By Steven Suskin
04 Jan 2009

GEORGE M. COHAN: YOU'RE A GRAND OLD RAG [New World Records 80685]
I have never had much interest in the music and lyrics of Geo. M. Cohan (1878-1942), that self-proclaimed "Yankee Doodle Boy." He wrote some snappy melodies, for sure; "Give My Regards to Broadway," "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy," "You're a Grand Old Flag," "H-A-R-R-I-G-A-N" and "Mary Is a Grand Old Name" are grand old tunes, yes; but the others I've come across have always seemed too quaint for my taste. That Cohan was a one-man musical theatre dynamo — writing, acting, directing, producing, and perhaps even folding up the chairs at night — has long been known; that he was egotistical (with good reason?) and found to be distasteful by many has also been part of the picture. His actions publicly protesting the formation of Actors' Equity in 1919 poisoned his reputation in the profession, an episode from which he never quite recovered.

Surviving recordings are all but non-existent — he recorded seven songs on one spring day in 1911, disliked the process, and never did so again — which makes it all but impossible to get an idea of his performing style. (James Cagney and Joel Grey, both, portrayed Cohan and helped popularize him for later generations; but these were performances in the styles of Cagney and Grey, not the original.) Cohan's one major film role — in what was a decidedly non-major film — was in a 1932 comedy called "The Phantom President," with songs by Rodgers and Hart and not very good ones. Cohan is unimpressive in this all-but-unwatchable movie, but this is the Yankee Doodle Boy at 54. And that's about as much Cohan as we're likely to see today. The few octogenarians among us might remember his Broadway performances in Eugene O'Neill’s classic Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and the Rodgers-Hart-Kaufman-Hart misfire I'd Rather Be Right (1937); but those gave us Cohan as an old man, not the brash young fellow with the feather in his cap.

There have been any number of recordings featuring Cohan songs, and the prospects of another didn't exactly pique my interest. But Rick Benjamin, a conductor and musicologist specializing in American theatre music of the 1875-1925 era, has devised an interesting and rather fascinating project: "to recreate the sound of George M. Cohan's music as he and his audiences might have heard it in theatres during the early 20th century." Working without much in the way or archival artifacts, he has nevertheless given us what might well be a reasonable facsimile. Benjamin started by amassing the original orchestrations, mostly by Charles J. Gebest (Cohan's conductor and orchestrator for more than 30 years); there are also two charts by the great Frank Saddler, who in his later work with Jerome Kern revolutionized the sound of the Broadway musical. The charts are played by Benjamin's "Paragon Ragtime Orchestra" using the original "eleven plus piano" instrumentation. Benjamin tells us in his extensive and informative liner notes — which give us a fine description of GMC and his times — that he carefully searched for a performer who sounded like Cohan must have sounded (in his educated opinion). Colin Pritchard is the singer; he performs four of the 14 tracks, and we will have to take Benjamin's opinion that this is what it was. Bernadette Boerckel sings three songs; the rest of the tracks feature authentic overtures, song selections, and the like. A bonus track features Cohan himself, at 60, making a speech at a charity dinner in 1938.

"George M. Cohan: You're a Grand Old Rag" doesn't exactly win me over to GMC's side, supplanting Kern, Rodgers, and Gershwin in my favors; the songs, most of them, still sound mighty quaint to me. Mr. Benjamin's recording is most interesting, though, in that it informs us just what the Broadway orchestra sounded like in those days before Mr. Saddler and his successor, Russell Bennett, began to creatively enliven the sound of Broadway music.