You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (24 page)

For MacLaine’s songs, as well as the ensemble numbers, Fosse felt it was important that the singing sound as natural as possible, and to this end he vetoed the studio’s idea that someone besides MacLaine perform her vocals.

Furthermore, when it came time to do the prerecord of “Big Spender,” he took exception to the purity of the sound that the ensemble hired by the studio produced, so he pulled them out of the session. Louise Quick, who had been a replacement in the Broadway production and was a dancer in the film, remembered, “You know Bob . . . I can’t remember if any of the studio singers stayed on any of ‘Big Spender’ or if he took them off completely, but [the dancers] did that. And we definitely did ‘I Love to Cry at Weddings’ and ‘Rhythm of Life.’”
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Filming occurred on both Universal’s sound stages and on location in New York. Coleman was present throughout, finalizing his thoughts for the intricate scoring and music cues that would eventually be part of the film. By July 1968 his precise notes on when music would start and stop during action—and dialogue—ran to nearly two dozen tightly spaced typed pages.

Because all the vocals had been prerecorded, Coleman found himself with down time, and there came a moment that became quite memorable for Quick. “I don’t know what was going on, but we were not learning any new stuff, and we had already shot the master shot for ‘Big Spender,’ but only the master shot. So . . . we had a week of rehearsing ‘Big Spender,’ Monday through Friday all day.” One day Coleman appeared where the women were rehearsing and offered an impromptu performance at the piano. Quick continued, “I was so impressed that Cy Coleman played piano for us. I don’t know why. It seems like a wonderfully kind thing to do, because he really entertained us. . . . I was impressed with his laid-backness, because I had him up on this pedestal from his work. He was so warm and so open and so funny and so smart that we all had a wonderful time with him then.”
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Quick’s story gives a sense of a theaterlike family involved with the picture, and it’s one that’s supported by an anecdote from Reams about how he came to his costume for the “Rhythm of Life” number. “Gwen Verdon, Buddy Vest, Ben Vereen, and [I] went into stock wardrobe at Universal or one of the costume places. We went into the costume shop and we went through clothes and we picked out our own clothes. I remember this exactly because I remember my costume. I got a pair of paisley pants, and Gwen found a ‘Sonny and Cher’ fringed vest, and she said, ‘Here. Lee Roy, put this on.’ And I put it on and then I said, ‘Oh, this red velvet shirt!’ and I put that on. And desert boots! I said, ‘Oh, I gotta have the desert boots!’ And I said, ‘I want to look like an Indian.’ And Gwen said, ‘Oh, good! We’ll stick a feather in.’ We were laughing so hard, and I said, ‘I’ve gotta have long black hair,’ and I used Liz Taylor’s old
Cleopatra
wig. So I had Liz Taylor’s old wig on. We were screaming. Edith Head was our costumer, but we picked our clothes out of stock at a costume shop.”
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Even columnist Dick Kleiner sensed the happiness. He began one piece about the filming by almost grumpily announcing: “There was so much sweetness around the ‘Sweet Charity’ set, it was like dessert time at the candy convention. Everybody loves everybody.”
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By late spring the filming of
Charity
on the West Coast had ended, and the company and crew came to New York for the location shots Fosse required. For Coleman, as both composer and publisher of the movie’s songs, it was time to find singers who would release additional singles, particularly of the three new tunes.

Changing musical tastes, however, meant that gentle ballads like “It’s a Nice Face” and the somewhat idiosyncratic “My Personal Property” were a difficult sell to performers. It was, after all, the age of Aquarius for musicals after the 1967 premiere of
Hair
at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater and that show’s transfer to Broadway in April 1968.

Coleman talked about the emergence of the rock musical with
Boston Globe
reporter Harry Neville just before the premiere of
Sweet Charity
. Of
Hair
, which he labeled a revue, he said specifically, “It has lots of enthusiasm going for it, but the basic idea won’t bear successful repetition.”
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Interestingly, his thoughts on the arrival of the rock musical on Broadway tellingly echoed what he had said about rock ’n’ roll a decade earlier: “This probably has been the bleakest period in pop music history and it has now reached its peak.”
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Regardless of his opinion of this music or rock in general, Coleman could grasp and appreciate some of the new sounds of the late 1960s. Perhaps the best indication of his ability to understand and enjoy the day’s music is a story from Jess Korman about an afternoon when Coleman was late for a work session for
The Coffee Lover
at Fields’s home off Central Park. Korman remembered, “He came in clutching a record, 33
1/3
LP. ‘You all have to hear this,’ says Cy. Dorothy gives me a look and I shoot her a look. Then Cy puts on
Sgt. Pepper
. He had just heard it.”
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Of the songs that might be able to expand into this sort of musicality, the most obvious choice was the new version of “Sweet Charity.” This number did get several unique recordings, including a terrifically funky rendition from Lou Rawls and a lightly trippy interpretation from the mod garage duo Jeff and Jerry, on which the flip side was the decidedly psychedelic “Voodoo Medicine Man.” Another—and perhaps the most intriguing—of the singles from this period is one that was never released. The test pressing of it features an unidentified male vocalist delivering “Where Am I Going?” in a style that brings to mind Jim Morrison’s work with the Doors.

