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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, the conclusion of a two-part visit with the acclaimed performer and songwriter, Micki Grant. Grant is best remembered for her Broadway score to Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, and her three amazing songs in Working. This program was originally broadcast in 1980.

[0:43] Micki Grant: Was it Vinette Carroll's idea to develop a musical theater piece based on the writings of Lewis Carroll? Yeah. In fact, it was a dream of hers long before I met her. She initially tackled it at City Center, and it was called But Never Jam Today. You know that line that the White Queen has? Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today. So in other words, you never get any. She always wanted to do a full-scale production, and she started talking to me about it shortly after we did Cope. Now, I had read Alice in Wonderland as a child, and it didn't turn me on, all these silly folks, silly things happening. And I kept saying, ah, who wants to do... So finally, she sent me a book of the annotated Alice, and of course put very complimentary things in back to my favorite composer and all that.

And I read it, and it was like reading it anew. Those magical things that are a completely different experience when we're kids. And I said, this is not a kid's book. It was an awakening. I adore pieces of literature like that, that have two distinct levels almost. Right. So then it became a challenge. It became a challenge because we're going to use Lewis Carroll's poetry and writings and what have you, and mine, how to blend them and how to match the wits and how to, you know. And I just enjoyed doing it.

[2:43] Paul Lazarus: Were all the songs you wrote for that show based on specific moments in Alice or writings of Carroll?

[2:50] Micki Grant: Yeah, there were. Every one. Tell me about two of the songs, a song called Consider and a song called It's Lonely. When we started doing the show, it was pure Lewis Carroll in terms of the book. But somewhere along the line, the concept changed, and Alice became a 16-year-old celebrating her birthday. But anyway, there's a moment when she finds herself in this strange place, having just gone through this funny, crazy conversation with the White Queen, and she's on the verge of tears and says, it's so lonely here, and it's really lonely because she doesn't know these people understand things go backwards instead of forwards. So any place where you are where you feel like a stranger, it's lonely.

And I have often said that in terms of myself, my own personality, I can be alone for days and weeks if I'm in a good frame of mind, because then you're just alone. But there's another whole feeling about being lonely, you know? And that's what turned me on, that line when she says, it's so lonely here. Being alone and being lonely are not the same at all. Alone with a book or your daydreams, you can have a ball. But when you get this empty feeling like that, that now, book or not, a ball it's not, it's lonely.

[5:17] Micki Grant: There must be someone else in this world besides me, bothered by that empty feeling and needing company. If you've been warned against talking to strangers as I've been, well then, we could pretend that I'm your long lost friend. And as two long lost friends, we find so much to say, or just simply saying nothing, we'd muddle through the day. Before it's over, we might end up holding hands if you want to. You never know just how far friendships can go. Right now, I gladly settle for a moment in time. Right now, I'm looking for someone to share a smile with and spend a little while with. There must be someone else in this world besides me, feeling slightly lost and lonely and in the mood for me. So wherever you are, please come my way. Wherever you are, you don't have to stay. However you are, so very welcome here today. Wherever you are, you don't have to stay.

[8:00] Micki Grant: Consider comes toward the end. When I wrote it, I wrote it for Alice. It became the two queens songs at the very end, after she's crowned and she gets to the end of the chess game. And she is crowned and she says, oh, I'm a queen, you know. When I originally wrote it, she was looking in the mirror at her crown and she sings, oh, little girl, you're not so little anymore. No more peeking through keyholes, you finally opened the door. Consider how you started out. Well, the word consider, when the white queen says to her, when she starts to cry, consider what a big girl you are. Consider how far you've come. Just consider anything, just don't cry. The use of the word consider is what put the idea in my head.

[9:58] Micki Grant: Well, little girl, you're not so little anymore. No more peeking through keyholes, you finally opened the door. Consider how you started out. Consider a stranger to what life's about. Consider you listen to that distant drum and from the pie you pull the plum. Considering where you've come from, you've come far. Consider all the lessons learned. Consider the bridges crossed, the bridges burned. Consider the horns you raised that wouldn't blow, the friends you knew but didn't know. Consider how far you had to go and look, look where you are. Life is a game of chess that you learned how to play. By watching the winners and losers and learning the rules along the way. Just a rank beginner, you played it like a winner.

Now who can blame you for feeling like a queen? Now that your innocence has fled, consider the roads that still lie up ahead. Consider you made it to that final square, you finally become aware of who you are. Now you are on your way, little girl, you grew up today.

[11:50] Paul Lazarus: Are there any other numbers in that show that you really like that are very special to you?

[12:05] Micki Grant: Yeah, well, I did a number for Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

[12:10] Paul Lazarus: What's it called?

