BY BRETT CAMPBELL
Getting to Know
Richard Rodgers
Shedd explores
songwriting legend
E
ver since The Beatles demolished the division
between popular music performers and song-
writers, we’ve generally expected our greatest
songwriters to also be star performers who express their
personal feelings in song. But in the first half of the last
century, even the greatest pop songwriters usually la-
bored as behind the scenes craftsmen who adapted their
genius to the needs of Broadway musicals, Hollywood
movies and TV shows, or star performers.
So unless they saw PBS’s recent American Masters
documentary biography of Richard Rodgers, hardly any-
one would have recognized a photo of the creative genius
who scored such varied classics as Elvis Presley’s “Blue
Moon” and plenty of other early rock hits, John
Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” and dozens of other
jazz standards (“My Funny Valentine,” “It Might as Well
be Spring” and many more), Frank Sinatra’s “The Lady is
a Tramp” and scores of other pop masterpieces. Next
week, the Shedd devotes this summer’s Oregon Festival
of American Music to raising Rodgers’ profile to its de-
served heights.
Over six decades, nearly 1,000 songs, five dozen
stage and screen musicals and hordes of awards
(Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, Oscars, even a pair of
Pulitzers), Rodgers dominated midcentury American
music, because this was the period in which musicals
generated the bulk of the country’s greatest sounds. His
first songwriting partner was Larry Hart, whose often
gloomy love life, shadowed by alcoholism and the era’s
repressive anti-gay social mores, darkened and deepened
his clever lyrics and thus Rodgers’ music — the finest of
his career. After Hart’s untimely decline and death in
1943, Rodgers joined another old friend, Oscar
Hammerstein II, who supplied less-complex lyrics for
more ambitious theater, film and even TV productions
like Carousel, Oklahoma and The King and I. Rodgers
enjoyed middling success solo and with other collabora-
tors between Hammerstein’s death in 1960 and his own
in 1979.
The festival provides multiple perspectives on
Rodgers’ incomparable career.
• Musicals. Rodgers wrote great songs, but hearing
them only in concerts wrenches many of them out of their
original musical theater context. So six years ago, the
Shedd added a big musical production to OFAM, and
this year it’s doubling the number so as to include
both of Rodgers’ great partners. We’ll get to see
and hear the Rodgers & Hammerstein peren-
nial South Pacific (directed by Ron Jessup
with live music by the American
Symphonia, conducted by James Paul),
which OFAM head James Ralph calls
“one of the greatest American musi-
cal dramas of all time, almost a musi-
cal tragedy.” This year’s rediscovery:
the original 1937
production of Rodgers & Hart’s Babes in Arms, which
OFAM
considers superior to Rodgers’ 1959
revision. “Babes in Arms is the quintessential Rodgers &
Hart show, and particularly appealing to me because
they’ve re-released a very close proximity to the original
book and score,” Ralph says. “And it is arguably the best
musical comedy score ever created, with a phenomenal
number of standards.”
• Jazz. Matinees on Aug. 2, 4 and 10 reveal just how
resilient Rodgers’ harmonic structures could be; his tunes
provided the vehicles for stratospheric flights of impro-
visatory genius by even modernist jazz giants like Trane,
Evans, Miles Davis and so many others. OFAM regulars
Ken Peplowski (the clarinet vet taking the jazz adviser
reins from legendary New York pianist/arranger Dick
Hyman, who’ll also appear), guitarists Howard Alden
and the legendary Bucky Pizzarelli and bassist Doug
Miller perform.
• Talks. OFAM excels at combining historical context
with fun performances, keeping the education from being
too dry while deepening the musical experience. This
year’s free talks look especially fascinating as they offer
a glimpse into a genius’s creative process by comparing
Rodgers’ work with Hart and with Hammerstein, an ex-
Next week, the Shedd devotes this
summer’s Oregon Festival of
American Music to raising Rodgers’
profile to its deserved heights.
amination of what makes his songs great and how they
fought racism, plus looks at the exciting beginning and
poignant last days of the doomed Hart’s partnership with
his longtime colleague.
