In my DNA

I mentioned recently that the first record I ever owned was Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender. But before that 45 started my love of collecting music there were already several 78s in the house. The only two I remember off the top of my head are Mitch Miller and the Gang’s version of The Yellow Rose of Texas and 1952’s Thumbelina by Danny Kaye.

There were also LPs, though that was a bit later, in the early 1960s -- music that my parents remembered from the 40s through the 60s: Les Brown and His Band of Renown, Benny Goodman, Meyer Davis, Les Elgart and other dance band recordings. And there were original cast albums such as My Fair Lady and soundtracks like South Pacific, West Side Story and Oklahoma!

I played all of them but I was particularly fond of the Broadway shows, whether on stage or on film. How many times home alone did I dance and act out the parts of both rancher and farmer in The Farmer and the Cowman from Oklahoma!; or sing the boys part in America from West Side Story; or pretend I was outside Professor Higgins's house singing On the Street Where You Live?

Maybe it was in my blood. I mean we gay men are supposed to love this stuff, right? Wasn’t it Robin Williams who said “homosexuals are tall, thin men who like show tunes”? I’m six feet and was once thin.

West Side Story sits at perhaps the top of my list. The music and dancing are among the best ever written or choreographed; I’ve seen three staged versions and have watched the film – now out in an incredibly gorgeous Blu-ray edition – at least a dozen times over the years. (It’s on "pause" right now as I write this).

Yesterday my friend Suzanne and I went to Lincoln Center to watch New York City Ballet’s “Tribute to Broadway:” Fancy Free, Carousel (A Dance) and West Side Story Suite. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Fancy Free, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with music by Leonard Bernstein, brought a modern, American sensibility to ballet and was later expanded to become the Broadway show On the Town. It’s a staple of both New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre and I’ve seen it half a dozen times at least.

Carousel (A Dance) was new to me and was somewhat less impressive than the other two, but the chance to hear a sixty-piece orchestra play that gorgeous score was thrilling.

It was West Side Story Suite though that bowled me over, as usual. Every note, every move, every word is, as I say, in my blood. Also choreographed by Robbins with, of course, music by Bernstein, I have never tired of this most American of musicals. The dance version hits many of the highlights: Something’s Coming, Dance at the Gym, America and more. City Ballet even uses vocalists, including some of the dancers themselves.

The stereotype is not true; there are plenty of gay men who are bored by musicals – my husband is one of them. But I am part of the group that fits the stereotype: a show-tune-loving, somewhat tall, not often thin gay man. 

Let me shut up and get back to Tony and Maria.