We’re winding down this 50th-anniversary celebration of the public-access TV shows my father, Dr. Simon Anderson, took part in creating: Man and His Music and Pop Music, U.S.A.  If you’re “tuning in” for the first time, the former consisted of material Dad taught in his wildly popular music appreciation class at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, the instruction that eventually made its way into his first book, The Musical Imperative, still used in a few schools today.  The latter featured material Dad taught in his more specialized history of pop music class, the title for which doubled as the title of the TV show and subsequent book.

Having covered an introduction to pop music, country music, and jazz in the first five episodes, Dad now turns his attention to what he calls mainstream pop, middle-of-the-road fare that encompasses everything from Vaudeville to Broadway.  After the Tonight Show-esque cold opening, in which he plays a fierecely heckled Vaudeville perfomer, he begins the meat of the show by articulating five traits of successful mainstream peformers and then moves into some of his bread-and-butter analysis of the socio-economic factors at work that make the creation of West Side Story, for example, impossible to conceive as a story set in Nebraska.  This was Dad’s forte, creating sweeping generalizations that helped students get a handle on the huge world of music.  Later he accompanies on the piano two vocal grad students who sing examples of Broadway tunes, “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” from Porgy and Bess, and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” from Showboat.

The final segement in the show finds Dad playing talk-show host to Paul Rutledge, for years a theater expert in Cincinnati.  Their Q & A is a fascinating glimpse at a musical genre in transition: Broadway at a crossroads.  Their prescient commentary illuminates some of what we see a few years later with the advent of a new age in blockbuster Broadway entertainment, from Cats to Phantom of the Opera to Miss Saigon to Rent to The Lion King.  I would loved to have seen Dad dive into all that led up to and contributed to this artistic renaissance.  

Thanks for reading.  Hope you enjoy the first part of Dad’s look at mainstream pop.