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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now, the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. Today, Part 1 of a two-part visit with the acclaimed performer and composer-lyricist, Micki Grant. Grant is best remembered for her Broadway score Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, and her three amazing songs in Working. This program was originally broadcast in 1980.

[0:59] ♪ Musical number: "I Gotta Keep Movin'" — performed by Alex Bradford and the original company ♪

[4:04] Paul Lazarus: This is Paul Lazarus. My guest this afternoon on Anything Goes is actress-singer-songwriter Micki Grant, who besides Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, has provided music and lyrics for Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, Working, and Yubi, just to name a few. Micki, you're an actress-singer as well as a songwriter. You've acted on Broadway in plays like Lanford Wilson's The Gingham Dog and on television you played the part of Peggy Nolan for six years on the soap opera Another World. When did you first start writing songs?

[4:39] Micki Grant: Oh, when I was around 14 or 15. We always had a piano in the house. My father played by ear. My sister studied. In fact, they had sent both of us to study, and after a few lessons, I told my mom to stop wasting your money, because I didn't seem to be too interested. But it turned out that actually I was more interested in string instruments, and I started studying violin shortly after that.

[5:09] Paul Lazarus: So you had a pretty extensive musical background. I mean, you still have the, is it the cello or the bass that you play?

[5:16] Micki Grant: The double bass. Yeah, I've had that since I was, since high school. Do you fool around on it still?

[5:22] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, every now and then I get the urge to take out the bow and go over some exercises or just pluck. My fingers are a little tender now, but you hear so much electronic music, you know? Every now and then I just get the urge to want to hear the sound of a double bass. I went to Symphony Space a few weeks ago, and they had wall-to-wall Haydn, and it was so nice just to hear those rolling tones. Did you play in orchestras?

[6:05] Micki Grant: Yeah, I played in the Chicago School of Music Concert Orchestra. I also played in high school in the marching band and the orchestra, and in college I played with both the pop band and the concert orchestra. And I always played double bass, except in high school I played double bass and sousaphone.

[6:31] Paul Lazarus: Did you grow up in the Chicago area?

[6:37] Micki Grant: Yeah. Did you spend most of your childhood there?

[6:39] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, practically all of it. Were your folks at all involved in music outside of your dad playing by ear?

[6:42] Micki Grant: No, not really. I understand that he had been playing for years because he and my mom met when he was playing for a house party. So he used to play on weekends around and what have you.

[6:58] Paul Lazarus: What kind of stuff did he like to play?

[7:03] Micki Grant: He'd play the old blues thing, like, woke up this morning, had you on my mind. So he would play and he'd sit there and he'd sing. It was great. Did you do a lot of singing and playing together?

[7:18] Micki Grant: Yeah, I'd sit beside him. It's the funniest thing though. I can't play by ear anymore. I'd sit beside him and watch him. And when he'd get up, I'd sit there and I'd do the same thing because I didn't know what I was doing. And when I started to study and I realized what notes were and chords were, all of a sudden I didn't have that freedom just to start hitting the keys and what have you.

[7:49] Paul Lazarus: That's a major argument for all time sometimes. The rules help all the time.

[7:56] Micki Grant: So really no one in your family was really involved with professional arts before you?

[8:01] Paul Lazarus: No. That's funny because a lot of people I've talked to, that's the case, really just set out on their own. Well, I guess I was the crazy one. Do you remember the very first musical you ever saw?

[8:11] Micki Grant: I would say it was probably Oklahoma.

[8:20] Paul Lazarus: That's incredible. I think that that musical influenced so many kids. You composed mostly on the guitar for your shows, is that correct? Do you find that that affects your work in any way? I mean, because most theater composers I know compose on piano.

[8:31] Micki Grant: Well, when I want to write the stuff down, I can sit at the piano and write, but I can't execute. I can't execute what I hear. It's just the finger.