There were more–traditional-sounding covers of the
Charity
songs to be found as the movie neared its premiere. Sammy Davis Jr. included a triptych of the Coleman-Fields creations, including “My Personal Property,” on his album
I’ve Got to Be Me
. The other two, “Brass Band” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” were also released as a 45. As for the movie’s third new song, “It’s a Nice Face,” Shani Wallis, who starred as Nancy in the 1968 film version of Lionel Bart’s
Oliver!
, included it on her album
As Long as He Needs Me
, delivering it with silky, almost sensuous aplomb.

For Fosse, the summer months were spent editing the film and coping with one major issue: the ending. He shot two versions. In one, Oscar jilts Charity just as they are about to get their marriage license. Brokenhearted, she wanders the streets of New York before returning late at night to the bridge in Central Park that had become her rendezvous spot with Oscar. For a moment, it looks like she may jump into the lake, but then the scene fades to morning and a group of flower children are found walking through the park, proffering daisies and “love” to the people they pass. They find Charity and wake her. Their presence and message is just enough to give Charity the strength to once again pick herself up, and at the end of the film she’s seen walking into the sunrise as Coleman’s last new melody plays, the buoyantly soaring “Rebirth.”

The alternate ending Fosse shot gives Charity and Oscar a fairy-tale wind-up. He still jilts her at the city building, and she once again roams New York before arriving in Central Park. Fosse then cuts to Oscar’s apartment, where his claustrophobia is kicking in. He races out and into the park and finds Charity on the bridge. Believing that she’s about to commit suicide, he dashes to her, stumbles over her suitcase, and plunges into the lake. She dives in after him and while they float, he admits, “You’re the only breath of fresh air I’ve ever had” before proposing. And even though this insurance actuary warns Charity, “The odds against us are at least a hundred to one,” she joyfully and tearfully accepts the risk.

Each of these scenarios features one of the show’s most recognizable numbers: MacLaine sings “Where Am I Going?” during Charity’s late-night walk, and at advance screenings both versions received approximately the same reaction from audiences. Ultimately, Fosse gave Charity the less happy fate, and the film was ready for release.

Universal had opted to make
Sweet Charity
a road-show attraction, meaning that it would be seen in select venues around the country where patrons would buy reserved-seat tickets in advance, much as they would for any live musical performance. The sense of films such as
Charity
(or Barbra Streisand’s
Funny Girl
, which was released almost concurrently) being like a theater piece was further enhanced by the inclusion of an intermission, and there were usually souvenir programs that patrons could purchase. The one for
Sweet Charity
even proclaimed in its introduction that the movie was “destined to be the musical motion picture of the 1970’s.”

The hyperbole was echoed in a
Variety
review that ran on January 29, 1969: “For the director, the star and the producer, ‘Sweet Charity’ is a professional triumph. . . . For the public, it is a rare experience of entertainment-plus.” As for Coleman and Fields’s work, the critic mentioned all of the songs written for the movie by name without passing judgment, merely remarking that they were “plot-enhancing if not memorable at least on first hearing.”

But even with this complaint the review amounted to an essentially unqualified rave. Unfortunately, as the film rolled out, reactions among critics in the general press would become increasingly less enthusiastic. Things started well when the movie premiered in Boston on February 11. The
Boston Globe
’s Marjory Adams wrote, “It looks to me as if everybody in the film, whether from the original theater production or not, decided to make the Universal film a success and did their best work when they saw the vivacious star challenging Miss Streisand as musical sensation of the year.”

The film’s second engagement was at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, where praises continued to flow. Critic Charles Champlin announced in his March 23
Los Angeles Times
review that the movie was “vivid, exhilarating, funny, contemporary, superbly alive, and mobile, and, if sad, then sad in a bittersweet, sentimental, defiantly optimistic and non-depressant way.”

