This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Kevin David Thomas: Hey listeners, Kevin and I need your help.

[0:02] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, we need your help.

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[0:29] Kevin David Thomas: If you need some help, think of one star being Carol Channing and Paul Lynn in the road company of The Last Five Years, and five stars being free front row tickets to Hamilton.

[0:38] Robert W. Schneider: Although, when you think about it, I actually would give five stars to the road company of Carol Channing and Paul Inn in The Last Five Years, because I think that would be awesome.

[0:45] Kevin David Thomas: I would love to hear.

[0:46] Robert W. Schneider: Can I hear moving too fast as Paul?

[0:49] Kevin David Thomas: That's the really that's the one I really want to do.

[0:51] Robert W. Schneider: Jesus shakes the goddess.

[0:55] Kevin David Thomas: Erica Schwartz and Danica Weiss and the Handleman twins.

[1:00] Robert W. Schneider: So there you go. You can also leave a comment if you like.

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[1:04] Robert W. Schneider: Send us your reviews, friends. Thank you.

[1:06] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[1:07] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm Kevin David Thomas.

[1:09] Robert W. Schneider: And this is Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[1:12] Kevin David Thomas: Don't forget to follow us on Twitter at Broadway Curtain and on Instagram at Broadway Curtain Podcast.

[1:17] Robert W. Schneider: And make sure to join our Facebook page at Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[1:21] Kevin David Thomas: We are also excited to announce that you can listen to us on Broadway Radio.

[1:25] Robert W. Schneider: Kevin, we have been trying to get this now for quite some time because we are so impressed with his incredible resume.

[1:34] Kevin David Thomas: And we grew up listening to the orchestrations of many of his recordings.

[1:38] Robert W. Schneider: Yes, yes. Um and also, did you know that if it wasn't for today's guest, Stephen Sondheim would not have a Pulitzer Prize?

[1:46] Kevin David Thomas: That's a true story.

[1:47] Robert W. Schneider: And if that wasn't impressive enough, our guest, who is an accomplished orchestrator, has been praised as one of the most ingenious practitioners of his profession.

[1:55] Kevin David Thomas: As an orchestrator, his work has been heard on the albums of The Lost in Boston series, Unsung Sondheim, Sondheim at the Movies, the Unsung Musical Series, Liz Callaway On and Off Broadway, and Jason Graae, you're never fully dressed without a smile.

[2:09] Robert W. Schneider: Plus, he was instrumental in the 1988 recording of Showboat conducted by Maestro John McGlynn, which was a seismic event in the recording industry.

[2:17] Kevin David Thomas: Here to tell us more about the wonderful world of orchestrating and an incredible life is the legend himself, LARRY MOORE.

[2:25] LARRY MOORE: Yay. I think I'm less a legend and more of a dying swan.

[2:31] Kevin David Thomas: Disagree.

[2:32] Robert W. Schneider: Your swan is not dying, LARRY.

[2:34] LARRY MOORE: First of all, I want to thank you, young whippersnappers, for making me feel like an antique.

[2:40] Kevin David Thomas: So, what do you want to know?

[2:42] Robert W. Schneider: So, first of all, I want to I was gonna ask you before we talk about your life history. Can you tell us the story about how you got Stephen Sondheim the Pulitzer Prize? I think this story is so fascinating.

[2:53] LARRY MOORE: Well, it's convoluted because I came to New York in 1979, at the ripe old age of 33, because frankly it took me 33 years to get my shit together. And um, one of the first things that happened in New York was that a friend from Summer Theater from about 1970 had been a founding member of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, and three of he and two of the other boys in the chorus had begun a doo-wop trio, and they would sing doo-wop songs like Blue Moon and so on on their way home from chorus rehearsals.

[3:33] LARRY MOORE: So his name was Peter Clam, and Peter called me and he said, We need a vocal arranger. Would you like to work with us? So he and the two others, they were Aurelio Font and Paige Jackson, came to my apartment and sang a couple of things for me, and I said, sure. And one of my colleagues at Drama Bookshop was a composer. He's now dead. He died from AIDS about 2005. And he wrote a song for the trio. And uh pretty soon, so we auditioned. Let me get this story straight. So I was working with the boys writing vocal arrangements and playing for them. And the New York City Gay Men's Chorus had their second concert at a discotheque on I think 43rd Street called Bonds, which was the old Bonds clothing factory, excuse me.