[8:52] Paul Lazarus: Yeah, and that's a friendly thing about just sitting and you can do it anytime you want with a guitar. You feel like playing at three in the morning, you're not disturbing anyone. It's kind of a warm, friendly. It's good for those bursts of inspiration, isn't it? You can pick it up and just go to it. Also, you can take it anywhere, which is very nice.

[9:35] Micki Grant: Last night left me tired. I hardly slept at all because the rats were having a party in the hall. Then the city just decided to condemn this tenement. That's when the landlord decided he was going to raise the rent.

[10:11] ♪ Musical number: "Lookin' Over From Your Side" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[10:27] ♪ Musical number: "Lookin’ Over From Your Side" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[12:28] Micki Grant: Whose original idea was the multi-award winning show Don't Bother Me I Can't Cope? Glory Van Scott, who is a writer, actress, and performer herself, wanted to do a project using her dancing talents and some music, and she wanted to do music of mine. It was, you know, to be a little piece that was presented at the Library of Performing Arts for two nights and two afternoons, and that was to be it. They thought they'd take about two weeks and work on it, and Vanette would, you know, direct it, set it up for it. But as I started working on it, it got more and more involved, and the more that Vanette heard of my material, the more she wanted to use. It just started to grow like Topsy, you know, it just grew and grew.

Even my being in it sort of happened. I was supposed to be going on my vacation, and as I sat there watching them rehearse, I couldn't tear myself away, you know. I walked in one night, and Vanette says, "You're going to go on," and she says, "Nobody sings your material like you do." Edward Perdula wrote on the cover of the album that you and Vanette Carroll set up to create a work together with the theme that coping is a basic commitment of a mature, purposeful, involved human being, that the ways we are similar are far greater than the ways we are different. That was a quote from the album.

[14:40] Paul Lazarus: When did you actually hit upon the show's title and that whole concept?

[14:45] Micki Grant: Yeah, it's funny how titles come out. The same person who introduced us when we were sitting there talking about the show—this is who again?

[14:57] Paul Lazarus: Gloria Van Scott.

[14:59] Micki Grant: Was telling us of an experience she had just had a week before where driving along with a friend, she saw a car hit from behind. There was a woman driving the car that hit the car in front, and when the person got out of the car in front and walked back to where the woman was sitting, she flung her head on the steering wheel and started saying, "Don't bother me, don't bother me, I can't cope, I can't cope." And Vanette said, "That's a good title for the show."

[15:57] ♪ Musical number: "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[18:44] Micki Grant: You know, I almost felt—in fact, I've said many times at that point in time when we did Cope, that was a militant stand because we were going just the opposite of what everything had been in the '60s, which was confrontation and hate. There was so much venom, and it was almost like that was necessary. So who was going to be the first to say to have a kind of reconciliation time or conciliate it? It's funny because Gerald Boardman, in his book on American musical theatre, when he talked about Cope, he addressed that.

[19:01] Paul Lazarus: Really?

[19:02] Micki Grant: Yeah, he said that it was due to that very fact that it was kind of like saying now's the time to say things in a different way. That really was one of the reasons for the great success of Cope, and I think that's true. I think everybody got room to breathe and listen instead of turning off and tuning out. I don't want to hear this. All of a sudden, people started—everybody wanted to hear what you were saying.

[19:22] Micki Grant: There was a young black man who came backstage shortly after we opened, and it was his third visit. On the third time he came backstage because he had gotten to the point where he was no longer ashamed to enjoy it because he had been in that very, very militant bag. He said the first time I walked out, it was like I was in a centrifuge. I was so turned around and so whirled around because he had been conditioned when you walk out of the theatre to be fired up and ready to punch anybody and angry and angry. He said what I did, I just walked out feeling so good about myself and not wanting to fight. I just felt good inside and good about who I am. But he had to come and see it two more times before he lost his guilt feelings.

[20:16] Paul Lazarus: Isn't that something?

[20:17] Micki Grant: Yeah, it is. I thought that was remarkable.