After this, though, positive reviews were difficult to come by. On March 28,
Chicago Tribune
reviewer Terry Clifford took a swipe at everything from Fosse’s direction to MacLaine’s performance to the score, which he said was “consistently anti-hummable (including the three added starters which contribute little except running time).” And as the movie was beginning its Big Apple run at the Rivoli Theatre, Vincent Canby, who had covered the musical’s opening at the Palace, wrote in the
New York Times
that the musical “has been so enlarged and so inflated that it has become another maximal movie: a long, noisy and, finally, dim imitation of its source material.”

For the most part the reviewers’ complaints centered on Fosse’s direction, which is filled with gimmicks and cinematic sleights of hand. In hindsight, the movie does have a certain first-time clumsiness, but at the same time there’s something curiously prescient about it. The film’s fast cuts and steep, awkward camera angles all anticipate the grammar of musical narrative that Fosse would employ to more optimal effect in the movie
Cabaret
, techniques that would ultimately become an industry standard with the launching of MTV in 1981.

For Coleman, the score for the film fared better once it was divorced from the visuals. A capsule review in
Billboard
on February 22 opined that it would be difficult “to find a bouncier, more rhythmic score,” and in the March 7
Lowell Sun
William E. Sarmento anticipated: “You will be clamoring at your record store to get the album.”

Sweet Charity
garnered Coleman his sole Oscar nomination, for best music, best score of a motion picture (original or adapted), but he lost to Lenny Hayton and Lionel Newman, who adapted Jerry Herman’s
Hello, Dolly!
But even before the Academy Award nominations were announced in February 1970, Coleman had sprinted forward in new directions.

17.
“After Forty, It’s Patch, Patch, Patch”

Coleman’s duties for the
Sweet Charity
film extended to frequent television appearances on talk shows and jaunts around the country as the road-show film made its bow in different cities. None of this, however, prevented him from broadening his company’s scope in a variety of ways, especially the formation of Notable Records. The label would allow him to record his own work as well as that of the artists the company published, including Blossom Dearie and two newly signed talents, Hod David and Tom Paisley. His vision for the material was that it would be contemporary and modern in tone. In addition, Coleman announced that “We will have an open-door policy for young producers and encourage them to submit their ideas and products.”
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Beyond this work as a businessman, there were reports that he would collaborate on a musical with playwright Arthur Kopit, who had burst onto the scene six years earlier with the provocative comedy
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad
. Coleman was also said to be working on a movie musical with comedian David Steinberg, who had become a fixture on programs like
The Tonight Show
and who was something of a comic renegade, particularly after a controversial appearance on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
in 1968.

Nothing came of the rumors, but they indicate how Coleman was attempting to adapt to changing tastes in popular culture as he aligned himself with two cutting-edge artists whose work would appeal to a generation that was adopting Jack Weinberg’s “don’t trust anyone over thirty” as its motto.

Another fascinating indication of how Coleman, who had just turned forty, was working to ensure that he and his work would be perceived as “with-it” was a change that he began to institute in the company’s publishing practices. Concurrent with the creation of the new label, he announced that all of the covers for his company’s sheet music would be designed by famous artists and be suitable for framing. It was an effort to attract female buyers, who he believed would be attracted by the pop-art covers for decorating purposes.

Remo Bramanti, an abstract painter who had also begun designing the covers for LPs, was the first artist he commissioned, albeit for a surprising piece of music: “50 Stars,” a patriotic choral anthem that had a lyric by Coleman’s old partner Joseph A. McCarthy Jr. and a melody by Joseph Meyer. Coleman intended to use the tune for the debut of another new label under the Notable rubric: Generation Records.

Given that the Vietnam War was at its midpoint, antiwar protests were taking place around the country, and the seminal Woodstock festival had put a new face on and given a fresh voice to the era’s music scene, Coleman’s decision to launch both of these initiatives with a song that in its tone and sentiment could rival Irving Berlin’s most flag-waving work was a surprise.

Even more interesting is the reception that the 45 (which had a robust, freshly scrubbed rendition of Coleman and Fields’s “Keep It in the Family” on the B side) got from
Billboard
. In the August 16, 1969 issue of the industry paper, the disc from New York University Choir and Chorus was called “an auspicious debut” for Generation Records.