[4:28] LARRY MOORE: And the chorus was going to perform there. And the conductor, Gary Miller, said that there wasn't enough material in the chorus repertoire for the chorus to do a whole evening. So if anybody wanted to audition as an act to appear with the chorus or as a break for the chorus, they would they could audition. So just good friends auditioned. And after they we performed for Gary, Gary said, Well, you guys have to perform, and then he asked me to write the opening medley for the chorus. And that was my first performed choral piece with the New York City Gay Men's Chorus.

[5:05] LARRY MOORE: So Arthur Lawrence was on the board of directors for the chorus, and he had been urging the chorus, urging Stephen Sondheim to get involved with the chorus. So one day I got a phone call from Gary. I was working at Drama Bookshop, and Gary said, What are you doing Friday afternoon? And I said, Well, I'm gonna get off work at five o'clock. He said, Can you get off work at four o'clock? And he said, Maybe. And he said, Well, we're going, we're going to Steve Sondheim's house. And of course, at that point, I dropped the phone and passed out. Yep, yep. And on Friday afternoon at 4 o'clock, we presented ourselves at Steve's apartment or Steve's house on 49th Street. And we had a lovely visit, and we talked about some possible song. And said Steve said, Well, once you know exactly what you want, call my secret, my office manager, Patricia Sennett, she now works for Symphony Space, and get the we'll give you the music.

[6:05] LARRY MOORE: So I got the music. We put it, I put the sketch together, and we went back to see Steve, and Steve played through it and seemed very happy with it. He suggested one different modulation from one song to another, but the medley was long, it was like eight minutes long. And that was premiered at the June 1981 concert, I think, at Alice Tully Hall, I believe. So anyway, following that, uh Merrily We Roll Along came and went. And uh because I really liked our time, I thought it was a good song for the chorus to do. And I urged Gary to include it in a chorus concert. And in June 82, I think it was 82, maybe it was 83, the chorus performed Our Time in their June concert at I guess it was Alice Tully Hall again.

And Steve came to the concert, okay. He came to the dress rehearsal, and he and I were sitting in the balcony listening and gossiping, and he said to me that after Merrily's failure, he wasn't going to write musicals anymore, which upset me greatly. I didn't like Merrily much, but I didn't think it was his fault that there were a lot of problems. And I don't think they'll ever fix it. So that's just my own personal opinion. I wish the show well, but I wish Stephen better.

[7:30] LARRY MOORE: And um so we were talking, and I basically was completely shocked that he said he was going to go write video games for Parker Brothers. And so for about he seemed to like the Our Time arrangement. And for about a year, I would call his house occasionally and ask Patricia how he was doing, and she'd say, Well, he's not writing anything. And um one time I was talking to him and he told me he had really liked the Our Time arrangement and had suggested to his publisher that they publish the arrangement. And so my first published choral arrangement happened, thanks to C. Sondheim. Wow. And my reaction was, Holy crap, how do I repay this?

[8:18] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[8:18] LARRY MOORE: I mean, what do you give to the man who basically can have anything? And I was talking to Patricia one day about this, and um she said he's working on something. And I said, Really? She said, Yes, he started writing again. He's got a show in the works. So I had to call Steve one day for some for a question for some answers to some questions that a friend of mine had asked me to ask him. And he was in a he was in one of his I'm writing and don't bother me moods. And so it was a rather tense conversation because I felt I was wasting his time, and I felt he was letting me know I was wasting his time. And I got off the phone and I said, Boy, that man hates my guests. I'm not calling him again. And about four weeks after that, Patricia called and said, Steve wants to know when you want to come and see Sunday in the Park with George. And that was when it was down at the Playwright's Horizons.

[9:15] LARRY MOORE: And I saw it on a Sunday afternoon. I thought, I saw it, I think about the fourth day after finishing the hat went into the show. And there was no act two. But the show was so wonderful. It was, it was everything I wish that Merrily We Roll Along had been, in terms of staging and in terms of clear book and everything. And I remember walking out the theater in complete shock. One of the things that was the most amazing about Sunday at Playwrights was that there were three musicians sitting in the little band area. There was a trumpeter, there was Michael Steraban on the piano, as I recall, and Paul Gemini on the drums. And every song had piano and drums. And the trumpeter just sat there. And they got to the act one closer of Sunday.