[20:51] ♪ Musical number: "Questions" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[24:10] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to Anything Goes. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. And my guest today is composer-lyricist Micki Grant. The score to Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope garnered Micki Grant several awards in 1972, including an Obie and Drama Desk Award for Best Music and Lyrics, an NAACP Image Award for Best Playwright, and the Grammy Award for Best Score from an Original Cast Show Album. Was the Grammy that you won for the show a surprise?

[24:41] Micki Grant: Was it ever. I mean, I knew that I was nominated, but I didn't think of attending. And the night that they were being given, I wasn't even home watching.

[24:56] Paul Lazarus: Oh, you didn't even go to the ceremony?

[24:57] Micki Grant: No, I was doing a benefit performance at Carnegie Hall.

[25:00] Paul Lazarus: Oh, how funny.

[25:02] Micki Grant: And the call came into Carnegie Hall just before I was to go on that word had just come that I had won the Grammy. So that just before they announced me, they also announced to the audience that I had just that night won the Grammy. And I was standing there in a state because I wasn't even thinking about it. These are the kind of things that you dream about, you know. And then they happen. It was like when I was sitting there in the Tony ceremonies. These are things that I grew up because all my life I've been, you know, thinking about theater and watching the Academy Awards and watching the Tony. And it seemed so far removed that anything was possible, but yet it always seemed possible. There's always that hope.

[25:44] Paul Lazarus: Right.

[25:45] Micki Grant: And sometimes you have to pinch yourself because I'm sitting there at, you know, the show that was nominated for several Tonys. And I'm looking around and I'm like, I'm actually here. This is me sitting here. It's actually happened. So that was, oh, that was a big surprise. Really a big surprise.

[26:05] Paul Lazarus: Another show you worked on with Vinette Carroll was Your Arms Too Short to Box with God based on the book of Matthew. And you shared the writing of the score with a former fellow performer in Cope, Alex Bradford.

[26:16] Micki Grant: Right. How did you work to divide the score up? How did you resolve it?

[26:20] Micki Grant: I came in late and I came in before the Broadway production because it was originally done at Spoleto at the festival there. And it was mostly the pageantry that got it over and the music and the sound. And the reaction was just phenomenal. You could see the men and people sitting in the audience crying, tears, but because of their involvement of the feeling and what have you of the show, even though they didn't understand a lot of words, you know, of the lyrics of the songs. But when we came back, and I had a couple of spoken lines in the show. In fact, Vinette Carroll was doing sort of a narrative part in Italy, and I had written several lines for her, speaking lines. But I had written no music for the show.

But when we came back to the States, and again, it was Ford's Theatre. That was the first to produce it commercially. They were going to take the show to Ford's Theatre, where it played for some time, and then we're going to bring it to Broadway. And Vinette, in the meantime, went over to do the Australian production of Cope. And she came back with all these ideas about what she wanted to do with Bach's that mattered for her before it went to Broadway. And in other words, because I am a theatre writer, she wanted to deal with storyline. And there was really nothing actually dealing with the book itself in the lyrics, you know. And that's how I came into the picture. In fact, if you hear the sermons, I wrote both the sermons, which gives it a purpose and a reason for being, you know, why we're here to hear this pageant and what have you. And then most of the material that I wrote dealt with the actual, like, Mary's thoughts, and the priestess, and the elders, and all of that.

[28:37] Paul Lazarus: You said earlier about your love of writing things of the West Indian sound. Is that what influenced you when you wrote It's Too Late, Judith?

[28:40] Micki Grant: Yeah, but you know, that really came as a suggestion from the... It almost lent itself to it. You know, it was almost forcing itself in that direction. And with the situation and the way it was, and they're mocking him and what have you, you know, it worked very well.

[30:16] Paul Lazarus: So, you've been listening to part one of a two-part look at the career of composer-lyricist Micki Grant. Associate producer Jeff Lunden. Anything Goes, backstage with Broadway's best, is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. For more information, visit anythinggoespl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.