• Film. Though Rodgers and Hart considered their
1931-35 Hollywood sojourn unsatisfying, many of their
most memorable songs eventually appeared in films, in-
cluding adaptations of their Broadway productions.
OFAM includes free showings of Flower Drum Song,
Pal Joey and more.
• Vocal concerts. The Aug. 3 Hart vs. Hammerstein and
Aug. 9 Twenties concerts with Ian Whitcomb and ensem-
ble, and Aug. 10 duets show with Brabham, Julie Alsin
and Michael Stone, place Rodgers’ songs in the kind of
cabaret setting where they flourished after their stage in-
carnations. Hyman, Peplowski and the engaging singer
Maria Jette try a more “classical” setting on Aug. 2.
The Aug. 1 opening gala and Aug. 11 closer give ex-
cellent overviews of OFAM’s characteristically compre-
hensive survey of Rodgers’ music, much of it written for
early musicals now barely remembered in the wake of his
later triumphs. The festival also includes performances
by students at the Shedd’s music and dance camps
and jazz academy, a free public jam and
more.
For 16 years, the great strength
of OFAM has been how thought-
fully and entertainingly it com-
bines history and performance.
It’s rare to find any festival
that delves so exhaustively and
rewardingly into a single sub-
ject yet keeps things swinging
enough for casual fans. A key is
finding subjects worthy of such
depth while offering enough vari-
ety to sustain a dozen or more events,
and Rodgers’ music certainly quali-
fies. The Shedd keeps proving that
America’s musical legacy is an
inexhaustible trove of riches
and reaffirms OFAM’s status
as Eugene’s most important
musical institution.
ew
The Genius
of Hillstomp
Misery loves a
driving guitar riff
S
ay you have a friend coming to town.
You’re not not excited to see that person,
but it’s been a while and you’re worried
about how to entertain him or her. Maybe you
were Goths back in the day and you’ve heard your
buddy works for Pfizer now, or you used to barbe-
cue together and so-and-so’s become an anarchist
vegan. Rather than learning to cook tempeh or
brushing up on the latest in pharmaceutical patent
law, your best bet would
Hillstomp,
be praying to your deity
Cicada Omega,
of choice that Hillstomp
Glassell Park
is playing in town that
9 pm Friday, July 27
night (or driving to wher-
John Henry’s • $5
ever they are playing) be-
21+ show
cause if your houseguest
doesn’t end up liking Hillstomp, you probably don’t
want to be their friend anyway.
It’s true that you generally can’t go wrong with
the blues, but Hillstomp goes so right with the
blues that pretty much anyone who sees their
show becomes an instant convert. Fans who
caught Henry Kammerer and John Johnson at
John Henry’s last year may want to listen for their
own hoots and hollers on the backtracks of the
duo’s latest album, After Two But Before Five, par-
tially recorded live at Eugene’s most beloved hole
in the wall. Johnson and Kammerer make it sound
so easy: two guys, some buckets, a guitar, a distor-
tion microphone … but that’s the genius of it. The
aching, soul-twisting impact of songs like
“Roustabout” or the classic “Dark Clouds a-Risin’”
is a product not only of talent but a visceral under-
standing of how minor chords, relentless percus-
sion and songs in the key of misery can strip an au-
dience bare. Not that Hillstomp is a downer; fortu-
nately, misery loves company and a driving guitar
riff, and you’re guaranteed both at this show.
Call it trance blues, “hill country blues stomp,”
“bucket ’n’ slide rock ’n’ roll” or whatever.
Hillstomp’s reverent modernization of classic blues
(including covering greats like R.L. Burnside and
Mississippi Fred McDowell) has carved a musical
niche that is nothing short of revolutionary. Don’t
miss your chance to say you saw them when.
— Adrienne van der Valk
JULY 26, 2007 25