The chorus did the number, the photo was formed, the picture was formed, and then the trumpeter played Bomb Bum. Well, I was in complete tears. I remember walking out of the theater thinking, this is so magnificent. This show is so amazing. I think I cried from finishing the hat to the end. Mostly because finishing the hat is all about artistic drive prohibits so much of your personal life. You know, I used to get phone calls saying we're going to go to the movies tonight, and I would say, I got a piece to finish for the men's chorus, or you know, tomorrow we're gonna have dinner. Do you want to come along? No, I got an orchestration to write for New Amsterdam Theatre Company. So it had a real resonance for me.

[10:50] LARRY MOORE: So anyway, the show went to Broadway, and I was talking to Patricia about this Our Time situation. What do I do to pay them back? And she said, Well, yeah, I think you're worrying about too much. And I said, No, I really feel I should do something. I'm really grateful for this. And all of a sudden, this light bulb went off. And I said, has he ever been nominated for the Pulitzer? And Patricia said, not to my knowledge. And I had made a comment back like Company wasn't nominated, and she said, No. And I said, Follies wasn't nominated? I would have given Follies the Pulitzer Prize because if anything says anything about the state of America in 1971 and the Vietnam War, Follies does. You know, the war's never mentioned, but that poster and the crack in the American Dream, it's all too clear in that show.

[11:40] LARRY MOORE: So anyway, I thought, okay, I need to find out what I can learn about the Pulitzers. So I asked her if she knew anything, and she said, No, not me. So I called a librarian friend of mine at the public library music collection at Lincoln Center, his name is Charles Eubanks, and I said, What do you know about the Pulitzers? He said, Well, I think they're handled by the Columbia School of Journalism. Well, that was more than I knew before, so I called the Columbia School of Journalism. And they said, Yes, the office is here. And I spoke to a person in the office, and they said, You need the following. You need the biography of the writers, photos of the writers, the book or the text or whatever.

If it's a piece of music, we need a score and a recording, and then you pay the admission fee, which wasn't much, thank God. And so I called Patricia and said, This is what I need. She said, Okay. Well, about two days later, she called me back and she said, I can't do it. We have to tell Steve. He got nominated and didn't win and found out he had been nominated behind his back. It could be really ugly. And if he got nominated and found out he had won and hadn't been notified, it could get ugly. So I said, okay, I'll talk to him. So he called me that night and I said, I want to nominate Sunday in the Park with George for the Pulitzer. And his immediate reaction was, we're not gonna win. And I said, Well, you know what?

It's possible, but you've never been nominated, and it's about time you should be. So we talked a little bit, and he agreed to it. He said, just call Patricia, she'll take care of everything. So I called her back the next day and said, All right, get me a score, get me a libretto, get me a recording.

[13:30] LARRY MOORE: So about a couple of weeks later, the application form came in from the Pulitzer office, and I called her and said, I got the form. So I took the form over to Steve's house, and he and I visited and just gossiped and dished while she filled out the form. She typed it out because I'm a lousy typist. And I left the house with this huge bundle. It was at that point, the score wasn't published. It was a full big conductor's manuscript score, about what, 14 by 12 or something. Plus, I had the recording in the package along with the two pictures of James Lepine and Steve, a copy of the working libretto. And I walked, he's on 49th Street. So I walked down to 42nd, took the 104 bus, which then ran from the UN up to 125th Street.

So I got on the bus at 42nd Street and 3rd Avenue, rode it all the way up to Columbia. I got there about three in the afternoon. And I remember walking around the campus looking at it was in the summer. It was either late summer or early fall. But these kids all looked like they were 12 years old. And I remember thinking, was I ever that young? Did I look like that in college? So anyway, I turned this thing in, and the man who I gave it to said, you're awfully early for this. And I said, Well, I'm here. Here's your money, here's your material. And I completely forgot about it. So in was it April of 1985? I got a phone call one morning from my dad who's who was upset. He was in tears, and it was about seven in the morning.

And he said, You've got to fly back to Ohio today because your mother has to have a quadruple bypass tomorrow. And if she doesn't come out of it, I want you and Tom and Randy, my two brothers, with her. So I said, Give me the, I have to get my day organized, get a plane ticket and everything else. And so I spent the day running errands, and I got home about lunchtime, and I had leftover Chinese food from the night before for lunch. And the fortune cookie said, You will hear great news today. And about that time, Patricia called me and she said, My phone has been ringing off the hook. And I thought, your phone's always ringing off the hook, lady. I mean, you know, when I say I'm busy, it means you know, I've got like a possible two dates on my calendar.