[12:11] Micki Grant: Very contemporary rock number, it's called Working for the Man. We used twins, actual twins in this role. It became Tweedledee and Tweedledum sung, actually it was written for the workmen who were setting up the tent for the croquet game, you know when they have the croquet game and they have the workmen out there and they're talking so tough and yeah I want a queen of the red, this is for the red king and queen and blah blah blah blah and suddenly the queen enters and they're prostrating on the floor, you know that game you play with people, you bow and scrape when it's time and so I wrote this number called Working for the Man. Working for the man he is, like working in showbiz, because putting on a show is like working for the man is, you know, so then they go and they really did it up, the two guys who did it.

[13:07] ♪ Musical number: "Workin' For The Man" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[15:55] Micki Grant: Goodness, what a stake your hair is in.

[15:59] Paul Lazarus: The brush got entangled in it and I lost the comb. I lost the comb yesterday.

[16:04] Micki Grant: Oh, really you should have a maid.

[16:07] Paul Lazarus: Oh, I'm sure I'd take you with pleasure. Two dollars a week and jam every other day.

[16:13] Micki Grant: I don't want you to hire me and I don't care for jam, thank you.

[16:18] Paul Lazarus: It's very good jam.

[16:19] Micki Grant: Well, I don't care for any today at any rate.

[16:22] Paul Lazarus: Well, you couldn't have it if you did want it. The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.

[16:27] Micki Grant: But never jam today. Hmm, how true.

[16:31] Paul Lazarus: Alice Ghostly as the White Queen and Debbie Allen as Alice in a scene from Alice, a show by Mickey Grant and Vinette Carroll, which closed during its out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia and unfortunately never made it to Broadway.

[16:44] Micki Grant: The three Mickey Grant songs you heard were It's Lonely, performed by Debbie Allen, Consider, sung by the Black Queen Paula Kelly, and the real-life twins Clinton Derricks Carroll and Cleavon Derricks as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Working for the Man.

[16:59] Paul Lazarus: Back to a pre-recorded interview with my guest today on Anything Goes, composer-lyricist Mickey Grant.

[17:04] Paul Lazarus: Did Steve Schwartz approach you about writing songs for Working, the musical based on Studs Terkel's novel?

[17:09] Micki Grant: Yes, he did.

[17:11] Paul Lazarus: And this is early on into the project, right?

[17:13] Micki Grant: Yeah, actually they had been working on it. And the way he told me was that, well, when he first started working on it, he really realized with the kind of subject matter and so varied and so many people from so many walks of life, that it would be the kind of project that maybe one person shouldn't, you know, tackle.

[17:36] Paul Lazarus: Do alone, yeah.

[17:37] Micki Grant: Right. Because, as you know, it's based on a series of interviews, and there's a whole style and way of talking that some people don't hear that much, you know, the idioms and what have you.

[17:50] Micki Grant: And to make it authentic, because I think what we all tried to do, all the writers involved, was to really use the person that we were dealing with, as much of them as possible, and try to do lyrically, get as much of their actual words in, but still do it, you know, with certain craftsmanship, lyrically, but use as much of the actual person as possible.

[18:15] Paul Lazarus: Did you get a chance to speak with the people that you were writing with at all?

[18:18] Micki Grant: That, in Chicago, I met the real Levan L.

[18:24] Paul Lazarus: You did.

[18:25] Micki Grant: And he loved what he did because he felt he could do it better than anybody else.

[18:32] Micki Grant: I'm known from Peking to Hong Kong, from the West Coast to the Pecos. Hiking cars is my game.

[18:45] Micki Grant: In an automobile, I used to be a hell on wheels, and that's what earned me my name.

[18:58] Micki Grant: Ask anybody to tell you about loving out.

[19:04] Micki Grant: Ask anybody, and anybody will tell you.

[19:10] Micki Grant: There was a time when nobody could beat me doing what I do.

[19:17] Micki Grant: I'd punch out a ticket, slide under the wheel, and right off the bat have it under control, using one hand to spin her around without backing up, put her straight in the hole.

[19:25] Micki Grant: People ask me how I do it.

[19:28] Micki Grant: I tell them that there ain't nothing to it, because I'm Levan L, the wizard.

[19:34] Micki Grant: One swing out, that's me.

[19:38] Micki Grant: Levan L is a wizard, so don't be surprised at what you see.

[19:44] Micki Grant: One swing in, one swing out, and look out.

[19:49] Micki Grant: Brother, there he goes.

[19:51] Micki Grant: Why can't I be a rich man with some big bucks in my jeans?

[19:58] Micki Grant: I'd buy me a brand new Cadillac and a 50 cent cigar, because you can't smoke 10 cent stogies when you ride in a rich man's car.

