20,000 vinyl LPs 287: Hair ~ Original 1968 Broadway Cast

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Hair ~ Original 1968 Broadway Cast 

vinyl LP front cover

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Fifty-three years ago today, April 29, 1968, the rock musical drama, Hair, opened on Broadway and the world of theater musicals would never be quite the same. Hair reflects the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the 1960s,            

 

 

Hair ~ Original Broadway Cast - 1968
 photo: Friedman-Abeles

 

 

The Off-Broadway production of Hair had opened the year before in October of 1967 and I had purchased the vinyl LP of that production by the time the show hit Broadway, so, I was familiar with the music. To me Hair was the culmination of The Summer of Love as I perceived it, because it captured the innocence and the rage against injustice of that VERY short period, plus the show had a raw edge that appealed to me.   

              

Hair ~ Original Broadway Cast poster - 1968

I was heavy into musicals at the time and had been since the forties (link below). One musical, West Side Story (link below), had broken new ground ten years earlier in 1958. Hair was like no musical I had ever seen. It is no big deal by today's standards but at the time it blew me away!       

  

The show generated tons of controversy because of a scene in which the cast appears nude. I remember sitting in the audience anticipating that scene and then it finally happened. In the production I saw the cast formed a large circle and had a huge translucent fabric that they held over their heads and waved it up and down so that it billowed, the stage lighting went dim and while some held the fabric overhead, others got undressed underneath it. Between the dim lighting and the fabric casting a shadow over them you couldn't really see anything. I thought to myself, "Big Deal!"     

 

The music was written by Galt MacDermot with lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado.  would go on to write the music for Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1971. The cast for Verona included Raul Julia, as one of the leads, with Stockard Channing and Jeff Goldblum (in his first Broadway performance) in the chorus.      

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1    Dyson* & Co.* - Aquarius - 2:55
A2a    Ragni* & Co.* - Donna
A2b    The Co.* – Hashish - 2:45
A3    Curry* & Co.* - Sodomy - 0:50
A4    Washington* & Co.* - Colored Spade - 1:10
A5    Rado* & Co.* - Manchester England - 1:20
A6a    Rado* - Ragni* - Curry* - Washington*–    I'm Black
A6b    Curry* - Washington* - Moore* & Co.*–    Ain't Got No - 1:10
A7    Eaton* - Plimpton* - Moore* & Co.*–    Air - 1:15
A8    Co.* - Initials - 0:55
A9    Rado* & Co.* - I Got Life - 3:05
A10    Rado* - Ragni* & Co.* - Hair - 2:55
A11    Kramer* - My Conviction - 1:36
A12    Ragni* - Curry* - Don't Put It Down - 2:00
A13    Plimpton* - Frank Mills - 2:05
A14    Co.* - Be-In - 3:00

Side 2:

B1    Rado* & Co.* - Where Do I Go? - 2:40
B2a    Keaton* - Norstrand* - Mosco*–    Black Boys
B2b    Moore* - Davis* - Marks* - White Boys - 3:35
B3    Kellogg* - Easy To Be Hard - 2:35
B4    Co.* - Walking In Space - 5:00
B5    Washington* - Dyson* - Burks* - Davis* - Abie Baby - 2:45
B6a    Co.* - Three-Five-Zero-Zero
B6b    Dyson* - Harris* - What A Piece Of Work Is Man - 4:45
B7    Kellogg* - Moore* - Ragni* - Rado* - Good Morning Starshine - 2:30
B8    Rado* - Kellogg* - Moore* & Co.* - The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In) - 3:35

Companies, etc.

    Recorded At – RCA's Studio B
    Mastered At – RCA Recording Studios
    Pressed By – RCA Records Pressing Plant, Hollywood
    Copyright © – RCA

Credits:

    Artwork – Rúspoli-Rodríguez
    Artwork [Colour] – Bishop (26)
    Conductor – Galt MacDermot
    Engineer – Mike Moran (7)
    Liner Notes – Nat Shapiro
    Lyrics By – Gerome Ragni, James Rado
    Music By, Directed By [Music] – Galt MacDermot
    Presenter – Michael Butler (5)
    Producer – Andy Wiswell
    Technician [Sound] – Robert Kiernan
    Written-By – Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni, James Rado

Notes:

 © 1968, RCA

The Original Broadway Cast Recording

Hollywood Pressing, with Jacket Mfg. Plant code (2), bottom, center, rear sleeve

1st cat#: sleeve; 2nd: labels

 
Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Matrix / Runout (A Side Stamped): WPRS-3962-10S H
    Matrix / Runout (B Side Stamped): WPRS-3963-13S H
    Pressing Plant ID (Runout Stamps ^): ʜ
    Rights Society: ASCAP
    Other (Jacket Mfg. Plant #): 2

 

Various – Hair (The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical)
Label: RCA Victor – LSO-1150, RCA Victor – LSO 1150
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, Hollywood Press
Country: US
Released: 1968
Genre: Rock, Stage & Screen
Style: Musical, Psychedelic Rock   

         

Viewfinder links:        

        

Jeff Goldblum        

Raúl Juliá        

Galt MacDermot                  

The Student Prince, Mario Lanza & drama           

        

Net links:        

        

         

        

        

         

        

        

YouTube links:        

        

Hair ~ (Original 1968 Broadway Cast)

       Let the Sun Shine In (The Nude Scene)         

       Abie Baby             

       Ain't Got No (Reprise)             

       Aquarius             

       The Bed             

       Be-In             

       Black Boys / White Boys              

       Colored Spade             

       Easy To Be Hard            

       The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)           

       Frank Mills          

       Hair                     

       I Believe in Love                    

       I Got Life                      

       Initials                      

       Manchester, England                      

       My Conviction                      

       Three-Five-Zero-Zero                      

       Walking in Space                      

       Where Do I Go?                      

Let the Sun Shine In (The Nude Scene)         

        

         

        

        

        

Styrous® ~ Thursday, April 29, 2021       
       

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Jeff Goldblum articles/mentions

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Hair ~ Original 1968 Broadway Cast       
Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish       
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Jeff Goldblum   

photo by Frank Trapper

     

     

     

      

     

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20,000 vinyl LPs 249: Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish & Charles Bronson

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Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP front cover detail 

photo by Styrous®

Today is the birthday of Charles Bronson who was born in 1921. He was an American actor who was often cast in roles of police officers, gunfighters, or vigilantes in revenge-oriented plot lines. He had long-term collaborations with film directors Michael Winner and J. Lee Thompson and appeared in 15 films with his second wife, Jill Ireland. At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, he was the world's No. 1 box office attraction, commanding $1 million per film.            

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP front cover

photo by Styrous®

Death Wish is an American vigilante action-drama film loosely based on the 1972 novel of the same title by Brian Garfield. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, an architect who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter sexually assaulted during a home invasion (link to plot below). This was the first film in the Death Wish franchise; it was followed eight years later with Death Wish II and other similar films. It was released on July 24, 1974.          

 

The film was based on the Brian Garfield 1972 novel of the same name. Garfield was inspired to use the theme of vigilantism following incidents in his personal life. In one incident, his wife's purse was stolen; in another, his car was vandalized. His initial thought each time was that he could kill "the son of a bitch" responsible. He later considered that these were primitive thoughts, contemplated in an unguarded moment. He then thought of writing a novel about a man who entered that way of thinking in a moment of rage and then never emerged from it. The novel denounced vigilantism, whereas the film embraced it. The film marked the screen debut of Jeff Goldblum, playing one of the "freaks" who assaults Kersey's family early in the film.     

In 2018, Death Wish was remade with Bruce Willis assuming the role of  the vigilante, now a Chicago surgeon.      

 

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP front cover detail 

photo by Styrous®

The score for Death Wish was written by Grammy award-winning jazz musician Herbie Hancock; it was his third film score.     

The music is progressive jazz with lots of strings. Most of the music puts me in mind of the group, Passport, a German jazz ensemble led by saxophonist Klaus Doldinger. A member of the group was jazz rock and rock music keyboardist, Brian Auger.      

 

The interesting cuts from the album are Do a Thing, with its ticking-clock beat and mysterious strings, Fill Your Hand that has a great sax played by Bennie Maupin who was with the jazz-fusion band, The Headhunters formed by Herbie Hancock in 1973. The group fused jazz, funk, and rock music.        

 

Hancock's theme for the film was quoted in Judge, Jury and Executioner, a 2013 single by Atoms for Peace.                    

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP back cover

photo by Styrous®

Death Wish was a watershed for Bronson, who was 53 years old at the time, and who was then better known in Europe and Asia for his role in The Great Escape. Bronson became an American film icon, who experienced great popularity over the next twenty years.       