When Steve Sondheim is busy, there are probably a thousand dates on his calendar. So she said, this is the day the Pulitzers are announced. And I'm getting all these phone calls from the United Press, from the ABI, and so on, and they all want to know about Steve and the Pulitzer. And so I was thinking about you. And I said, Oh, is it today? I have to fly back to Ohio because my mother and we talked about my mother's operation. And I said, she said, I'll call you back later as soon as I hear something. So I went off and got my plane ticket and came back and was packing. I came back about maybe 4:30 in the afternoon to pack to get ready to go to, I think I was going to LaGuardia. And there was a phone message, and it was Patricia, and she was screaming, we won!

We won! We won. So I called her back and she said, Where are you? Steve wants to talk to you. Where are you? I said, I'm home now. She said, All right, don't go anywhere. He's calling you right back. And he was at the theater with Lepine. They had announced at the end of the performance that they had just been given the Pulitzer. And Steve called me from the theater, and we talked very briefly. He was really happy, and I was ecstatic. And then I flew to Ohio, and my mother survived her surgery, and I came back, and there was an invitation in the mail to the anniversary party for Sunday in the Park with George. And all I could think of was, damn, I need to buy a suit.

[17:36] Kevin David Thomas: That is incredible. That's incredible. I'm just completely flabbergasted by that story.

[17:44] LARRY MOORE: Well, that's how it happened. You know, Steve may have a whole different memory. He may have been, oh yeah, this pain in the butt kept bothering me, and I said yes. Now I have to ask you, LARRY, how did the relationship with John McGlynn start?

[17:55] LARRY MOORE: That became about because of the Drama Bookshop. I had been working as an assistant to the buyers. I was hired to do troubleshooting things. I never was hired to sell books in the store. I was hired to work in the office as a book buyer and a shipping problems person. And occasionally I get called out to the floor with questions and things. And I had met a young theater business person named John, I can't remember his last name now. Ben Bagley was madly in love with him. And he was, but Benjamin was straight, and it was the agony of Ben Bagley's life. I had been, I had been a fan of mine from the New York City Gamers chorus, Jimmy Simpson, had knew a film producer named Sam Irvin, who at that point lived in New York.

Sam had written, had produced a low-budget thriller, and he was looking for a composer, and Jimmy recommended me. And I interviewed with Sam, and Sam was great. And he said, I like what I've heard, but tell me about your sound studio experience. And I went, duh. And he said, I have to hire someone who knows his way around a sound studio. This is a low budget, I have very little money, and I can't afford to lose it on someone who has no experience. So I lost the job, which is kind of good because I really am not a composer, but it led me to work for Ben Bagley as an orchestrator because I wanted to learn my way around the recording studio.

[19:27] Kevin David Thomas: And tell us a little bit, our listeners may not know who Ben Bagley is. Maybe in a nutshell.

[19:31] LARRY MOORE: Ben Bagley had been at one point a theater producer. He produced shows for the Phoenix Theater, The Little Review, The Littlest Review. His big success was an off-Broadway show called The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter. And Ben in the 70s started doing a series of records called Revisited. The first one was called Rogers and Hart Revisited. And they were all done with a good budget, a good arranger named Norman Paris, who was married to Dorothy Loudoun. And the first albums, which were there was the Rogers and Hart Revisited, there was a Noel Coward Revisited, Cole Porter Revisited, a George Jerome Kern, and a George Gershwin. And they were either for the crew label or MGM, as I recall.

By the early 1980s, Ben was working on a shoestring budget, and all of his album covers were designed by Harvey Schmidt, the composer of The Fantasticks. Oh yes, of course. And Ben in the early 80s was basically doing recordings with piano, bass, and drums, and occasional instrument that he would overdub two or three times to get a sound of a full sound.

[20:51] LARRY MOORE: So I was working for him both as a copyist. I knew he, I met him through the Drama Bookshop because he would come and sell me his records. And Ben was a hoot. He was a very sad man. He always fell in love with straight men who rejected him. And he would write in his liner notes, you know, I'm desperately looking for love while living in Queens in poverty with my cat. I can't remember the cat's name now. Those were always the liner notes. And he also wrote very outrageous things about his performers, you know. And I can't remember them now. I do, I because I have some of his albums, and I do recall him being a little out there in his notes.