Unsurprisingly, the song was rapidly embraced by the Armed Forces. Just a week after the review of the 45 appeared in its pages,
Billboard
reported that a new arrangement had been made for the Navy choir and that copies of the record and sheet music were being sent to Armed Forces glee clubs across the United States with the suggestion that “‘50 Stars’ become part of their portfolio.”
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The record’s success led to talk of a follow-up LP,
Songs for Everybody’s America
, but like many of the diverse projects attributed to Coleman during this period, the album never materialized.

One reason might have been that Coleman was taking the first steps in managing and promoting a singer, Steve Leeds, whom he met in the late part of 1967 or early part of 1968. Leeds came to Coleman’s attention when his cousin Norm Blagman (who composed a pair of songs, including “Put the Blame on Me,” that Elvis Presley recorded) and Nick Meglin (who would become an editor at
Mad
magazine) were auditioning a song they had written for Coleman; Leeds arrived with the writers to perform it.

The next day, Leeds recalled, “I got a call saying that they would like to have me sing on the demonstration records for
Sweet Charity
. They needed to show these tunes to Shirley MacLaine and Sammy Davis, etc. etc. So obviously, I said, ‘That’s great. I’d love to do it.’”
3

Leeds did the recording session, and then, when Coleman formed Notable Records, he got a second call: “Cy loved my singing, and he decided to sign me to a two-year recording contract and a managing contract.”
4
Coleman put Leeds on the first release from the new label, a 45 on which Leeds delivered the new
Charity
title song and “It’s a Nice Face,” with the appropriate alterations made for a male singer.

Coleman’s arrangement for the A side walked a fine line, managing to sound pop and Broadway concurrently with Leeds’s breezy and sunny vocals, supported by equally cheery background singers, pushing the tune toward the former. On the B side, Coleman’s uptempo arrangement, heavy with electronic instruments, turns the gentle ballad heard in the film into a more insistent piece of music.

Leeds believed that Coleman created these versions of the songs in an attempt to help them compete against Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” which, as recorded by B. J. Thomas, was an enormous hit at the time. They might also have been one last attempt by Coleman part to create buzz and awareness of the tunes so that they would be considered as best song possibilities for the Academy Award nominations.

Coleman himself became the second artist to be featured on Notable Records, with the release of a 45 offering his own “Russian Roulette.” This instrumental piece sounded a bit like one of the Monkees’ chipper tunes—the group was at the height of its popularity at the time—slowed down to eerie, dissonant effect. On the B side was a decidedly funky version of an older Coleman tune, “Sweet Pussycat.” A review in the December 10 issue of
Variety
commented on the “offbeat” sound of both offerings, noting that it could mean that they might have “novelty impact.”

In tandem with this record, Coleman launched an extensive advertising campaign in the trade papers for the disc. It featured him at his sartorially hippest, with longish hair and bushy moustache and sporting an embroidered turtleneck pullover that might have been found in London’s Carnaby Street. There was not only a grooviness but also a creepy playfulness to the full-page ads: they featured Coleman, revolver in hand, with two other men, seemingly dead and lying across the studio control board. The copy for the advertisement included a list of the artists “who gave their lives” recording the piece. In the text, too, Notable Records extended “deepest sympathy to those who have not heard [‘Russian Roulette’].”

Coleman returned to a less “out there” sound for the next two records for the label, which included his own cover of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny.” It’s a full-bodied orchestral take on the soulful tune that features several nimble and speedy piano solos from Coleman, and in a May 23 review
Billboard
commented on the “powerful workout” he gave the song and predicted it would chart. Against songs like Guess Who’s “American Woman,” Chicago’s “Make Me Smile,” and the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road,” Coleman’s “Sunny” failed to climb into the paper’s rankings.

Between Coleman’s two releases there was one from another artist, blues singer Jimmy Huff, whom Coleman had also signed to Notable and who took on songs from two of Notable’s songwriters, Hod David and Tom Paisley: “The Lonely Young Girls” and “I’d Love Making Love to You.” Both tunes were the most decidedly rock of the four releases, though both were tinged with a slight country feel. Huff’s raw, plaintive vocals imbued the songs with an emotional urgency that helped to garner modest sales attention. The record spent four weeks on the “Looking Ahead” charts in
Cashbox
magazine but never managed to break into the publication’s Top 100 charts. Still, this release demonstrated the synergy that Coleman was developing with his multifaceted business practices, which were beginning to mirror those of his mentor publisher, Bud Morris.

