Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern: The Birth of the Modern Musical

Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, and Jerome Kern changed the face of American musical theater; they basically invented the modern musical comedy. Before Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern, Broadway shows fell roughly into two types: European-style operettas (The Merry Widow, Naughty Maria) or revue-type offerings, with the bare minimum of a plot interspersed with unrelated (or only tangentially related) songs and dances. To be sure, composers such as George Cohan and Will Marion Cook provided distinctly American-sounding songs to the best of these revues.

But Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern took things a step further: in their conception, the musical comedy should have a tightly woven, coherent plot, and the songs should not just be catchy and entertaining - they should be vehicles to further the plot and/or reveal more about the characters. Bolton's scripts, Wodehouse's clever lyrics, and Kern's music, memorable and modern, were carefully integrated to form an entertaining, impactful whole.

The team only wrote five shows together, but their influence extended far beyond the sometimes limited run each musical had on Broadway. Their collaborations represent the peak of the "Princess Musicals," that string of shows performed at the smallish Princess Theatre between 1915 and 1919. Not all the trio's musicals ran at the Princess, but they were all in the modern, intimate style of the Princess shows.

In those days, there was no such thing as an "original cast album" - that concept had to wait until Decca recorded the Broadway cast of Oklahoma! in 1943. But as early as 1909, Victor Records began issuing recorded medleys of songs from Broadway shows in their "Gems" series: "Gems from Babes in Toyland," "Gems from The Belle of New York," etc. These usually filled one side of a 12-inch 78 RPM record, so each medley ran about four or four and a half minutes. Victor's Gems were recorded by the company's staff musicians, often very early in a musical's run, so that theater-goers who attended a show could then go to the nearest record store and buy a disc with their favorites.

Four of the five Bolton / Wodehouse / Kern shows got the Victor Gems treatment, and I'm presenting them all here. There are several caveats to keep in mind while listening. First, to fit five or six songs onto one record side, each song had to be abridged - so we only get a verse or two and maybe a chorus of each song. The lyrics are sometimes difficult to make out through the murky recording and surface noise, especially when ensemble singing is involved. And all of these records show the kind of wear you would expect from 110-year-old discs.

Here are the four medleys in chronological order. Each is backed on its record by a medley from an unrelated show; I have only included the sides by our famous triumvirate. Artist credit on all is "Victor Light Opera Company." I have listed the featured vocalists on each number. Enjoy these glimpses into the beginnings of the modern American musical.

Gems from "Have a Heart" - Victor 35624; recorded February 23, 1917

    I'm So Busy (full chorus)
    And I'm All Alone (Elsie Baker)
    The Road That Lies Before (Olive Kline and Reinald Werrenrath)
    Honeymoon Inn (Harry MacDonough)
    You Said Something (Olive Kline and Lucy Isabelle Marsh)

Gems from "Oh, Boy" - Victor 35651; recorded July 19, 1917

    Till the Clouds Roll By (full chorus)
     An Old-Fashioned Wife (female trio)
     You Never Knew About Me (Harry MacDonough and Marguerite Dunlap)
    Rolled Into One (Olive Kline)
    Till the Clouds Roll By (full chorus)

Gems from "Leave It To Jane" - Victor 35666; recorded January 2, 1918        

    Just You Watch My Step (full chorus)
    The Crickets are Calling (Lucy Isabelle Marsh)
    What I'm Longing to Say (Reinald Werrenrath)
    The Sun Shines Brighter (Olive Kline and Harry MacDonough)
    The Siren's Song (Elsie Baker)
    Leave It To Jane (full chorus)            

Gems from "Oh Lady! Lady!" - Victor 35672; recorded March 13, 1918   

    When All the Little Ships Come Sailing Home (full chorus)
     Not Yet (Elsie Baker)
    Before I Met You (Reinald Werrenrath)
    Some Little Girl (female trio)
    She Found Me and I Found You (Olive Kline and Lambert Murphy)
    When All the Little Ships Come Sailing Home (full chorus)    

La Bohême - Acoustic

 For opera fans, here's a half hour of some legendary voices of the early 20th century, performing selections from one of the great operas - Puccini's La Bohême. These recordings, drawn from the Victor catalog, were made from 1906 to 1916, so they are all recorded acoustically. There are a few key selections missing, but most of the favorite arias and ensemble pieces from the opera are here. The great Enrico Caruso is heavily featured.

Of particular interest is Caruso's famous rendition of "Vecchia zimarra," the "Coat Song." This is a bass aria, but Caruso's voice was so flexible that he had no trouble bailing out Andrés de Segurola when that singer lost his voice during a Metropolitan Opera performance in Philadelphia; with his back to the audience, Caruso sang the piece while Segurola mimed the performance. The famous tenor was persuaded to record the aria the next day in Victor's Camden, New Jersey studios, but the recording was never intended to be issued. In the late 1940s, radio personality Wally Butterworth obtained a test pressing of the aria and issued it on a privately pressed vinyl 78, with an explanatory talk on the other side.

All of the other records are one-sided, as were all of Victor's Red Seal classical records in those years. The company didn't start making double-sided Red Seal discs until the 1920s. Part of the reason for this was economics. In order to attract the biggest stars of the opera world, Victor gave them lucrative contracts, with generous royalties on each record sold. So the company tried to maximize its profit by charging as much as possible for each issued selection. The royalties demanded by Victor's two biggest stars, Caruso and Nellie Melba, resulted in a duet record priced at five dollars for three and a half minutes of music - and that's the equivalent of over $150 in today's dollars. The star-studded Quartet cost six dollars - nearly $200 when adjusted for inflation. 

So here's a generous chunk of La Bohême, transferred with minimal noise reduction. Apologies for the occasional spots of "blasting" distortion in loud passages.

Act I:

Enrico Caruso: Che gelida manina (Rudoph's Narrative) - Victor 88002, recorded 1906

Frances Alda: Mi chiamano Mimi - Victor 74448, recorded 1915

Nellie Melba & Enrico Caruso: O soave fanciulla - Victor 95200, recorded 1907

Act III:

Geraldine Farrar & Antonio Scotti: Mimi, Io son! - Victor 89016, recorded 1909

Geraldine Farrar: Addio! - Victor 88406, recorded 1912

Geraldine Farrar, Gina Viaforo, Enrico Caruso & Antonio Scotti: Quartet: Addio, dolce svegliare - Victor 96002, recorded 1908

Act IV:

Enrico Caruso & Antonio Scotti: Ah Mimi, tu piu - Victor 89006, recorded 1907

Enrico Caruso: Vecchia zimarra (Coat Song) - RCA Victor 87499 (private pressing), recorded 1916

Wally Butterworth & Frances Alda -Why Caruso recorded the Coat Song - RCA Victor 87499, recorded c. 1949