[20:11] Micki Grant: I see them get out with their tuxedos on, and when I get in I can smell the cologne.

[20:15] Micki Grant: The music be up, I'll be listening a while, sitting pretending to deal with my own.

[20:20] Micki Grant: I may sit longer than I should.

[20:23] Micki Grant: That's because it feels so good to me.

[20:27] Micki Grant: Levan L, the wizard.

[20:30] Micki Grant: One swing out, that's me.

[20:33] Micki Grant: Levan L is a wizard, so don't be surprised at what you see.

[20:39] Micki Grant: One swing in, one swing out, and look out.

[20:46] Micki Grant: I had a customer once, tall as a smokestack.

[20:51] Micki Grant: I sat down and it looked like I was sitting in the back.

[20:54] Micki Grant: He said, you better pull that seat up, boy, I'm over six feet.

[20:57] Micki Grant: I said, mister, I never move anybody's seat.

[21:01] Micki Grant: Levan L, the wizard.

[21:05] Micki Grant: Wheels and me agree.

[21:08] Micki Grant: Levan L is a wizard.

[21:11] Micki Grant: King of the parking lot, Grand Prix.

[21:13] Micki Grant: That's it!

[21:15] Micki Grant: I got the skip, but I see a tip.

[21:22] Micki Grant: Levan L, signing off.

[21:32] Micki Grant: Steve also told me that he was sitting there and thinking that maybe, you know, Mickey Grant, thinking in his head, you know, how do I get a Mickey Grant kind of sound?

[21:39] Micki Grant: He says, why don't I get Mickey Grant?

[21:46] Micki Grant: Why am I sitting here doing it myself, or trying to do it myself?

[21:49] Paul Lazarus: For sure.

[21:51] Micki Grant: It is harder, I think, for a person like Steve to deal with the thoughts of the cleaning woman and the idiom.

[21:56] Micki Grant: It is harder for him than it would be for me to deal with the other side.

[22:02] Micki Grant: See, because we move through all avenues of life.

[22:12] Micki Grant: In other words, a cleaning woman who goes to other people's homes to clean knows everything that goes on in that house, but they know nothing about what goes on in her house.

[22:22] Micki Grant: You know?

[22:24] Micki Grant: So it's much easier for me to write songs that have nothing to do with a particular idiom or just have to do with a situation in life, because everybody knows what pain feels like or heartache feels like, but not everybody knows what it feels like, say, to never be called by your last name.

[22:46] Micki Grant: Wonderful.

[22:48] Micki Grant: And some little kid is just seeing you for the first time in life and calls you Annie or Sue, you know?

[22:52] Paul Lazarus: Yeah.

[22:54] Micki Grant: They don't really experience those feelings.

[22:56] Micki Grant: And my mother has done cleaning when I was growing up. That helped us survive some of those times.

[23:04] Micki Grant: When she would go.

[23:06] Micki Grant: And I remember a time that my father made her quit a particular place because a woman insisted she live on the third floor and insisted my mother sit outside the window and wash her windows.

[23:16] Micki Grant: And my mother left and said, you know, I don't wash windows in my own house. My husband wouldn't let me hang out.

[23:22] Micki Grant: And my father told her, you never go back there again.

[23:24] Micki Grant: My mother worked just like her mama before her.

[23:35] Micki Grant: Domestic workin' was their trade.

[23:38] Micki Grant: They was a laundry cook, a living help Thursday girl, a babysitter and a hotel maid.

[23:45] Micki Grant: They worked six days a week, all day long.

[23:49] Micki Grant: Never crooked out of debt.

[23:52] Micki Grant: Those were the days when the minimum wage was anything you could get.

[23:59] Micki Grant: They were leanin' on women without faces.

[24:06] Micki Grant: Comin' and goin' on the first name basis.

[24:13] Micki Grant: You're talkin' to somebody who knows.

[24:16] Micki Grant: And after too many years, oh,

[24:20] Micki Grant: I don't wanna be in one more laundry room.

[24:23] Micki Grant: I don't wanna pick up now another broom.

[24:26] Micki Grant: One of these days, just wanna sleep till noon.

[24:31] Micki Grant: They were leanin' on women without faces.

[24:37] Micki Grant: Comin' and goin' on the first name basis.

[24:42] Micki Grant: You're talkin' to somebody who knows.

[24:46] Micki Grant: And after too many years, oh,

[24:50] Micki Grant: I don't wanna be in one more laundry room.

[24:53] Micki Grant: I don't wanna pick up now another broom.

[24:56] Micki Grant: One of these days, just wanna sleep till noon.

[25:03] Micki Grant: All day long I'm thinkin' my kids is in the street somewhere.

