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)    

Three Songs by Will Marion Cook

 Will Marion Cook (1869-1944) was a prodigiously talented Black American violinist, conductor, and composer. Born William Mercer Cook in Washington, D.C., he showed musical ability at an early age. A year spent with his maternal grandparents in Chattanooga exposed him to a deeper strain of Southern Black folk music than that which he had heard in Washington; he would later call this his "soul period." He went on to study music at Oberlin, the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik, and with Antonin Dvorak at the National Conservatory of Music in New York.

It soon became apparent, though, that there was little place in the American classical music world for a Black violinist or composer, no matter how talented. Instead, Cook found a home in the musical theater. In 1898 he collaborated with poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar to create the first Broadway show with an all-Black cast, Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk. Cook went on to write dozens of musicals, including The Southerners, the first production to bring a racially integrated cast to Broadway. 

Cook's music was a product of its time, and some of the themes, lyrics, and titles of his songs are somewhat cringe-worthy when seen through 21st-century eyes. The lyrics (which he generally did not write) reflect the values Black entertainment was expected to exhibit at the time in order to appeal to a White audience. In any case, the historical importance of Cook's work, as well as its musical value, makes it worth preserving.

So here, then, are three contemporary recordings of Will Marion Cook's songs. The first is from 1905 - a song from The Southerners, which was first presented on Broadway the previous year. "It's Allus the Same in Dixie" is sung by Billy Murray and the Haydn Quartet. Murray was one of the most prolific of recording artists for the first twenty years or so of the record business, and the Haydn Quartet wasn't far behind in terms of recorded output. This recording is from a one-sided Victor "Grand Prize" disc, recorded on May 4, 1905. I'll say nothing about the lyrics except that they're by Richard Grant. This song may not be at the level of Cook's best work, but it's certainly interesting to hear this recording, made as it was when the song was still fairly new.

The next record, a two-sided Columbia from 1915, is more well-known, and presents The Right Quintette singing two of Cook's best and most famous creations. The Right Quintette was a popular (and, based on their recordings, very accomplished) Black musical group based in New York. They were a vocal quartet, but generously included their pianist in the count when they decided to name the ensemble. "Rain Song" and "Exhortation" are from Cook's 1908 musical Bandanna Land, and have lyrics by Alex Rogers. Along with "Swing Along," these have endured as Cook's most frequently-performed songs, and it's easy to see why. "Rain Song" and "Exhortation" are complex songs, interestingly constructed while still being catchy and engaging.

Cook's personality and later career are pretty interesting, but this is probably not the place to go into those subjects. I will digress to recommend a 2003 CD by The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Black Manhattan, on the New World label. It includes Cook's "Overture to In Dahomey" and "Swing Along," as well as works by other pioneering Black composers like James Reese Europe, Ford Dabney, and Will Vodery.

Their are other transfers of these records on the web, but I think these, from records in my own collection, are pretty good. Enjoy these historical recordings of three songs by Will Marion Cook.

It's Allus the Same in Dixie - Victor 4434; Billy Murray & Haydn Quartet (May 4, 1905)

Rain Song - Columbia A1987; The Right Quintette (December 24, 1915)

Exhortation - Columbia A1987; The Right Quintette (December 24, 1915)