[21:33] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, outrageous, you know, like you know, his latest film is called House Dick, and that kind of thing. And I've seen in this a fantastic movie. I well, at one point he I remember he wrote about I think it was on the Vernon Duke Revisited album. He wrote that one. He wrote that Jerome Robbins always had problems with his leading ladies. No, Vernon Duke always had problems with his leading ladies, and Jerome Robbins was no exception. And then in his own little biography, as long as, as well as talking about being living in poverty in Queens, he would add things like Ben Bagley, who is hopelessly insane, as if if I say I'm crazy, that justifies any rude thing I say in this liner notes.

[22:23] LARRY MOORE: I'm obsessed. I gotta get these. So, how did you get associated through the Drama Bookshop?

[22:28] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[22:28] LARRY MOORE: So anyway, I was working as an orchestrator for, I mean, I was doing stuff for Ben, but we ran into this kid, Benjamin something one day. I was on my way to lunch, and I ran to him out in the street, and I just said to him, I introduced my friend Tom to him, who is my co-worker, and we asked what he was doing. He said, I'm working with a new theater company, and we're looking for an orchestrator. And I said, Oh, and my friend Tom, who had heard some of my stuff, literally took my right shoulder and pushed me at him and said, Hire him. So the next day, Bill Tynes, who was the producer of the New Amsterdam Theater Company, called me. We talked on the phone for about two hours, and that's how I became a member of the New Amsterdam Theater Company.

[23:17] Kevin David Thomas: Can you tell us a little bit about that company? Because I think some people might know.

[23:21] LARRY MOORE: It began as a group called The Bandwagon. And it was a collaboration of two producers, Bill Tynes. Bill Tynes was this young violinist who loved period musicals. His idea of heaven was sitting at home listening on his wind-up Victrola to old shellac recordings of musicals from the 30s and 40s and 20s. Not bad. And yes, Ethan. Ethan Morton used to was on the board, and Ethan Morton used to joke that Bill only liked The King and I because if Gertrude Lawrence was in it, it had to be a 20s musical. And so Bill was co-producing with this horrible man named Jerry Bell, and they were going to produce Floridora. The first musical you could say.

[24:22] LARRY MOORE: So they needed an orchestrator, and they were allowing me to score it for 12 players. And Evans Hale, who has done a myriad things around town as a conductor and a producer, was the musical director. And I remember going to a lovely showcase to raise money for it, where there was a group of maybe six singers who sang the score it was really lovely it's very very pretty Gilbert and Sullivan kind of stuff and I started working on it and then Bill called me and said I have bad news Jerry Bell and I have parted ways I am going to reorganize the group and as soon as I do you'll hear from me. Jerry Bell went ahead with Floridora and I continued working on it but I would go into rehearsal with a finished score and hand it to him and he would look at it and say oh we cut this number yesterday or I would be at the rehearsal with him and we'd be listening to me he'd turn me and say don't you just hate this score and all I could think of was then you dumb asshole why are you producing this score?

If you don't like the show why do it so after about a week of dealing with him I walked in and said here's a check for the money I've spent don't ever call me again. Ethics have always been my problem with standing up for yourself.

[25:43] LARRY MOORE: So Bill Tynes called me and said that it's now we are now called the New Amsterdam Theater Company and Evans and I are going to do Victor Herbert's Eileen. Oh so I went to work with them I there was a lot of cut songs from Eileen. I didn't know at the time about the Victor Herbert collection at the Library of Congress because if I'd known about that I would have gone down copied the scores and just copied the parts but I orchestrated the numbers was done at Town Hall and it was a it went well. Judy Kay was in it. Oh wow. Jeannie Lehman was Eileen, Mark Jacoby was the romantic lead. Roderick Cook was in it. The cast was great. Did you do a lot of research on? I mean, I'm sure eventually, as you did more of these period scores, how did you prepare? I mean, did you research that, you know, in order to get the style of it?

[26:36] LARRY MOORE: I was flying blind back in the middle. That was the best way to learn. I love it. I was flying blind. And I just scored the numbers. And anyway, it happened. And from that point on, I was a member of the company. So they did a show by Sigmund Romberg and George Gershwin called Rosalie, which was a Ziegfeld show from Marilyn Miller.

