers. Why was it, and is it still so controversial?
MCWHORTER: Well, the thing about "Porgy And Bess" is that it's some of the most beautiful, some of the most titanic music ever written and, especially after a certain period, massively cherished by Black audiences, including my mother. And yet, it was written by these two - actually three - white men. And the question is, is it inauthentic for that reason? And the truth is, I think at this point, we can say, no.
George Gershwin actually, in particular, really captured a certain Black quality in the music by studying people in Charleston, South Carolina, in the Sea Islands, and spending time in their culture and drinking in the music. And you might think that wouldn't have worked, but it actually did. And so it's a thing that shows that what we might read as cultural appropriation - and it certainly was, especially at the time, when no one Black could have gotten that kind of attention writing that piece, even if it were that good. Nevertheless, it's great art, and it just becomes a kind of American.
SIMON: Richard Rodgers, 1962, following the death of his writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein, wrote a musical on his own.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SWEETEST SOUNDS")
RICHARD KILEY: (Singing) The sweetest sounds...
DIAHANN CARROLL: (Singing) The sweetest sounds...
KILEY: ...(Singing) I'll ever hear.
CARROLL: ...(Singing) I'll ever hear are still inside my head. The kindest words...
KILEY: (Singing) The kindest words...
CARROLL: ...(Singing) I'll ever know...
KILEY: ...(Singing) I'll ever know are waiting to be said.
SIMON: "No Strings" - writer and a fashion model fall in love in Paris. What was a surprise about the casting?
MAUCERI: Well, the man, in this case, was white and the woman was Black. Nowhere in the text does it indicate the race of either person, and so it just was there.
SIMON: We should explain Richard Kiley and Diahann Carroll was...
MAUCERI: That's right.
SIMON: ...Who we just heard. Yeah.
MAUCERI: That's right. What was so interesting is that Rodgers made it just normal. And a couple of critics pointed out that it wasn't actually normal, but it was nice to see. And a lot of them didn't even want to address - they were so afraid to address the race issue in their reviews.
MCWHORTER: It's interesting with that show, also, "No Strings," in that it doesn't end up working out, whereas, usually in musicals - even relatively serious ones - it does. And so there was a kind of a gradual coming together of these white and Black characters, but the '60s was not ready to allow it to just be. That started happening very slowly in the '70s, but at least they were trying.
SIMON: Yeah. Maestro, while putting together this book and writing about "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," you came across a letter with a familiar name.
MAUCERI: Yeah. This is in my epilogue. There's a book, "The Letters Of Oscar Hammerstein," and I decided to look up Oscar's letters around the shows that were relevant to this book. And there was a letter from a military man who had seen "South Pacific" and wanted Oscar to know that he loved the show, but he thought that the song, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," was going too far and that this didn't - this wasn't necessary.
And his last name was McWhorter. And that struck me, and I laughed. I thought, isn't that ironic? Imagine that. And in my complete stupidity, I called up John McWhorter and he said, you know - without much of a fuss - he said, oh, yeah, probably his family owned mine once upon a time. And I thought, holy mackerel, how dumb can I be? Black people who've got a name McWhorter, who are not exactly Scots-Irish - I should have known that. And so, as I said, I was being, once again, carefully taught.
MCWHORTER: That was good.
SIMON: John Mauceri and John McWhorter - their new book, "Broadway In Black And White: The Untold Story Of The American Musical." Thanks so much for being with us, gentlemen.
MAUCERI: Thank you, Scott.
MCWHORTER: Thanks for having us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE TAUGHT")
TABBERT: (Singing) You've got to be taught to hate and fear. You've got to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear. You've got to be carefully be taught. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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