Baby It's You

[Joan NYC]

Hi All,

Just got an e-mail promo for Baby It's You, the Florence Greenberg, Scepter Records, Shirelles musical opening on Broadway this spring. Sounds fun.
Here's the link.
http://www.babyitsyouonbroadway.com/?gc ... Gw#refgoog

Best,

Joan

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Wow! I can't believe it! I never thought that this show was gonna happen. I wonder who will play Burt, Hal and Dionne? I have no doubt that the great success of "Jersey Boys" is giving a boost to this show about Florence Greenberg. It's gonna have a lot of great songs in it, that's for sure. I wonder who's writing the book, too? The question I ask myself is whether the life of Florence Greenberg will be fascinating enough to draw people to the theatre? Or, will the music alone be enough to satisfy theatre-goers? I can't wait to find out!

[vincent.cole]

Bonjour Joan;

Thanks for the information!

I know you will be going to one of the shows! I also am looking forward to the show!

Thanks again.

Take care mon ami.

Vincent

[Bruce Bernard Williams]

There has been a lawsuit filed in New York State's Supreme Court against the producers of the Broadway production "Baby It's You" because the names and likeness of the plaintiffs in the case were used without permission. Plaintiffs in the case are Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson, and three of the original members of the group The Shirelles whose names are: Beverly Lee, Doris Coley Jackson, and Addie Harris Jackson. Opening night was scheduled for last night (Wednesday, April 27, 2011). I am interested in any and all details surrounding the proceedings of this case. I have a real interest in this case as I and a friend (now deceased) visited Scepter in August, 1966 when it was located on the 10th floor at 254 W. 54th (which later was the home to world-famous "Studio 54"). The receptionist took us on a tour and gave me an autographed photo of Dionne since she hadn't made it in yet. I remember seeing pictures of Big Maybelle, The Kingsman, Tommy Hunt, and Maxine Brown hanging on one wall and on another wall there were pictures of Chuck Jackson, Dionne, The Shirelles and B.J. Thomas. The staff members were all cordial to us I guess because we were so young-I had just turned 16 and remember that day as if it were yesterday.

[An Enormous BB Fan]

I have been meaning to come here and write that I have been hearing radio commercials for this show. And I was extremely surprised that the commercial did not make even one mention of Dionne or of Burt/Hal. I was very shocked, too. How could the commercial not have mentioned the great Dionne Warwick. So, today, I read that Dionne (and others) are suing the producer for using their likeness. I was also surprised to read that, according to Dionne, Dionne was cheated out of royalty money. But I believe it. And I believe that Burt/Hal and everyone in EVERY record company was cheated out of royalty money. That's because that's how people are in business... if they can cheat you, they will. It's human nature, I have no doubt. Just as one example out of a trillion: Holland-Dozier-Holland sued Berry Gordy for the same thing -- they said that Berry cheated them. So this certainly doesn't come as a big surprise to me. What I'm not sure about is whether Dionne et al. can win their case. It seems to me that the producers lawyers would have had to check into the legal aspects of this prior to mounting the show. No?

Here is the article from yesterday's New York Post about the lawsuit:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/dion ... 4bSBoNvfDM

Dionne Warwick sues 'Baby It's You' producers
By DAREH GREGORIAN

April 27, 2011

Posted: 6:34 PM, April 27, 2011Rw

This is dedicated to the ones they sue - Dionne Warwick and a surviving member of the Shirelles are taking action against the producers of the new musical "Baby It's You" for featuring them as characters in the play without their permission.

"Plaintiffs, having been cheated out of their royalties when they were young and popular, are now victimized again. Defendants are cashing in on Plaintiff's stories and successes, while using plaintiffs' names, likenesses and biographical without their consent and in violation of the law," says the suit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, mere hours before the show's opening.

The show tells the story of Florence Greenberg, the New Jersey housewife who discovered the Shirelles - the girl group behind the hits "Dedicated to the One I Love" and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" - and formed her own record label, Scepter Records.

"The Shirelles' success was unprecedented, creating a musical blueprint that had an enduring influence on future generations of female pop singers," the suit says, and ads for the play have described it as, "The Shirelles" musical. The title of the show comes from one of their best-known hits.

The girl group - which was made of high school friends Beverly Lee, Doris Coley, Addie Harris and Shirley Owens - aren't the only musicians portrayed in the play.

It also features Warwick and "Any Day Now" singer Chuck Jackson, who were also signed by Greenberg.

The problem with that, the suit says, is that they didn't have permission to use any of their likenesses for the musical - and they knew they need it.

"Defendants' actions were undertaken notwithstanding their knowledge that plaintiffs' written consent was a necessary pre-requisite for defendants' activities," the suit says.

Now Warwick, Lee, the estates of Coley and Harris, and Chuck Jackson are suing producers Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and Broadway Baby LLC for unspecified money damages for the "brazen unauthorized use of their names and likenesses."

The musicians' lawyer, Oren Warshavsky, said the feel-good musical hit a particularly sour note with his clients, since they still feel they were never fairly compensated by Greenberg in the first place.

