Lyr Req: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)

Subject: Lyr Req: Ism
From: GUEST,Larry Enns
Date: 25 Jul 06 - 08:29 PM

I'm looking for the words and music for "Ism". It's a very funny, poignant song sung by a girl about her dad who is always going on about socialism, existentialism, etc.   It's from a flop Broadway musical called "Vintage 60" by Sheldon Harnick and David Baker. Anyone ever heard of it?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ism
From: Sorcha
Date: 25 Jul 06 - 10:40 PM

Are any of these links, what you are looking for?

Subject: Lyr Add: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Jul 06 - 01:59 AM

I found it for $4.95 at musicnotes.com, but I wasn't willing to cough up the $4.95. I've found all kinds of things saying what a significant song it was, but only one very obscure recording.
musicnotes.com does give you the first page for free, so here is the beginning of Verse 1 and Verse 2:

Ism

(Dedicated to the memory of Marcia Brushingham)
Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick
Music by David Baker
from the Broadway Musical Vintage 60

1. I have a daddy who's all the time talking,
Curing the ills of the world;
Communism, socialism, capitalism, nepotism.
Always his tongue is un-.....


2. Marxism, fascism, day after day,
Nothing but isms galore.
I went outside in the alley to play.
I couldn't stand it no.....


Vintage 60 wasn't a big success, I guess. It opened Sep 13, 1960 and closed Sep 17, 1960, after 8 performances. There's a little more information about the show on the Internet Broadway Database, ibdb.com. Sheldon Harnick, usually teamed with Jerry Bock, did the lyrics for a number of musicals, most notably Fiddler on the Roof

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 04:43 PM

Any more information?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)
From: Peace
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 09:30 PM

Review/reminiscence from a blog.

Nobody Does It Like Her

In September 1960, a revue called "Vintage '60" that had started in California, traveled to Broadway. Four days later it closed, but never mind. In the cast were two effervescent soubrettes, Bonnie Scott and Michele Lee. Within months, Scott opened as Robert Morses's leading lady in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and Lee was tapped at 18 to be Cesare Siepi's leading lady in the short-lived "Bravo, Giovanni." Then when Scott, who'd received terrific reviews for her performance, left 'How to Succeed..." more quickly that B'way wags would have predicted, Lee was asked to replace her, did and played the role for two years.

Not much has been heard from Scott since, but Lee -- who rarely mentions she didn't open "How to Succeed..." when she plugs herself in it -- has parlayed her precocious early assignments into genuine longevity. Now performing an act of unflagging bravado at appealing Feinstein's at the Regency, she gives the impression of having achieved her tenure -- the couple of films (the first "Love Bug"), "Knot's Landing," other television production deals -- by sheer force of will.

Oh, she's talented, all right. She has a strong belt, is still cute as a button now that she's in her sixties and behaves like the senior class's Girl Most Likely. But the belt and that reveille personality seem to be coming from deep, deep, fathoms deep inside her where the other stick-to-it-iveness resources emanate. Likely they were inculcated by her father, Jack Dusick, a Hollywood make-up man whose practical and fantastical philosophies she quotes repeatedly.

By the time, she's finishes her energetic, not to say restless, turn -- in which she gets personal for seemingly the same reasons stars expose themselves for People magazine cover stories, she wins the audience over. Yes, there's that audition-winning voice. It's an oddity, however, because the powerhouse notes are still there, but when she pulls back the sound is tattered. (The pipes are rather like the artfully ripped and stringy tops with glitter she's taken to wearing.) Lee doesn't back off from singing numbers she introduced on the Great White Way, including the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields "Nobody Does It Like Me," that insistent self-pity anthem from "Seesaw." It's the one about habitually screwing things up with which Gittel Mosca flagellates herself. The truth is that Lee has seen to it she mucks up nothing in her path -- probably not even her ex-marriage to James Farentino. You can't help but admiring her for it.

-- David Finkle


November 21, 2005

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)
From: Peace
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 09:32 PM

It likely makes no difference, but the title of the musical is "Vintage '60". (Years ago that apostrophe placement made a difference in a search (It didn't in this case.).)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ism (Sheldon Harnick and David Baker)
From: Peace
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 09:57 PM

Sound sample link here.