You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (10 page)

The songwriters had, in fact, been working on the project for a while before the paper got wind of their involvement. Leigh had completed work on a lyric for one proposed number, “The Luau Song,” by April. By June 7 there was a full song list that accompanied a scene-by-scene breakdown of the show.

The project continued to be something that the songsmiths and the press referred to as being on Coleman and Leigh’s plate for another eighteen months or so, but then their association with it ended. Eventually
13 Daughters
made it to Broadway, during the 1960–61 season, with Magoon as the sole creator. It ran for twenty-eight performances.

The last time the show was mentioned as being a Coleman-Leigh property was in November 1958, when
Billboard
ran a story about the success they were having in turning tunes written for aborning musicals into pop hits. The article mentioned several of the tunes the two had penned for
13 Daughters
, including a long-forgotten comic number, “Hibiscus,” which had been recorded by Jo Stafford. The story also referenced “You Fascinate Me So,” which had been written for
Daughters
. It was then enjoying life in a revue,
Demi-Dozen
, playing at Julius Monk’s Upstairs at the Downstairs, and would go on to be one of their most enduring tunes, performed by artists as varied as Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee, Bobby Short, Liza Minnelli, and Sam Phillips.

The
Billboard
article failed to mention another pop recording Coleman and Leigh had gotten out of the show, “Melancholy Moon,” which was released in two versions at the very beginning of 1958. The first, from the Andrews Sisters, was described in a January 20 review as being “a haunting ballad.” The second came a few months later when Felicia Sanders recorded the tune, putting a gentle Latin spin on Coleman’s melody that evoked the soft sway of waves on the ocean.

Yet the principal reason for the November
Billboard
article was not to tout the songs from
13 Daughters
(that was a happy sidebar) but to put the spotlight on the phenomenal success that the team had had during the year with songs from another musical that they ultimately did not write:
Gypsy
.

The show was to be based on Gypsy Rose Lee’s much-discussed and widely popular memoir about her life growing up as a child performer in vaudeville and her eventual fame as a striptease artist. The book was published in May 1957, and before it had reached store shelves producers were eyeing its terrific potential as source material for a musical. Among those interested in the show were David Merrick, who had produced
Jamaica
and was about to emerge as one of Broadway’s most influential and controversial figures; Leland Hayward, who had brought shows like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
South Pacific
and Irving Berlin’s
Call Me Madam
to the boards; and Herman Levin, who was enjoying a gargantuan Broadway hit with
My Fair Lady
.

By the end of May Merrick succeeded in winning the rights. Speculation arose almost immediately about the two women who would Lee and her domineering mother, and about who would create the book and score for the show.

Popular thought was that Merrick would reunite the team of Styne, Comden, and Green, whose hit
Bells Are Ringing
was still drawing crowds. In a column in the
New York
Times
on July 14, Louis Funke confirmed Comden and Green’s involvement as the book and lyric writers, and on September 8, 1957, a story from Arthur Gelb in the same paper read: “Jule Styne is a man who likes to keep busy. Being well into the score of Richard Bissell’s ‘Say Darling,’ [he’s] already thinking about the music for Gypsy Rose Lee’s ‘Gypsy.’”

Both Funke’s and Gelb’s stories, however, proved to be premature. By the end of 1957 Comden and Green had withdrawn from the show because of scheduling conflicts: they were busy writing the screenplay for the movie version of the comedy
Auntie Mame
. After this, Styne’s involvement was up in the air. In a
New York Times
column on January 22, 1958, Sam Zolotow wrote, “Merrick lacks an adapter, composer and lyricist [for
Gypsy
].”

During the first few months of 1958 Coleman and Leigh tried their hands at penning material for what has come to be known as the quintessential backstage musical. And while their efforts did not secure them the job, they did get a tune that would prove to be important in further establishing their street cred: “Firefly.”

They had written the jaunty 1920s-sounding tune as a number for Baby June, the younger sister of the show’s title character. After they had been rejected for
Gypsy
, Coleman and Leigh turned the song over to Tony Bennett, who recorded it in early August 1958 with the Ray Ellis Orchestra and Chorus, for a single with a chipper, twinkly quality.

