February is another lean month for New York musical openings, but we’re still going to sample songs from ten of them on this week’s Dress Circle (2/2 7:00 p.m.) spanning 114 years of Broadway history.
Sadly, we don’t have anything from a show entitled “Redwood” that opens this year, so we had to make do with something from the 2022 revival of Meridith Willson’s “The Music Man” since that was the latest opening from which we had a recording. The earliest opening comes from 1908 and features a performance from a popular musical entitled “Bandana Land.” We’re fortunate enough to have a recording of the song’s author performing it, Bert Williams. Williams was an incredibly popular performer and one of, if not the, highest paid performer at the time. The song is “I’m Tired of Eating in the Restaurants.”
Along with the better-known shows like the recent “Bridges of Madison County,” “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” and “Silk Stockings,” we’ve also included some with which you may not be familiar like Jerome Kern’s “O, Lady! Lady!!”, Irving Berlin’s “Face the Music,” and two vehicles for Steve Lawrence, “Golden Rainbow” by Walter Marks and “What Makes Sammy Run?” by Ervin Drake that spawned two hit songs on the pop charts, “I’ve Gotta Be Me” and “A Room Without Windows.”
There’s more including some dance music and a long-forgotten ballet, but you’ll just have to tune in to find out what they are!