"They did get taken advantage of, and now they have to watch and live through it a second time," Warshavsky said. "It's terribly disappointing to see it happen again."

[BachtoBacharach]

Bruce,

Inga Freed, the wife of the famous (infamous) DJ Alan Freed was a secretary at Scepter during that time...she worked for Scepter for several years to pay off the debts her husband had accumulated...Florence Greenberg hired her; they were friends. Inga was a wonderful person, a tall attractive blond...I would venture to guess that it was Inga who gave your friend the tour and the photo of Dionne.

[Bruce Bernard Williams]

Hi BachtoBacharach, Thank you so much for filling in the blanks for me! Indeed I remember her (Inga) and can visualize her sitting behind that desk (to the right as one entered the door). She was ever so gracious that afternoon, I can honestly remember that it was Tuesday, August 16, 1966 at 1:30p.m. and me and my friend Bobby from Baltimore started a mini tour of NYC there at Scepter. What a thrill that week was for me! I distinctly remember going to the Apollo Theatre and seeing Brenda Holloway (singing "Love Is A Hurtin' Thing" along with two other numbers), Billy Stewart, The Contours, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, and the ventriloquist Willie Tyler & Lester. After leaving New York, we went to Detroit and Jeffrey Bowen (a Motown staffer) took me on a tour of "Hitsville, U.S.A.". I can go on and on about my travels and experiences but even at age 60, I've got to get ready for work.

[gillanddon]

What can I say? I'm behind Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles all the way. Add me to the list.

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Here's a review of the show from the 4/28/11 New York Times:
(I'm predicting the show will close very very soon--maybe next week.)

Theater Review | 'Baby It’s You!'
Girl Group Tale Is Reharmonized
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: April 27, 2011

Mama said there’ll be shows like this. But she didn’t tell me there would be quite so many, or that any one of them could be this dismal. In “Baby It's You!,” Beth Leavel stars as a New Jersey homemaker with ambition who founds two record labels. If you recognize the lyrical allusion in that first sentence, you may have guessed that my subject today is “Baby It’s You!” the new Broadway musical about the pioneering girl group the Shirelles, which opened Wednesday night at the Broadhurst Theater.

If you do not recognize the allusion, you may now be wondering if the world was crying out for a Broadway musical about the pioneering girl group the Shirelles. The answer is probably not, but Broadway has increasingly become a booming marketplace for boomer nostalgia, a national resource that could solve our energy problems in a trice if it could somehow be converted into kilowatts.

“Baby It’s You!,” which at least offers a distaff twist on the recent songbook musicals stuffed with 1960s chart toppers, also earns a smidgen of respect — is there anything smaller than a smidgen, by the way? — through the blatant acknowledgment of its status as just another item in a popular product line. As the show begins, a giant image of a jukebox is flashed upon the curtain, in case anyone has wandered in expecting to see that meaty dramatic opus from London, or just something remotely original.

The shamelessness hardly stops there. “Baby It’s You!” succors and seduces its audience of yesteryear addicts with a determination unbettered by any of its brethren, which include, just among the current Broadway roster, the smash “Jersey Boys,” the Elvis and friends hoedown “Million Dollar Quartet” and “Rain,” the animatronic Beatles show.

Invitations to sing along are flung at the audience regularly, as if they were life preservers. Further inducements to wallow in visions of happy yesterdays are provided by the slide shows of drive-ins and diners and other cultural markers of the period, accompanied by the silky narration of Geno Henderson, playing a sort of cosmic D.J. who registers the passing years with material cut and pasted from Wikipedia: “In the movies Elizabeth Taylor wins the Oscar for ‘Butterfield 8,’ and ‘The Apartment’ is best picture. In comedy we’ve got the button-down mind of Bob Newhart and the sick humor of Lenny Bruce.”

And in addition to the handful of songs by the Shirelles themselves, “Baby It’s You!” stacks up vinyl from a whole host of other artists from the era: “Book of Love” and “Rockin’ Robin,” “Shout” and “Duke of Earl,” “Louie, Louie” and “It’s My Party.” More than any of the jukebox musicals that have come before, “Baby It’s You!,” directed by Floyd Mutrux and Sheldon Epps, resembles one of those PBS pledge-night specials devoted to oldies but goodies.

True, some of the non-Shirelles songs were recorded by other artists on the Scepter records label founded by Florence Greenberg (played by Beth Leavel), whose spunky journey from dissatisfied homemaker in Passaic, N.J., to junior-level rock ’n’ roll magnate provides the narrative focus. Florence, whose Jewishness is efficiently announced in her first line of dialogue (“Oy”), is married to a self-satisfied businessman, Bernie (Barry Pearl), who reacts with paternalistic exasperation when she announces she’s decided to get a job.

After his own “Oy,” he breaks into a mocking chorus: “Yakety-yak don’t talk back.” The integration of song and story in “Baby It’s You!” is often on this semi-facetious but still ludicrous level. In the same scene Florence expresses her dismay by delivering a moody, downbeat rendition of “Mama Said.”