Bennett’s rendition of the song was released as the B side of Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s “The Night That Heaven Fell” a few weeks later, and on August 18 it was a
Billboard
“Spotlight Winner”: “his best offering in a while.” Record buyers agreed, and soon the 45 was climbing the charts, ultimately reaching number 20 on the Top 100 in the paper. While “Firefly” was enjoying its success, Coleman and Leigh did take the opportunity to mail a copy of the recording to Merrick. Before 1958 ended Bennett had rerecorded the song, using a chart created by Count Basie, and while it was the first edition that hit the charts, it’s the later, sultrier version that endured.

Among the other numbers that Coleman and Leigh developed for
Gypsy
were two that they later used in the 1962 musical
Little Me
. The fourth was a tune called “Do Unto Others,” a playful hymn of sorts—most likely intended for the part of Gypsy’s mother—that includes the motto, “So do unto others as though they were your brothers, before they get around to doing you.”

“Firefly” was one of two successes from Coleman and Leigh’s
Gypsy
score, according to a
Billboard
article that appeared a month later about the team’s luck in turning such rejected or unused material into pop gold. The article said that the other (and even more visible) hit from their
Gypsy
work was “Witchcraft,” which had become a best seller for Frank Sinatra.

Unfortunately, this appears to be a bit of revisionist history, and while the song might have been proposed as one that could be used in the show, it was not specifically written as part of the team’s audition material for Merrick.

Leigh had actually been holding on to the word as a possible title for a song for a while, and the song was completed in early 1957, almost a year before the work on
Gypsy
began. As she once said, “I did have an idea and I was dying to do it with Cy. I told him about it and that it was called ‘Witchcraft.’ My feeling was that we shouldn’t do a typical AABA song because it seemed to me it would take away the excitement and meaning of the word . . .
witchcraft
. I wanted to try a new form, and if you inspect that song, you’ll note that it has a totally different construction. It’s built almost like a pyramid.”
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Coleman was game to try Leigh’s idea and developed a melody, which he described to Michael Anthony on the WHPC radio show
The Unforgettables
in 2004 as “a very exotic song.” Both recognized that what he had written was good, but it wasn’t right. And then one day he said, “We were playing around, and I came around with another opening strain, and she said, ‘That’s “Witchcraft”!’ And that’s how it was born.” The original melody wasn’t, however, lost forever. Coleman later included a piece of it in his own rendition of the song on his 2002 CD
It Started with a Dream
.

Coleman and Leigh completed work on “Witchcraft” in April 1957 and sent a demo of it to Frank Sinatra. Frank Military, a music publisher who was an intimate of Sinatra’s as well as scores of other performers, remembered the day on which the singer was considering songs for his next sessions: “Voyle Gilmore [a producer at Capitol Records] picked one disc, put it on the turntable, put the needle on, and it was a song called ‘Witchcraft.’ We all sat and listened. As he played it and it finished, Frank looked at us and we looked at him, and Hank [Sanicola, Sinatra’s manager] shook his head no. And Frank said to Voyle, ‘Play it again,’ so he put it on again, we went through it again, and he looked at us and Hank again. Then he said, ‘This is the song I want to record. You guys put whatever songs you like on the rest of the session, but this is the song I like.’”
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A telegram went out on May 10 informing Leigh that Sinatra would be recording it the following Thursday, May 16. Just two months later Walter Winchell promised: “‘Witchcraft’ will be Sinatra’s big hit soon. Clever lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, haunting melody by Cy Coleman.”
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Winchell’s use of the word “soon” might have been optimistic. The recording, featuring a lush, appropriately exotic orchestration from Nelson Riddle, didn’t come out until January 1958, but when it did it made a splash, and soon it was climbing the Top 100 chart, becoming a fixture on the radio, and making good on the prediction in the December 30
Billboard
review that it was “in line for loot.”

When the very first Grammy Award nominations were announced, “Witchcraft” figured prominently. It received nods for song of the year and record of the year, and Sinatra, in a host of nominations, garnered a nomination for best male performance.

The song attracted more than critical and popular accolades. Other songwriters took note of what Coleman and Leigh had created. Leigh would always remember the thrill she felt when she learned that Richard Rodgers had taken Coleman to lunch and congratulated the younger man on the originality of the song’s construction.

