BOLLYWOOD PART 3: GETTING THERE

                It seems clear in retrospect that Bollywood and I had been lying in wait for one another for some time. But first, a little background on my musical tastes. They were pretty much established by the time I was ten (late 50’s).  Show-tunes occupied center stage. With a definite leaning toward operetta. My grandmother was probably an influence there. She treasured her memories of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.  Had even seen MacDonald in concert in the 40’s - to her, a completely rapturous experience.  I can still remember her describing how the diva swept onstage in “a slithering red dress”. I imagine that it was somehow through my grandmother’s influence, that our family record collection included a number of operetta LP’s. They were all budget items from RCA Camden conducted by Al Goodman ($1.98 each, I believe) and I played them pretty much non-stop. “The Desert Song”, “The Student Prince”, “The Chocolate Soldier”, “H.M. S. Pinafore”. Earl Wrightson generally handled lead baritone, joining voices with Frances Greer and Martha Wright, among others. Someone named Jimmy Carroll got most of the tenor assignments. And to this day I’ve never heard a tenor voice I like better.  None of this Three Tenors business, blood vessels bursting as songs are belted into submission. No, Jimmy Carroll offered something much more intimate – soft golden shimmer with a touch of Irish cream.  I wish he’d made a hundred LP’s.  Choral duties, crucial in operetta, were performed by studio singers christened The Guild Choristers.  I remember playing these albums on my little portable record player and in those years - before my voice broke - singing along with abandon. Sometimes with Carroll or Wrightson, sometimes with the sopranos (they sang, I screeched). Little of the Goodman operetta material (of which he released plenty) is available anymore. And the few reviewers who mention it usually aren’t too laudatory.  But, for anyone like me who grew up with them, these recordings are cherished and definitive.

G&S purists, avert your eyes. This is the Pinafore I boarded

                                      

           As for more modern show-tunes, I can still remember how excited I was Christmas morning, 1955 when, there under the tree, I spotted the original movie soundtrack of “Oklahoma!” in all its orange colored glory. Up till then we’d never had a show album that wasn’t a $1.98 knockoff. The very first time I had enough of my own money to buy an LP ($3.98) was in 1959. It was a single album combining two MGM soundtracks, “Show Boat” and “Lovely to Look At”. My mom started taking me to see movies when I was a baby. And I was hooked from the get-go. One of my earliest memories was the “I Got Rhythm” sequence from “An American in Paris” (Gene Kelly & kids at a flower stall). “Show Boat” and “Lovely to Look At” I’d never seen. But the cover art called out to me. Both movies had scores by Jerome Kern. And both starred Kathryn Grayson, an instant idol. Not the last time I’d become a super fan of someone whose film career was already done and dusted. Pretty soon I had every old MGM soundtrack album I could get my hands on. A Judy Garland fixation, rather inevitably, came next. I was eleven or twelve during her Carnegie Hall comeback years and I remember excitedly cutting out newspaper clippings. I still regret never having seen her perform live. 

                                               

As close as MGM musicals got to Bollywood exotica

                                     

During this time, rock’n’roll – with its Bill Haley and Be-Bop-a Lula sensibility - hadn’t exercised much pull on me. I’d take Jane Powell over juvenile delinquency every time. But in the early 60’s something happened to pop music. Some people consider this the Brill Building era; I know I’m comfortable calling it that.  Because that’s the place in New York City where scores of young songwriters were gathering to ply their craft and, in the process, put a new spin on hit parade music. They’d grown up, like me, loving Tin Pan Alley and show tunes – but they were also  young enough to respond to the excitement of rock’n’roll rhythms. So they fused the two, creating lovely, hummable melodies – vocals full of luscious harmonies – all pulsating to beats that summed up the feeling of what it meant to be young then. The caveman primitivism of early rock made way for something more polished -ardent and aspirational.  It hit me at just the right time;  here finally was current music I could respond to wholeheartedly. It was what kids my age were loving – and I loved it too. Suddenly as I entered my teens, I was a card-carrying member of the club. And who doesn’t like to be in the swim? I didn’t disown my old musical favorites. But I kind of moved them to a lower shelf. Early 60’s pop – the songs of Goffin & King, Barry & Greenwich, Mann & Weil, Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach – these are what propelled me happily through the early and mid sixties. Augmented, early on, by a major Motown fixation (mainly early Motown) that’s still going strong all these years later. And Beatlemania, which I went for – like most of my generation - full-tilt. I remember going to a first day morning show of “A Hard Day’s Night” with my friend Joe. Girls in the audience screamed through the whole thing. So we decided to stay for the second show (in those days you could, without paying extra). This time the girls only screamed through the songs. And Joe and I were delighted to discover that the movie was really, really good.  Script sharp and funny.  Atmosphere pure exhilaration.  So we actually stayed for one more showing. And the girls at that performance only screamed sporadically (maybe it was the same girls – and they’d stayed too but had screamed themselves hoarse). That’s when we finally experienced “A Hard Day’s Night” in full, untrammeled words and music glory. Still the best movie musical of the 60’s and - of course- a fantastic time capsule of what the world looked like through teenage eyes in ’64.