[27:01] LARRY MOORE: And Marilyn Miller in New Amsterdam was played by Mary Ann Tatum, who was doing Barnum at the time. And she was a beautiful lady. And Richard Muans was the romantic lead. And Alex Corey played the belting role. Of course. Love her. And the comedy role was, I think it was Rusty Thacker, because they do say so. Say so, say you love me. And at the first orchestra rehearsal, this young man named John McGlynn showed up. John had been working with City Opera and was assisting Malcherry on the Candeed there. And he had he had been doing work on the show boat that Houston Grand Opera was doing. And he had been working for Ira Gershwin. And he had come primarily to hear what the Gershwin stuff sounded like in Rosalie.

And uh I did several cut numbers for that. There was um Yankee Doodle Rhythm for Alex. And there was a cut number from Primrose called New Lyrics called Beautiful Gypsy that Richard Muan sang. I did it, and I did The Man I Love because that had been written for the show, had been used in the show and then dropped. So anyway, so John McGlynn started calling me about various projects. He did in 85, he did that series of Kern Kern's Centennial was 19 was 1985. So John was called John used me on no, I'm sorry, I'm I'm completely confused. Bear with me a second. John did at Carnegie Hall in 1985 his three print his three princess theater show series. He did Oh Boy O Lady Lady and Zip Goes a Million.

And then he also did for New Amsterdam Theater Company, Leave It to Jane, because they also did a three-current season in 85. And that led to his contract with EMI, Angel EMI Records. Tony Corona, I believe, was the executive who decided he should be signed for their crossover series.

[29:25] LARRY MOORE: And we did. She was a pain in the ass. There were two reasons. The first reason that was John McGlyn, who later self-destructed because of his arrogance and his pomposity in 1985, was very much a nicer person. And he was very, he was very not not uh condescending, but he let Kiri know he was a fan. And she smelled fresh meat, and she walked all over him. Um he told me later they had a problem picking the repertoire because she didn't like the Gershwin songs very much. Then why do the album? Well, it was committed. And I remember at the very first band rehearsal, something happened with the drummer. She wasn't happy with him, and he was replaced. Nice man. And the week before the sessions, she wouldn't rehearse with John because she had company in from out of town.

And this was my first experience working on a huge budget recording. And EMI went all out to kiss her butt. There was fresh fruit and flowers every day, and she was she was awful. The first day she was lovely, but she has a very short-term memory, and she couldn't remember the she couldn't remember the music since she hadn't rehearsed it in over a week. And one day we had to have a break while the band left the room and she relearned the verse to our love is here to stay. And the more she looked bad, the more defensive and ugly she became. So when I was inventorying John McGlynn's estate in 2009, we ran across a cassette and we put it on, and there was Kiri at the session yelling at John McGlynn, I am not a fucking machine.

[31:25] LARRY MOORE: Now that's that's a tape then people would love to hear. Oh my god. Now, there had been all these different incarnations of Showboat, and we were looking for a definitive version of this. So what happens? What did what do you and John come up with? Well, actually, what happened was this. John would, John, after the Kiri album, the next week we recorded Gershwin Overtures. And the question was, what's going to be the next recording for EMI? I think he was given like a three-year contract or something to do so many recordings a year. And John would call me. It was funny, the the two late night callers I had during that period were Ethan Morton and John McGlynn. Ethan would call about whatever he was working on or just to gossip.

McGlynn was the other person who would call me regularly. He'd call me and say, you know, I've been thinking about this and so on. And we would he would call me at like 11 o'clock at night, and he was an all-nighter, and I had to get up and go to work at a drama bookshop. And he would talk until like three in the fucking morning. And he was a very lonely unhappy man. And he I never considered John a close friend because I felt he was there were too many, there were too many barriers and walls up to be close to get close to anybody. And I liked John and I liked working with him. I later found I liked working with him more than I liked him personally. But by the time we stopped being friends, I didn't even want to see him anymore. And that was in 2002. But so he was trying to decide what to do next.

[33:04] LARRY MOORE: And then one night he called me and he said, All right, brace yourself. And I said, What? He said, We're going to record a complete showboat. And that led to questions like, you know, who are you gonna cast and so on? And he had decided, I think, thanks to Miles Kruger, that it shouldn't just be showboat, but it should be everything ever written for Showboat. I had nothing to do with any of that. The only thing I had a weighing vote on that he accepted was he wanted to know what to do about the end of the show. You know, what how does the show end? The original show was supposed to end with it's getting hotter in the north. The Magnolia didn't like it, so she ended up doing impersonations. Then for London, they wrote Dance Away the Night.

