Here’s a charming Richard Rodgers waltz you don’t know; but like his best work, hear it once and you’ll not only think you’ve known it for years, you’ll find you have it by heart thenceforth. It’s from 1967’s Androcles And The Lion; one of those extravagant, made-for-live television fairy tale adaptations that made the golden age of TV into a kind of Twilight of the Gods for Broadway song writers. Click for my video starring the fabulous Ito, while Norman Wisdom sings the Act II reprise of Velvet Paws. https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IFs3fPuTeTs53JKb4WHgnZNvwYx-ivG/view?usp=drivesdk

Richard Rodgers had lost Hammerstein, and was in this period doing his own lyrics — as he did for No Strings. This Shaw show is pretty damn good, judging by the cast album, with Noel Coward particularly sparkling as Caesar. Apparently Geoffrey Holder played the Lion! The show seems adult and unusual and provocative and experimental — not musically, but morally. (The Broadway opening of Hair, after all, was only weeks away; Androcles may be the last gasp of the Old Guard.) It left reviewers cold; and indeed, the album starts a bit slowly and quietly and uncertainly, which is death for TV. Peter Stone’s (!) adaptation does pick up steam as it goes, and it treats the implications of Shaw’s myth with humor, but also doesn’t dodge the serious issues of pacifism, minority rights, capital punishment, and of living one’s religious convictions to their fullest conclusions. I’d love to see it staged to get its real effect. It’s only by gay grace that this RARE album — an industry-promotional-only copy at that — came into the right hands (mine!) at where else? Out of the Closet Thrift. This is major American art by major American artists, an album and show that deserves to be heard and appreciated.

Many years ago we had the honor of being dinner guests of Inge Swenson and her husband in their beautiful house in Santa Monica Canyon, thanks to David Eidenberg of fond memory. This recording shows off her crystal voice the way it deserves to be heard. John Cullum, too — he must have been a stripling but his baritone already swells like a Wurlitzer, and together they weave magic spells.I wish I had the server space to upload the whole album.