White rappers should pay their respects to their forefathers - traveling salesmen from a highly-successful '50s musical.
Hopefully readers are scratching their heads right now and Eminem is concocting a song about how he wants to kill me. Yet what many people might not know is that one of the earliest connections to rap could be said to have appeared in Broadway's 1957 hit, "The Music Man."
It's an exceptional album with a smorgasbord of brass-heavy music describing how in the early 1900s, a traveling salesman named Harold Hill tries to sucker the residents of River City, Iowa, into buying instruments for a local youth band.
When the curtain goes up, "Overture/Rock Island" begins on a "moving" train and consists of a bunch of traveling salesmen essentially rapping to each other about how their profession is a dying breed. Through repetition of phrases and wonderful inflections in the rappers' tones, the song is likely to get stuck in your head for days to come.
Eventually, the group gets into discussion about some fellow named Harold Hill. This song, and the next, "Iowa Stubborn," set up the River City demographics and background for listeners.
It's with "Ya Got Trouble," that not only does Hill, played by Robert Preston, coin the phrase "Ya got trouble right here in River City," but he makes his first pitch to the city's residents that they should buy his goods.
The chorus is everything a showtune should be - bombastic and entertaining. Hill warns residents that their kids are leaving home, where they then go to "rebutton their knickerbockers below the knee" and say words such as "swell."
And you know, this being a musical, that Hill is going to fall in love with someone, that woman being Marian Paroo, played by Barbara Cook.
Things don't start off well for the two lovebirds. Initially, Paroo sees right through Hill's disguise, and she has a hard time convincing other residents that Hill is a crook.
It's here that the album's first real snoozer, "Goodnight, My Someone," appears and one starts to realize that the lyrics are pretty simplistic in this musical. But really, that's what showtunes are all about.
But if you can sit through the snoozer, you're in for a treat.
Hill marches to a patriotic rally at the local middle school, where he once again espouses his propaganda to the townsfolk. This time, the kids buy it and march with him while horns are blasting in the background, hence the title "Seventy-Six Trombones."
The rest of the album is uniquely different from the first several songs.
Track No. 7, "Sincere," is sung by a barbershop quartet. I make three guarantees with this song: One, it has perhaps the most amazing vocals in music. Two, you couldn't get me to sing as high a note as the quartet's tenor does even if you kicked me in the groin. Three, it is the best song on the album - period.
The variety in music continues with "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little," which is a be-bopping back and forth of lyrics between local residents discussing how much of a hussy Paroo is. "Shipoopi" is anything but what it might seem to smell like, for it's clean, toe-tapping, square-dancing fun.
Overall, "The Music Man" is a good musical. It plays on the brass-instrument theme to its advantage and has simple but nice lyrics. Although there might be some really boring tracks, it's worth shelling out the 15 bucks.
