Original Broadway Cast- Hair

 

Huh! This was one dollar.  Keepin it all musical this month on the Show.  Mostly book musical.

Hair, the 1968 production was the first rock musical to hit Broadway.  Created by two actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado who wrote the books and lyrics along with Galt MacDermot, who wrote the music, the work is noted for its anti-war stance, audience interaction, illicit drug use, profanity, and full frontal nudity.

Well not every actor went along with the nudity.  Despite receiving a $50 bonus for nude work, a young Diane Keaton, who was a memeber of the “tribe” as well as an understudy for the role of Shelia, refused.  Incidentally, Keaton appears on this record as on of the singers on “Black Boys”.

I went thru the musical’s synopsis a few times and honestly can not in great detail describe the plot any more than say this a bunch of hippies doing hippie shit.  As a result, when it was adapted into a movie in 1979, substantial changes were made including adding an actual story.  The movie stared Treat Williams as Berger.  As a side note, for the year and a half I did not have cable TV in my house, I reckon I must have seen every Treat Williams’ movie on Antenna Tv.

But the actual musical (which was first championed by the illustrious Joe Papp and his public theater) was a success and ran on Broadway for 1,750 shows,  Subsequent productions ran on the West Coast as well as  London’s West End.  Frequent revivals have also been staged throughout the years. Furthermore, this album sold 3 million copies by the end of 1969.  It stayed on the #1 spot for 13 weeks and was the last Broadway recording to do so (Hamilton went as far as #3). The musical numbers also spawned hits for various people inlcuding teh 5th Dimension, the Cowsills (which is crazy),  Oliver, Three Dog Night, and Nina Simone.

Well, for a sample, I went with the closing number which has a rousing chorus part , “Flesh Failures (Let The SunShine In)”.

Satisfactory.

 

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