Then for 1946, they wrote Nobody Else But Me. And my comment was, I think you should do the original. It's thematically tied in with the themes and everything. And you know, it may not be what the show ended with, but I think it's the right closer for the body of the show. So that's what he did. But he would call me, he would say, Well, I'm gonna have Russell do these numbers, and I did the three movie songs. He was so funny. I never felt I was I was good at transcription. I always thought Russell was better at that. But John decided I was better at that, and the Russell was better as an orchestrator. So I did the transcription stuff. I did the three movie songs, and Russell did the stuff that was written and wasn't used in the show.

Actually, he did, that's right, because the Trocadero chorus wasn't ever in the show, even though it was written. So we did that. The um show boat happened in 88. Um, it was recorded over the summer, and John called me one day and he said, Well, I'm gonna be in London, I need to have all the showboat materials handy in case I have a problem. So I'm bringing them over to your house. Now, my apartment's about as big as this room, and the showboat material was about as big as this table. And for over a year, I had it all sitting in the middle of my living space. So anyway, that's how that happened.

[35:16] LARRY MOORE: And um, the the most exciting thing about Showboat, well, there were two great things. The first thing was when the album was recording, John called me one day from London, and he said, You had to go to Harriet Pilpel's office. Harriet Pilpel was the current attorney. Um the situation with Showboat was that Jimmy Hammerstein did not want the original version recorded. He only wanted the 46th version recorded. But Harriet Pilpel, who was the current attorney, was also Edna Ferber's attorney. And Jimmy Hammerstein lost because two-thirds of the vote went with McGlynn. Wow. Wow. And so the Secaucus situation warehouse in the early 80s had discovered, had uncovered a great deal of the missing showboat stuff.

So by 1987 or 88, the showboat material had been released. Well, had been the current material had been cleared or taken care of. So I had to go to Harriet Pilpel's office, get a letter of permission, go to the Warner Brothers warehouse, which was at that point down on like 27th Street, all the way over to the east to the hard to the uh Hudson, and give them the letter, and they handed me it's getting hotter in the north, the Apache Dance, and the box office scene, which was I would like to play a lover's part. So I got the full scores for those. I then took those full scores to Associated Music, which is on 52nd Street between 8th and 9th, wait while they photocopied the scores, and then take the scores to Harriet Pilpel's office. And that took me all day. I think I started at 10 in the morning and got home about four.

[37:14] LARRY MOORE: Wow. And those scores were photocopied, and then they were sent to England where they were copied and recorded. So that was my first showboat story. My second showboat story is the end of the year after the album was finished, a rough cut was assembled. And it wasn't the appendix material, so I didn't hear any of my stuff, but I got to hear the 1920 score with some inserts that John had put in, like the box office scene, and it's getting hotter in the north. And so John cleaned his apartment, which must have been an epic undertaking, and he invited Bob Kimball and me over. And one night, I can't remember when it was now, we I took a taxi over to John's apartment, and John basically sat me down in front of the speakers with the score, and Bob sat behind me, and we listened to Act 1.

I was in complete shock. I remember getting up and saying to John, I was weeping, just gone. And I said, I can't all discuss this. I will call you tomorrow. And I walked out, got into a taxi and went home. And the next day I called John and I said, This is the greatest studio cast recording I've ever heard in my life. And I have not changed my opinion. I don't think John ever reached that level again. And when I was doing the recordings in 2011 and 13 with Robert with Roberta and Dearest Enemy and Eileen, I just kept thinking I want this to be as good. I didn't achieve it, but that's Showboat's my model.

[38:56] Kevin David Thomas: Wow. That's so special. That you were, and you were not only that you were a part of that, I mean that you created that, that was your collaboration. So then I remember when the the following summer I met John, and he was we had we met at there used to be a place right across from Lincoln Center that's gone down. I can't remember the name of the place. But I met at they had a sidewalk cafe, and I met him there, and we had drinks, and he showed me the artwork for the showboat album, and we talked about various projects. He said they want me to do an Annie Get Your Gun with Dolly Parton. And I thought, wow, that's weird. So take us now to when you started working on the unsung, the The Lost in Boston, the Bruce Kimmel time and all of that.