[25:09] Micki Grant: But the lady of the house don't think you're thinkin' half the time.

[25:17] Micki Grant: Always talkin' round you like you ain't even there.

[25:23] Micki Grant: It didn't come when there was somethin' on my mind.

[25:34] Micki Grant: I got a daughter with her head on her shoulders.

[25:37] Micki Grant: Pretty as a picture, too.

[25:40] Micki Grant: She ain't gonna hide that pretty face behind little doors.

[25:45] Micki Grant: Well, when clothes like my mama do, if my legs don't give out and my back hold up, I'm gonna make her a better day.

[25:54] Micki Grant: You'll never see her get down on her knees unless she's down there to pray.

[26:01] Micki Grant: No more leanin' on women with our faces.

[26:05] Micki Grant: She's gonna walk in on this last name face.

[26:14] Micki Grant: You obviously did not mean that in any kind of self-pitying way. And I always sort of took that song to be a positive way, even though it's with regret. Nonetheless, it's still positive in the sense that, okay, I didn't do those things, but I could have done it. But I know I could have. I know I had it in me. If I could have been what I could have been, I could have been something. If what I could be had been left to be, I would have been something. A tower of strength, a center of power at ten bucks an hour.

[28:04] ♪ Musical number: "If I Could Have Been" — performed by Micki Grant ♪

[31:03] Paul Lazarus: This is Anything Goes. I'm your host, Paul Lazarus. You just heard songwriter Micki Grant's three songs for Working, the musical adaptation of Studs Terkel's book. David Langston Smurl performed "Loving Al." "Cleanin' Women" and "If I Could Have Been" were both sung by one of my absolute favorite performers, triple threat Lynn Thigpen, who could make any song sound great, let alone the talented work of Micki Grant. You do some commercial work and I've asked you to let me play an Un-Gun-Teen commercial, which won you a Clio, which is the awards given for commercials. I think it's super. I mean, I'm not exactly thrilled by commercials, but on the other hand, as a commercial, it's really very, very good. And you had it recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

[32:59] Micki Grant: Yeah. It's its own thing, too. I guess everything has a particular skill whereas I wouldn't want to just make my living doing nothing about it because I have too many other things I want to say and do. But it's kind of, if you do a couple of things and you say, wow, I did it, you know, and it worked and it worked, it's kind of fun. And one can always use the bread, I tell you.

[33:21] Paul Lazarus: Oh. I can certainly understand that aspect of it. And the Pips for Un-Gun-Teen Aerosol.

[33:59] Micki Grant: Mr. Burns is a mean sun up above, but Un-Gun-Teen Aerosol contains burn-chilling benzocaine that lays a burst of cool on that sun hand.

[34:21] Paul Lazarus: Let's talk a little bit about the show that's about to open, which had a short run at Moss Repertory and it's called It's So Nice to be Civilized and now is fortunately coming to Broadway very soon. In fact, you go into rehearsal in less than a week, I think.

[34:36] Micki Grant: That's right. It's about human survival, but more important, about the survival of humanness. You have strong feelings about the way things are going these days because, I mean, you play this wonderful song entitled "Who's Gonna Teach the Children," which we're going to play later. And it's obvious to me that you're not very thrilled about the way, especially maybe just America, if we can focus on America, the direction that it's heading, that loss of humanity and confusion that's...

[34:59] Micki Grant: Yeah, I'm amazed quite often. And somewhere, I guess it comes with living, and the more that you see. And I guess my biggest disappointments really come from people. Situations don't disappoint me as much as a disappointment in a person. But I'm amazed, and I'm amazed, really, it's what happened to the young people. And maybe it's because we don't see enough or hear enough about the others, but there's a callousness, and I think it's because of the world and the situation. And the kids today are born where there's no fantasy or amazement anymore. I doubt if people tell the kind of stories that they'll play. They don't play the games that we used to play. The kids used to play on the street and play games.

There's a violence in the society. And where you would be appalled, when I was growing up, I mean, if you saw somebody... If you saw a fight, just really a fist fight or something on the street, it was like you'd get this catch in your stomach. It was violence, somebody putting violence... you know, heaping violence on someone else. And the way the kids grow up with it today, it's like nothing. And that's very frightening to me. It's very frightening to me.

[36:04] Micki Grant: Now the moon's become old hat. We've got to get to Mars. And after building bigger highways for our bigger motor cars, they tell us now to slow down while we hurry up and learn how to find more energy so there'll be more to burn. And who's gonna teach the children how to sing while you're busy doing your number and I'm out doing my thing? Who's gonna teach the children how to sing?

[37:08] ♪ Musical number: "Who's Gonna Teach the Children" — performed by Micki Grant ♪