Back when Coleman was first starting out, he saw that Morris knew the value of publishing the songs from Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. By creating a recording arm at Notable, Coleman was able to expand on Morris’s business practices by both printing sheet music and ensuring that the public knew the company’s music through the singles he released. The songs that Huff had performed, in fact, came from one such property, David and Paisley’s musical
Cities
.

This show never made it to production in New York, but another one for which Coleman had also acquired publishing rights was on its way to the stage during the course of 1970:
Sensations
, a rock musical based on Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
. It had lyrics by Paul Zakrzweski and music by Wally Harper, who was then just starting out but would go on to a multifaceted music-theater career, perhaps most famously serving as Barbara Cook’s musical director for nearly thirty years.

Unlike
Cities
,
Sensations
made it to a full production and opened October 25 at Theatre Four in midtown Manhattan. In his
New York Times
review the following day Mel Gussow complained that the show lacked cohesiveness, but he also wrote that it was “challenging, original, ambitious, and overflowing with artistic riches.” Perhaps most important (particularly for Coleman), Gussow found that Harper had composed “one of the best rock scores I have ever heard—complex, richly textured, even hummable—a perfect answer to anyone who thinks rock is not melodic.”

Other reviewers were less charitable regarding the weaknesses of the show’s book but still admired its music. A November 18
Variety
review said the composer had written “an interesting score, even if major portions sound as abrasive as William and Jean Eckart’s largely pop art setting looks.”

Before the reviews were out, Mercury Records committed to a cast album, to be released as a double LP, and also recorded several singles of songs from the show, including one of “Lying Here” from Leeds. The record was released in tandem with the musical’s debut, and in a
Billboard
review of the recording Coleman was heralded for having discovered someone who would eventually become “a chart winner.”
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Coleman understood the potential in Leeds and demonstrated his commitment to his client when he took out a full-page ad in
Billboard
to toast him and the single.

Mercury also recorded a cut of Coleman himself singing the show’s title song. When the show closed after only sixteen performances, neither this, the cast album, nor the many other singles that were touted prior to the show’s opening hit stores. According to an October 21 story in
Variety
, Coleman had “racked up singles from the score.” Among the artists who were theoretically committed to record
Sensations
tunes were Shirley Bassey, Sammy Davis Jr., and Robert Goulet.

Also unreleased were the final two songs Coleman had written with Murray Grand specifically for Leeds—“Now” and “Holes in My Shoes.” Demos of the two reveal that neither Coleman and Grand’s work nor Leeds’s was subpar, so it’s difficult to understand why Coleman chose to keep them off the market. It might have had something to do with the fact that Coleman was probably having a growing sense that his work with Leeds was about to come to an end.

Looking back on this period, Leeds said, “I wasn’t receptive [to what Coleman was doing]. I was too busy with a relationship with a woman back in the Bronx, a childhood girlfriend, getting married, and my drinking career started there. . . . My priorities were all screwed up.” As an example, he pointed to what happened when Coleman enrolled him at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting: “His idea was to kind of launch my career through the soap operas. . . . I went to a couple of classes, but I just kind of went through the motions.”
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The professional ties between Coleman and Leeds were severed as 1970 turned into 1971, but the two remained friends for the remainder of Coleman’s life. Regardless of the difficulties that arose between Coleman and Leeds during their work together, it was a time when Coleman was squarely in one of the places he liked best as both an artist and a businessman: the recording studio.

Leeds recalled Coleman’s demeanor in the studio and enjoyment of the process of recording: “Cy would say, ‘Why don’t you phrase it this way,’ and I’d be very nervous, and he’d be kidding around, and I’d be thinking, ‘This must be costing him a fortune having all of these strings in here.’”
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It was during this time that Coleman came to know recording engineer and producer Tony Bongiovi, who was making a name for himself in New York after several successful years working with Berry Gordy at the Motown Studios in Detroit. Bongiovi, who would eventually cofound the cutting-edge Power Station studios, looked back on meeting Coleman: “I got Cy Coleman there one time. I didn’t know who he was, and we recorded [some songs from] ‘Sweet Charity’. . . . He liked what I did with the recordings when I’d say ‘Let’s try this and let’s try that,’ and so I participated beyond my normal job, which is to sit there and make sure everything is recorded properly.”
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Bongiovi’s almost improvisational approach to recording appealed to Coleman, and when Coleman returned to the studio for his own and Huff’s subsequent sessions, Bongiovi remembered, “Cy always asked for me to work with him, because of the way I interacted with him.”
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