“Witchcraft,” which ultimately may or may not have been proposed to Merrick for the
Gypsy
score, set the stage for a very busy two years for the team and for Coleman individually, paving the way for achieving their goal of having a show on Broadway.

9.
“In Pursuit of Happiness”

“
Witchcraft” and “Firefly,” along with the tunes from
13 Daughters
, were just a few of the songs that Coleman and Leigh had hitting record stores in 1958. Their prolific output seemed to know no bounds. During the first quarter of the year they had an additional three songs released, starting with the long-forgotten “My Last Frontier,” which got a recording by a group known as the Upbeats. The tune, a gently rolling western ballad, presupposed some of the work they would do a few years later on their first musical,
Wildcat
, but, as
Variety
succinctly put it on March 5, the song was “just another oatune.”

The same could be said of a song that came out a month later, “Small Island,” which was delivered by Les Paul and Mary Ford. This Hawaiian-flavored tune, filled with plucked ukuleles and a backing chorus, sounded as if it might have at some point been a thought for
13 Daughters
. Or perhaps, with a line like “Come back to me, small island,” Coleman and Leigh might have been signaling their disappointment over the fact that they were no longer associated with the musical.

More impressive was the song that debuted in April on a new Tony Bennett single, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” The song was the A side on a disc that had “Young Warm and Wonderful,” by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret, on the B side. A
Billboard
review on April 28 called “Sleep” “a lovely new Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh ballad.” The write-up in
Variety
two days later was more extravagant, labeling it “a standout class ballad.”

Indeed, the song, which evocatively referenced the lullaby that gave the work its title, described a man’s quiet jubilation over finding his true love and how her presence in his life allowed him to sleep soundly. Leigh’s shrewd lyric, Coleman’s slightly melancholy melody, and Bennett’s heartfelt vocals all combined to create a gorgeous musical exploration of the fragility of a relationship.

This little gem of a song was complemented by trio of others that came to be ranked among their finest. Interestingly, two of the tunes were paired on singles from two very different singers: Blossom Dearie and Claire Hogan, both of whom had long been part of Coleman’s circle from his work in clubs.

Dearie, whose willowy voice had begun attracting devoted fans through the 1950s, was a favorite of Julius Monk, the man who ran Upstairs at the Downstairs, where Coleman and Leigh’s “You Fascinate Me So” was being introduced as part of the revue
Demi-Dozen
. Hogan was a former band singer with a full-throated, commanding voice who toured with Jimmy Dorsey and then moved on to a career as a solo performer. She had befriended Coleman during his days at the Composer. As cabaret performer Charles Cochrane remembered it: “They would go to clubs together, and they had very much the same taste in music. Their senses of humor were compatible.”
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The inspiration for these pieces couldn’t be more different. In the case of “It Amazes Me,” the impetus for the lyric was quite personal: Leigh hoped to come up with a way in which she could express her gratitude to publisher Buddy Morris for his ongoing support and encouragement of Coleman and her work. And while there was careful intent behind that tune, “A Doodlin’ Song” came about quite by accident. Coleman was absentmindedly fiddling with the piano keys, and Leigh started vocalizing to what he was playing.

Dearie’s single hit the market in October, and Hogan’s followed in December. Reviews for both were enthusiastic, and for those who followed columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, buyers knew in advance there was a special treat to be had on Dearie’s version of “A Doodlin’ Song.” In a late September syndicated “Voice of Broadway” column, Kilgallen wrote: “Watch for Blossom’s record with Cy Coleman on which they ‘Doop-Doo-De-Doop’—it’s a beaut.”
2

Both tunes would go on to enjoy subsequent recordings. Perhaps the most famous for “A Doodlin’ Song” was Peggy Lee’s 1963 rendition that was on the B side of her “Got That Magic” single. Interestingly, she was inspired to use the song only after encountering it for the first time in the revue
Graham Crackers
, another Monk revue at the club where “You Fascinate Me So” had premiered.

