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You're A Grand Old Rag: The Music of George M. Cohan
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About You're A Grand Old Rag: The Music Of George M. Cohan
Product Description Historians have long viewed George M. Cohan as one of the most important figures in the evolution of the American musical theater. Yet his successes as a performer and impresario have greatly overshadowed his equally impressive influence as a composer of some of this country's most popular music; to date, little research has been presented regarding Cohan's work as a composer and lyricist. His songs such as "Over There," "You're A Grand Old Rag," and "Give My Regards to Broadway" are still so widely known that there is a general assumption that Cohan's artistic output and cultural significance has been thoroughly documented. But it has not. While his Broadway contemporaries stuck with the formulas of European operetta, Cohan blazed the path for modern American musical comedy using syncopation to advance his stories. His raggy tunes and slangy lyrics injected a new sense of vitality, brashness, and informality to the American stage, creating a stylistic model adopted (and amplified) by later "Golden Age" figures such as Kern and Gershwin. This recording presents a fresh and compelling look at the music of Cohan using original period orchestrations (most of which have never before been recorded), played with authentic style on vintage instruments. Its intent is to sweep away the commonly held (and largely incorrect) "perceptions" of Cohan's work by presenting it exactly as his contemporaries first heard in the early 1900s. The program comprises a mixture of songs: "That Haunting Melody," "The Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Eyes of Youth," "Harrigan," and "Over There,"; and selected instrumentals: "Geo. M. Cohan's Rag," "You're a Grand Old Rag," "There's Only One Little Girl for Me," "Popularity"; and the overtures to The Talk of New York, The Man Who Owns Broadway, and Little Nellie Kelly. Included is a forty page booklet with history, analysis, photos, and newly surfaced first-hand accounts by Cohan's orchestrator and conductor, Mayhew Lake. Review ...Discussing the Cohan disc, slated for release in November, Mr. Benjamin observes that "Cohan's status as a show-biz legend, fostered by the 1942 Cagney biopic 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' and the 1968 Broadway show 'George M,' led to constant updating of his music to make it commercially salable to each new generation." With this new recording, Mr. Benjamin says he aims "simply to make available on record -- for the first time ever -- Cohan's music as he heard it himself, in authentic period orchestrations by the arrangers who worked with him." And as I listen, buoyed to the rafters of the American Academy of Arts by the delectable cheer of Cohan's works, I realize the significance of Mr. Benjamin's role in protecting an important American treasure. The result will not just be a pleasure to hear but for many a true revelation. - Barrymore Laurence Scherer --The Wall Street Journal ...On the familiar side here, "Flag" contains such perennial favorites as "Mary's a Grand Old Name," "Give My Regards to Broadway" and ""Over There." The disc also contains songs that have disappeared from consciousness like "The Eyes of Youth See the Truth" (from The Cohan Review of 1918) and the ragtime incidental music from Popularity, a show from 1906. The disc is rounded out with one track featuring Cohan himself. He's not performing any of his music, but rather, he's delivering a speech, and in it, there is some terrific insight into the man, his stagecraft and the body of work that he created. This final track alone might be worth the price of the disc, but really, each track is a little gem a way for listeners to retreat nearly a 100 years (and in cases like "Popularity" even more. The orchestra has attempted to recreate the pit sound that audiences might have heard when these songs were first performed, and for anyone, like me, who's grown up on the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy or the musical George M! and the bombast Cohan's music gets in these two biogr
