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Beyond the Merm
By David Drake
Playbill
August 26, 2005
Chatting with Ethel Merman and, now,
Vernon Duke aficionado Klea Blackhurst.While Klea Blackhurst
may be best known for invigorating the legacy of Ethel Merman
with her MAC Award-winning cabaret tribute, Everything
the Traffic Will Allow, these days the redheaded chanteuse
is shedding some long-deserved light on one of the Merm’s
contemporaries, composer Vernon Duke.
Though the name may be unfamiliar, the tunes won’t be.
“If I start the first line of a Vernon Duke song,”
Blackhurst says, “chances are you could finish it.”
With such standards as “April in New York,” “Taking
a Chance on Love,” “I Can’t Get Started”
and “Autumn in New York,” what’s most intriguing
about Duke’s catalogue, says Blackhurst, “is that
all these songs were not only from Broadway shows that failed,
but were spectacular failures.” Based on her
cabaret show—which she’ll reprise Aug. 28 and
29 at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub—Blackhurst’s
sumptuously sung and beautifully arranged new CD, "Autumn
in New York: Vernon Duke’s Broadway," will be released
by Ghostlight Records on Aug. 16. And, while it features the
aforementioned classics—“it would be perverse,”
Blackhurst says, “to not include them”—the
CD also discovers seven other gems from the composer’s
canon.
“Doing a Vernon Duke tribute was not the most logical
step after the Merman show,” Blackhurst admits. But
after singing some of his songs in a 2003 centennial tribute
to several composers, inspiration—along with a key supporter—took
hold of Blackhurst. “It was during the Cabaret Convention,
and the day after we did the birthday show at the Algonquin,
I saw Andrea Marcovicci at Town Hall. She said, ‘Klea,
you’ve got to expand this. Because Vernon Duke deserves
you, and you deserve Vernon Duke.’” So impressed
with Marcovicci’s generosity and advice, Blackhurst
set out on a quest. Sorting through hundreds of Duke songs,
Blackhurst admits, “I love the detective work. Like,
when I started working on the Merman show,” she says,
“I didn’t know cabaret. I didn’t know that’s
what I was getting into. I was just sick of not working! But
the experience of creating the show was so exciting.”
Not surprisingly, Blackhurst unearthed two songs from the
1944 Duke flop Sadie Thompson—originally written
for Ethel Merman. “She quit after five rehearsals,”
Blackhurst says, having discovered Merman’s own archival
notes about her brief experience in the musical version of
Rain. In a case of creative differences, Merman reportedly
told lyricist Howard Dietz, “Either that lyric goes
or I do.” Dietz stonewalled. Merman walked. And, June
Havoc stepped into Sadie Thompson for its 60 Broadway
performances, while Merman moved on to Annie Get Your
Gun.
With a total of 17 box-office duds to Duke’s resume,
Blackhurst laments what could have been his hit. “You
know, Merman never had a flop. If she’d have stayed
in Sadie Thompson, might she have made it a success?
We’ll never know.” Meanwhile, Blackhurst, who
will headline a production of Red, Hot & Blue
at San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon Theatre in September,
is giving listeners a taste of what could’ve been—singing
two songs from Sadie on the CD. When recording those numbers
(“Poor as a Church Mouse” and “Sailing at
Midnight”), Blackhurst confesses, “Yes, she was
there. I obviously have this great connection to Merman. And,
though I don’t want that to be my whole life,”
she laughs, “I guess a part of her lives on now in a
different way in this record.”
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