Dearie debuted one other gem of a song during this period, “I Walk a Little Faster,” which she included on her album
Give Him the Ooh-La-La
. The tender tune didn’t attract much interest at the time, but eventually, thanks to other renditions by Tony Bennett, Rod McKuen, and Bobby Short, it became a something of a standard for connoisseurs. In a 1988 issue of
New York Magazine
dedicated to romance in New York, radio host and music historian Jonathan Schwartz opined that, in the pantheon of songs about the city, Coleman and Leigh’s rarely heard tune was “the most romantic of them all.”
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But the songwriters’ success in the world outside of the theater did not stop them from pursuing other musical projects. One that would continue to be in their thoughts for another two decades began to come to life during the second half of 1958: an adaptation of James Thurber’s novella for young people
The Wonderful O
.

It’s an idea that reflects the pop-cultural zeitgeist of the second half of the 1950s, when some of the most popular programs on television were musicals that had been written for children. Leigh obviously knew of the phenomenon firsthand because of the success of
Peter Pan
, which had originally been aired in March 1955 and then was restaged and rebroadcast in January 1956. The subsequent success of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
Cinderella
, broadcast in March 1957, convinced producers that such fare had the potential to make profits, and so by the middle of that year networks were rushing to arrange for composers and lyricists to create more musical programming aimed at the kiddie set.

Individually, Coleman and Leigh had both been involved in this rush. According to the June 3 issue of
Billboard
, Leigh was working on “several fairy-tale scores,” and Coleman was negotiating with CBS to “write a series of scores for a projected puppet-show version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” The story touted other shows as well, including a production of
Aladdin
to be written by Dorothy Fields, Burton Lane, and S. J. Perlman (Cole Porter eventually wrote the songs for Perlman’s book); a
Pinocchio
that would star Mickey Rooney; and a TV version of
Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates
. Each of these titles was eventually broadcast during the course of 1957 and 1958, charming television viewers and spawning popular and profitable soundtrack LPs.

The Coleman-Leigh adaptation of
The Wonderful O
was to be a continuation of this trend. Thurber’s tale centers on two pirates, Black and Littlejack, who, while searching for treasure, land on the island of Ooroo. When they cannot find the riches that they desire, they begin a linguistic reign of terror on the populace, which is based on Black’s utter abhorrence of the letter “o.” He bans all words and objects containing the letter and demands that the people of the island rework their language.

It’s a whimsical tale containing many of the elements that are part of children’s fare and musical comedy alike: romance, a sense of good versus evil, and even a cautionary moral, for young and old alike, about the need for freedom. Given this, it’s little surprise that Jule Styne was concurrently working to develop a stage version of the book.

Coleman and Leigh, over a period of sixth months, completed, or nearly completed, a dozen numbers. The material was ideally suited to Leigh’s fondness for wordplay, and for Coleman it served as a catalyst for experimentation.

For
Gypsy
Coleman tucked surprises into his tunes while still working within the constraints of the musical vernacular of the 1920s, but for
The Wonderful O
his melodies have an almost avant-garde sound. “Nothing Ever Changes,” the opening number, is a complex staccato song written for three sets of overlapping voices. With another song, “The New Scale,” Coleman and Leigh use a detail from Thurber: Black’s edicts remove the notes of
do
and
sol
from the scale because they contain the offending letter. The result is a jagged little melody that could simultaneously prompt a smile and raise an eyebrow.

Coleman and Leigh’s score also included several more standard numbers, including two, “A Little What If” and “Bouncing Back for More,” that they would later use in a different show, and one, the haunting ballad “There’s a Change in Me,” that would surface years later on Randy Graff’s album dedicated to Coleman’s work.

For reasons that remain unclear, after Coleman and Leigh completed what seemed to be a full score for
The Wonderful O
, the project stalled. Yet it continued to be a part of Coleman and Leigh’s life even after rehearsals began for their first Broadway show. An article in the August 17, 1960 issue of
Variety
announced that producer Kermit Bloomgarden had picked up an option on their work, and by the end of 1960 the
New York Times
carried a story saying that Bloomgarden had secured Wolf Mankowitz to write the show’s book.

After this flurry of press,
The Wonderful O
again went into a kind of theatrical limbo until thirteen years later, when Coleman and Leigh would attempt to secure the rights to the book themselves so that they could attempt to revive the project. The idea was ultimately dropped.