 

Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky, the eleventh of fifteen children, into a Roman Catholic family of Lithuanian descent in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, in the coal region of the Allegheny Mountains north of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He did not speak English at home during his childhood in Pennsylvania. In 1954, during the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) proceedings, he changed his surname from Buchinsky to Bronson at the suggestion of his agent, who feared that an Eastern European surname might damage his career.     

 

In a 1973 interview, Bronson said that he did not know his father very well and "I'm not even sure if I loved him or hated him." He said that all he could remember was that when his mother said that his father was coming home, the children would hide. When Bronson was 10 years old, his father died and he went to work in the coal mines, first in the mining office and then in the mine.       

 

The family suffered extreme poverty during the Great Depression, and Bronson recalled going hungry many times. His mother could not afford milk for his younger sister, so she was fed warm tea instead. His family was so poor that he once had to wear his sister's dress to school for lack of clothing.         

 

Bronson worked in the mine until he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943 during World War II. He served in the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron, and in 1945 as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress aerial gunner with the Guam-based 61st Bombardment Squadron within the 39th Bombardment Group, which conducted combat missions against the Japanese home islands. He flew 25 missions and received a Purple Heart for wounds received in battle.       

 

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP back cover detail 

photo by Styrous®

Bronson scored the lead in his own detective series for ABC, Man with a Camera (1958–1960), in which he portrayed Mike Kovac, a former combat photographer freelancing in New York City.   

Charles Bronson as Mike Kovac - October 2, 1959

Charles Bronson retired from acting after undergoing hip-replacement surgery in August 1998. He died at age 81 on August 30, 2003, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.      

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP record label, side 1

photo by Styrous®

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish

vinyl LP record label, side 2

photo by Styrous®

   

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - Death Wish (Main Title)     6:11
A2 - Joanna's Theme     4:46
A3 - Do A Thing     2:13
A4 - Paint Her Mouth     2:16
A5 - Rich Country     3:46
    Suite Revenge     (9:25)

Side 2:

B1a - Striking Back    
B1b - Riverside Park    
B1c - The Alley    
B1d - Last Stop    
B1e - 8th Avenue Station    
B2 - Ochoa Knose     2:07
B3 - Party People     3:32
B4 = Fill Your Hand     6:15

Companies, etc.

    Manufactured By – Columbia Records
    Manufactured By – CBS Inc.
    Copyright (c) – CBS Inc.
    Phonographic Copyright (p) – CBS Inc.
    Produced For – Catero Sound Company
    Recorded At – The Burbank Studios
    Recorded At – Western Recorders
    Recorded At – Wally Heider Studios
    Mastered At – CBS Studios, San Francisco
    Mastered At – Customatrix
    Pressed By – Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman

Credits:

Producer – David Rubinson, Herbie Hancock

Tenor  Saxophone: Bennie Maupin
Bass  Guitar: Paul Jackson
Drums: Mike Clark
Percussion: Bill Summers
Guitar: Wah Wah Watson
Producer: David Rubinson/Herbie Hancock for David Rubinson and Friends, Inc.
Recording  Engineer: Fred Catero

Notes:

 This is the OST recording. First pressing, pressed by:
Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman, as indicated
by a "P" stamped in the runout areas.

 
Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Price Code (On Spine): X698
    Matrix / Runout (A-Side Label): AL 33199
    Matrix / Runout (B-Side Label): BL 33199
    Matrix / Runout (A Side Runout, Stamped): o P AL 33199-1A 1 A1
    Matrix / Runout (B Side Runout, Stamped): o P BL 33199-1A / A1

 

         

Viewfinder links:        

        

10 To Midnight & Eugene M. Davis        

Charles Bronson        

Herbie Hancock        

        

Net links:        

        

Cast        

Plot         

Looper ~ The untold truth of Death Wish         

Mental Floss ~ 15 Surprising Facts About Death Wish      

Roger & Ebert ~ Death Wish (1974)        

SF Chronicle ~ Charles Bronson: Much more to him than Death Wish   

Variety ~ Death Wish ~ 2018       

        

YouTube links:        

        

Herbie Hancock ~ Death Wish (complete soundtrack)        

        Do a Thing      

        Fill Your Hand        

        

         

        

        

        

Styrous® ~ Tuesday, November 3, 2020       
       

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