my favorite broadway musical songs: “i’ve got your number”
by Douglas Messerli
Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Performer: Sven Swenson (original cast recording, 1962
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnNzeYVYrVE
Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Performer: Cy Coleman and the Cy Coleman trio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4x-Puo9ef0
Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Performer: Cy Coleman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiauDSB0Q4o
Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Performer: Peggy Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-rgcAORRg
Composers: Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Performer: Tom Wopat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltVaOzRfrTs
Originally produced on Broadway in 1962, with
a book by Neil Simon, based on Patrick Dennis’ fiction, and music and lyrics by
Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, Little Me
was dominated by the presence of one man, Sid Ceasar, who played all of Belle’s
lovers and husbands, young and old.
Yet
the one song that stood out in the musical was not performed by Ceasar, but by
the handsome, openly gay (he died of AIDS in 1993), Sven Svenson, playing
George, a nightclub owner who seductively does something like a striptease
(choreographed by Bob Fosse) as he courts the forlorn Belle, promoting his
cause that they should hook up:
I've got your number,
I know you inside out,
You ain't no Eagle Scout,
You're all at sea.
Oh yes, you brag a lot,
Wave your own flag a lot,
But you're unsure a lot,
You're a lot
Like me.
He succeeds of course, Belle is most certainly no “Eagle Scout,”
getting her pregnant.
If
Leigh’s lyrics are quite clever, it is Coleman’s jazzy score that makes this
song so powerful. Just to hear his own jazz rendition of it, played by his Cy
Coleman trio, makes this utterly apparent.
The
original version was not a big hit, but was revived in 1982, with Victor Garber
and James Coco co-sharing the original Sid Ceasar characters (it lasted only 36
performances, but when I stopped by the boxoffice, I couldn’t get a ticket),
and revived once more in 1998 (this time lasting for 99 performances), with
Martin Short and the great Faith Prince playing the major roles.
The
song has been recorded extensively by various singers, including Jack Jones,
George Chakiris, Nancy Wilson, Tom Wopat, and Peggy Lee; but Swenson’s version
still rings right in my ears, although the sung version by Coleman is so good
that it seems as if he might have written it for himself.
Los Angeles, December 21, 2017
Reprinted from World Theater, Opera, and Performance
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