As the 1970s drew to a close and the 1980s began,
The Wonderful O
continued to haunt Coleman. In a 1977 Associated Press feature about Coleman’s proclivity for juggling multiple projects, he pointed to projects that he regretted had not come to fruition, notably “[the] wonderful score for James Thurber’s ‘Wonderful O.’”
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Four years later Coleman and Leigh, along with Jack Heifner (who had written the Off-Broadway hit
Vanities
and was working with them both on individual projects), once again revisited the property, only to find that the rights were unavailable.

All of this work with Leigh during 1957 and 1958 did not derail Coleman from his career as a performer. During these two busy years of songwriting and knocking on Broadway producers’ doors for a crack at a first musical, he ventured into new directions and expanded in some existing ones. Perhaps most notable and visible was his inclusion in the television series
Art Ford’s Greenwich Village Party
, which debuted in September 1957. Ford had been making a name for himself throughout the first half of the 1950s as a radio emcee on such shows as
Ford at Four
,
Make-Believe Ballroom
, and the all-night show
Milkman’s Matinee
.

Ford’s love of jazz and the downtown scene had inspired him to venture into the world of moviemaking, and in 1953 he shot a documentary,
The Village at Night
, comprised of candid scenes from various clubs, galleries, and even apartments. Ford’s excursion into television was an extension of this desire to showcase the culture and nightlife that he experienced during his nocturnal sojourns below Fourteenth Street.

When announcing
Greenwich Village Party
, Ford said the show “will not try to encompass the whole Village, but what it does encompass will be as accurate and real as we can make it, not a stereotyped caricature of Greenwich Village.”
5

The program debuted on Friday, September 13, 1957 and featured Ford in a recreation of a well-appointed apartment (in actuality the show was initially shot on a set at the DuMont network and later on one in New Jersey) where he was hosting a cocktail party. The show didn’t have a script; rather, it relied on Ford’s ability to improvise chats with the guests, including people like songwriters and performers Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Accompanied by Coleman, they performed “I Get Carried Away,” one of their most grandiose numbers from
On the Town
. Others who performed included pianist Eddie Heywood and folk singer Susan Reed.

Not everyone assembled for the show was there to show off his or her talents. Some were just on hand to talk with Ford, such as Broadway producer Max Gordon. Similarly, gallery owner Nancy Miller discussed the art that she had curated for the set: selections from up-and-coming artists.

Coleman, who was joined by his drummer Ray Mosca Jr. and bass player Aaron Bell, wasn’t merely an accompanist; he was also part of the entertainment, and on the premiere episode he gracefully delivered his first big hit, “Why Try to Change Me Now?” On a later episode he even took center stage with the famous toy piano.

When
Variety
reviewed the show on September 18, it praised Ford’s accomplishments: “[He] got an inspirational hold on the atmosphere of Greenwich Village, a feat not successfully accomplished by far more costly video adventures.”

Ford’s guests a few weeks later included singers Polly Bergen, Julie Wilson, and Alan Dale, and this episode was greeted with moderate praise by Charles Sinclair in the October 21 issue of
Billboard
: “It is a pleasant, casual show tailored to New York tastes and a showcase for many a show business name.” His chief complaint was that each of the guests at the party had some sort of new project to plug.

Coleman remained a mainstay of the show for the next fifteen months, during which time the program’s popularity with critics and local audiences alike set off rumors about a record spinoff and a theatrical incarnation.

As
Art Ford’s Greenwich Village Party
was leaving the airwaves and Coleman was finishing up work with Leigh on
The Wonderful O
, he traveled to Chicago for his first appearance at London House, George and Oscar Marienthal’s club in the heart of the Loop that was rapidly establishing itself as one of the country’s preeminent jazz clubs.

Cabaret performer Barbara Carroll, a colleague and close friend of Coleman’s who would also go on to perform at this venue, remembered its genesis: “[Oscar Marienthal] decided he wanted to do in Chicago what had been done in New York with the Embers. So he came to New York, tape measure in hand, rulers in hand, and measured the height and width of the stage at the Embers, and he patterned the music at London House after what was going on [in New York].”
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