           I went away to college a year later while the music I loved was still holding sway. When the psychedelic heavy-guitar era took over in the late 60’s, I found myself disengaging from the pop mainstream. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin – none of these appealed to me. I liked the flower power colors of the era; I responded to the magic of Joni Mitchell. But the rough stuff just wasn’t for me. It’s worth mentioning that this is the period when a great many young people in the west first became conscious of Indian music. Part of this awareness came from the fact that the Beatles journeyed to India and began hanging out with gurus and yogis and such. Since every move the Fab Four made was news, this focused a lot of attention on India. And the group began to feature more and more Indian influences in their music. More importantly, though, this was the first generation in the west where recreational drug use became widespread. Every second person you met (under 30) was likely to have at least experimented with it. And what most did when they tried it was listen to music. It was the love and peace era.  And no instruments sounded quite as dreamily transcendental  as Indian ones. You could practically levitate listening to the sounds of the santoor, the sarangi, the shehnai , the tabla and above all the sitar. Indian instruments , with their exotic throbs and vibrations, just seemed to sound extra-wonderful  when you were high. And - not too surprisingly - these instruments suddenly found their way into western pop records. There was a time in the late 60’s when - if you turned on a Top 40 radio station -  you never had  to wait long to hear a pop record laced with Indian spice. The name of classical sitar master Ravi Shankar became a household word. His albums (peerlessly recorded by the prestigious British classical company, Angel) became huge sellers. Yet I don’t recall any particular awareness in the west, then, about Indian movie music. Certainly there was none on my part. In the end, sitars and such didn’t really remain big players in western pop for long. As years passed, to North American ears, that sound tended to be identified with the “tune in, turn on, drop out” era.  A musical cue to summon up memories of a particular moment in time 

           By the end of the decade I was working in a large record shop – and still music obsessed. But, looking back, I see that mostly I focused on whatever material my favorite 60’s artists (now out of style) were doing in the decades that followed. Plus recordings from new artists whose melodic sense and style built on echoes of the early 60’s – Carly Simon, the Carpenters, Captain and Tennille. One of the departments I looked after at the record shop was the international one. So I also discovered much to love in the French music scene of the time –which tended to extend the early 60’s sound long, long after it relinquished center stage in America. France Gall, Marie Laforet and Dalida were all favorites of mine – and remain so. As my twenties ended - can’t deny it - I enjoyed the disco scene of the late 70’s and early 80’s. But what came after left me cold.  In a landscape full of Glam Rock, grunge,  punk and  hip-hop, I clung to my old favorites. Sometimes I detoured into country to find artists (like Barbara Mandrell) who were still exploring the musical territory I loved. Since I had long hair in those days (and worked in a record shop), people constantly assumed I was an Eric Clapton/ Ted Nugent-loving, band-crazy rocker. Not so. If anything, I was returning more and more to the old show tune well. Usually the vintage ones. With the exception of the sublime Sondheim, I found less and less to enjoy in the new Broadway offerings. Those pompous Webberesque shows – rock operas where every song saw itself as an anthem - held little appeal for me.

        The golden age of the movie musical had ended in the 50’s so re-exploring the old stuff was generally the option I took. Luckily I had a friend, Sandy, who also worked at the record shop. She and I were about the same age – and hit it off from the beginning (early 70’s). What’s more – although her musical education went way beyond mine – our tastes in music were amazingly similar. She loved most of the music and movies I loved. And we discovered more of both together. The deal was sealed, of course, by the fact that our personalities clicked completely. When we weren’t baring our souls to one another, we were keeping each other in stitches. Anyway, the two of us wound up on a years long pilgrimage, seeking out old movies, usually musicals, and old songs – mostly from the first half of the 20^th century. You’ve got to remember, these were the days before even VHS. If you wanted to see something old and rare, you’d have to wait till some random TV programmer plucked  it out of the void, then stay up to catch it in some god-awful time-slot between midnight and dawn. And – of course – get up to go to work the next morning.  No videotaping in those days. You’d watch the movie, eyes out on stalks, trying to memorize every moment – because, chances are, you’d never see it again. And I can’t tell you how many long treks Sandy and I took to far-flung movie revival houses to see prints of 30’s and 40’s rarities. But we loved it all.  And – together - kept discovering more to love.  Once video did arrive, of course, we were both instant addicts. Eventually, we knew – and loved - more about old movie musicals than just about anyone around us. As a matter of fact, at times – this was before the internet and iTunes – we felt we’d practically exhausted the territory. That’s when John Kobal’s wonderful book “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance, A History of  Movie Musicals” turned me on to German movie musicals – the ones that flourished there in the 30’s and 40’s. This opened up a whole new galaxy of stars and songs for me. Zarah Leander forever! Not to mention Marta Eggerth, Willy Fritsch, Marika Rokk, Ilse Werner and many more. Suffice to say, the German movie musicals of the era introduced some of the best show-tunes ever written, few of which, for obvious (World War II) reasons ever got listened to on this side of the ocean. Vintage British shows offered lots of treasures too – and even though they were on our side, little of that ever made it across the Atlantic either.  But that’s a discussion for another time.  

          Sandy died in the early 90’s. And I still miss her. One reason, among many, being that I haven’t had such a full-time musical confederate since then. So often I discover a song or film – and think instantly how much she would have loved it. Anyway, by the mid 90’s, I was pretty much disconnected from the current music scene. Neither urban pop (usually either confrontational or misogynistic, frequently both), ear-splitting heavy metal nor the syrupy melisma of Celine and Mariah offered much for me. And more and more stage musicals were opting out for at least one of these styles to stay relevant.  But not, of course, relevant to me. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I’d never again be part of any new widespread musical trend. But faraway - in India, no less - things had been happening that were soon to sweep me off on a new musical wave. One that a great many others would be surfing with me. Reminding me of how great it was to be plugged into music that’s genuinely part of the here and now.