The book, by Mr. Mutrux and Colin Escott, the pair who created the more coherent “Million Dollar Quartet,” offers a superficial and weirdly frenetic version of Florence’s admittedly remarkable story. With little experience and few connections in the business, she founded two record labels, first Tiara and then Scepter. (“What can I tell you?” she quips. “I come up with the names while sitting on the throne.” As Florence and Bernie would say: Oy.)

After discovering them harmonizing at her daughter’s high school in 1958, Greenberg established the Shirelles as a chart-topping crossover pop group, well before Berry Gordy wowed the world with the more sugary sound of the Supremes. She also embarked upon an interracial affair with Luther Dixon (a smooth Allan Louis), who became the house producer and arranger at Scepter.

As this determined proto-feminist heroine, Ms. Leavel, a stalwart Broadway trouper who won a Tony for “The Drowsy Chaperone,” exudes an iron will softened by generous lashings of wry wisecracking. Florence’s mechanically sketched emotional crises involve conflicts between her family obligations, which include a neglected daughter and a blind son, and her drive to succeed in the male-dominated record business.
As if to assert her proud femininity Ms. Leavel’s Florence clackety-clacks around the stage in a sumptuous array of period pumps and for unfathomable reasons goes through more costume changes than Marlene Dietrich probably did in her entire career as a concert performer. The Shirelles themselves — Christina Sajous as the lead singer, Shirley, along with Crystal Starr, Kyra Da Costa and Erica Ash — may actually have more costumes (by Lizz Wolf) than they do lines of dialogue. Eventually I started looking for clues to their evolving fortunes in each new outfit: white go-go boots on one seemed to signify the onset of rebellion.

Ms. Sajous (“American Idiot”) and company do sing wonderfully, although few of the Shirelles hits are presented in full versions. (Don’t expect to hear “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,” the group’s first No. 1 hit; the show couldn’t obtain the rights to that Carole King-Gerry Goffin composition.) But mostly they bop around acting like blandly innocent Jersey Girls, generic teenagers getting ready for a sock hop, or even Mouseketeers.

It seems a small but cruel twist of fate: Knocked from their perch as the reigning girl group by the supersonic advent of the Supremes, decades later the Shirelles are fated to be backup singers in the story of their own career.

Book by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott; conceived by Mr. Mutrux; directed by Mr. Mutrux and Sheldon Epps; choreography by Birgitte Mutrux; sets by Anna Louizos; costumes by Lizz Wolf; lighting by Howell Binkley; sound by Carl Casella; projections by Jason H. Thompson; hair and wig design by David H. Lawrence; production stage manager, Joshua Halperin; music supervisor and arrangements, Rahn Coleman; orchestrations by Don Sebesky; music director, Shelton Becton; music coordinator, John Miller; consulting producer, Richard Perry; producer, Jonathan Sanger; technical director, Brian Lynch; general managers, Alan Wasser, Allan Williams and Aaron Lustbader. Presented by Warner Brothers Theater Ventures and American Pop Anthology, in association with Universal Music Group and Pasadena Playhouse. At the Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200; telecharge.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

WITH: Beth Leavel (Florence Greenberg), Allan Louis (Luther Dixon), Geno Henderson (Jocko/Chuck Jackson/Ronald Isley/Gene Chandler), Erica Ash (Micki/Romantic/Dionne Warwick), Kelli Barrett (Mary Jane Greenberg/Lesley Gore), Kyra Da Costa (Beverly/Ruby), Erica Dorfler (Millie), Jahi A. Kearse (Street Singer), Crystal Starr (Doris/Romantic), Barry Pearl (Bernie Greenberg/Milt Gabler), Christina Sajous (Shirley) and Brandon Uranowitz (Stanley Greenberg/Murray Schwartz/Kingsman).

[Blair N. Cummings]

For the life of me, I don`t understand why anyone expects anything of value to appear on Broadway. It has been (with rare exceptions) nothing but a garish tourist trap for at least half a century. Fans of old pop music should return to the original recordings or legitimate histories to shore up their youthful affection.
Fans of drama or comedy should return to Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Shaw. Leave the streets of West Mid-town to the back-aching bus-tourists.
As has been pointed out before, Jimmy Webb has been fruitlessly trying for decades to get musicals staged, only to be passed over so that we might enjoy the likes of "Tarzan" and, yes, "Baby, It`s You".

[blueonblue]

Burt and Adele.........fabulous !


"blue"

[ron hertel]

A "BIG THANK YOU" to you - blue - for posting that link. ......... Love Adele and think she could do some great interpretations of many BB/HD classics!

[blueonblue]

Hi Ron,
Glad you liked it !
I'd love to see Burt produce an album for this lady.......wonderful singer !

"blue"

[gillanddon]

Wow! Thanks for that. Let's hope this lady has a long and successful career ahead of her. So far she seems to have both feet firmly on the ground.

[Marcel]

I`m not sure if she wants this?
She once said in an interview that she didn`t like this song.
However does Burt like the colloboration with her?
Personally, i had the impression that Burt did like the performance of Beth Rolley.
She performed that night "TwentyFour Hour From Tulsa"
And she did it great (lovely lady bye the way !).

Adele is a great singer ,if you like her voice (personally not my taste)?

Kind Regards,

Marcel