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Moulton turned to me and, shaking the perspiration from the end of his nose, remarked: 'That, I believe, is the quickest orchestration on record.' Yet so excellently was the work done that Messrs.
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"While the house echoed with applause Mr. Nothing daunted, however, the intrepid leader signaled to the orchestra to begin, and then, leaving it to conduct itself, he made his pen fairly fly over the paper, with the result that he kept ahead of the orchestra during the entire song, and the musicians were obliged to pause only at the last note-which delay was not noticed by the audience. Moulton began orchestrating 'Sammy' between the musical numbers of the Wizard, but only four bars were completed for each of the twenty-four musicians when the time came for Miss Barrison to sing her song. Moulton, the musical director, had gone home to put on his dress suit and he did not reach the theatre until late, so that the orchestra was just being rung in when a rough copy of Miss Barrison's forty-three minute song was handed him, with the request that he orchestrate it. "She completed the work at 5 o'clock on the afternoon of the initial production of The Wizard of Oz. Frank Baum, author of the book of The Wizard of Oz, tells the matter thus-whether he is writing seriously or is having fun must be left to the discretion of the reader: "The 'Sammy' song, which is one of the hits of The Wizard of Oz, was composed by Mabel Barrison like a flash of lightning-or, to be more exact, she wrote the words and set them to music in forty-three minutes," said a well-known musician yesterday. The following article appeared June 11, 1903, in the Birmingham, Alabama, Age-Herald. As Paul Tietjens's first wife, Eunice Tietjens, said in her autobiography, "Everything that said had to be taken with at least a half-pound of salt." Unfortunately, little of the Baum's tale is true-entertaining though it may be. Over the next several installments of this "Sammy" series of posts, I'll be sharing various stories on the creation of the song, its performance history, and some unusual variations of its published form.īelow is one of the most interesting of the "creation" stories. The sheet music is far and away the most common title from The Wizard of Oz, and the song was also the most recorded number from the show, with over fifteen recordings on cylinder and 78rpm record, as well as music box discs in various sizes and formats.Īdvertisement from Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1902Ĭlick here to listen to "Sammy" as performed in the 1982 concert version "Sammy" featured music by Edward Hutchison and lyrics by James O'Dea. Rather, the hit of the show was "Sammy," a plaintive paean sung by Mabel Barrison, who played the role of former waitress Tryxie Tryfle, to a "fine and dandy" boy that her heart still ached for. The biggest song hit in The Wizard of Oz was not about getting back home, traveling down the yellow brick road, or obtaining brains, heart, or courage.