[39:47] LARRY MOORE: I was very unhappy. And um I am a big subscriber to magazines, and I read every recording magazine. So in the American Record Guide, no, it was Fanfare magazine, there was an interview with Bruce Kimmel, who was at that point with a company called Bay Cities as a producer. And I knew Bruce from seeing him in commercials on television and from the first New Deep musical, which was one of the first movies I saw in 1979. And I remember at the time telling everybody, this movie is so funny and so demented, I want to work with this man. Well, here was his interview.

[40:31] LARRY MOORE: Here's this Bruce is now producing records. Who knew that? So I called him. I just got on information and found Bass Cities in Los Angeles and called, and Bruce Kimball answered the phone. I realized now if the company had been doing well, he would have answered the phone. This might not have happened. But Bass Cities was on its way out. I didn't know that. And uh I said to Bruce, I had been a big fan for a long time and I had enjoyed the interview. And did he ever need an orchestrator? And he said, I don't have any projects right now that need an orchestrator, but if you want to send me a resume and a demo, I'll be happy to listen. So I did. And about a year went by, and Bruce called me out of the blue, floored me.

He said, I'm gonna do an album of Frank Lesser songs with Liz Callaway, and I want you to do it. And I said, That's great. I don't know Liz personally, but I loved her and baby, and she has a great voice. He said, Well, I think the two of you should meet. Go, uh, and if she likes you and wants to work with you, the job's yours. So she was doing Miss Saigon, so we met at this deli that's no longer in existence, uh, literally across from the Broadway theater, and got along great. She had a little baby Nicholas with her, and um, it was a fantastic time. And then Bruce called me and said, 'Bass is dead. I have to postpone the album. But I think I'm going to be moving this series to a different label.

And once it's set up, you'll hear from me. And sure enough, he went to Vares Sarah Band. Yep. And he called me. He said, 'Okay, I'm gonna be coming into New York to hear about how Liz and Alex Ryback are working. And they were great. I would go to the rehearsal. There was Bruce, there was Alex, there was Liz and me. And occasionally I would make a comment. I think I'm the person that said, you really should slow down. My heart is so full of you. I think this should be the adagio of the album. And I remember that Alex had the idea of the back harak Joey Joey. And it was just a great time of the four of us bouncing ideas off of each other. And then Bruce said, okay, we're going to record and we're going to do a Sondheim album at the same time.

Oi. And he said, he asked me if I had a conductor in mind. And I thought of my friend Jim Stenborg because I knew Jim had worked with Steve on Sweeney Todd. And I had worked with Jim at Good Speed. And the deal was, I was hand copying the parts for Liz's album. But the deal was that Jim would do the finale copying for the Sondheim. So it was like four weeks of hell. I was writing this two albums at the same time. Is this the unsung sound time? Yep, the very first one. I thought I was going to go crazy. And we recorded them back to back. And I kept I can remember thinking at the very first day of rehearsal, or the first day of recording, I'm going to be fired by the end of the week. I don't know why I'm here.

I'm out of here, no time. And at the end of the two weeks, Bruce just said to me, When you fly to LA, make sure you're registered for mileage. And I thought, okay, I'm safe. Good. When we finished Liz's album, the lesser songs, and we finished the opening number, The How to Succeed with all of that 100 people accompaniment. How excited we all were. It was just thrilling. And you know, then you go out to Los Angeles and you finally start putting the pieces together. But I wasn't trying in that on those recordings to really emulate anybody.

[44:19] LARRY MOORE: That was my next question. I was gonna say the other albums you started probably like The Lost in Boston. Lost in Boston was definitely you've got these orchestrators that had written the shows, and so now each song has its own kind of style. And I my goal on the Lost in Boston and the unsung musicals was to try and catch what I thought was the sound of the original orchestrator. Yeah. I didn't always succeed. I'll tell you where I felt I succeeded. I felt I really came close on where do I go from here? From Fiorello. Um I felt on the West Side story, Kids Ain't, I felt I was nowhere near the sound of West Side Story. On the song from on the two songs from the Baccharak songs from Promises Promises, I feel I nailed them.

Um I didn't, I did not nail the Fantastics number, and I did not nail, oh I really fucked up on it. Italy and Technicolor from Street Scene. Yeah. I listened to that track and I cringe. And I don't know if it's me, if it's the conductor, if it's Bruce, but I feel that we all let that song down. I just can't explain it, but I really don't think it's very good. I was just gonna say, do you have a favorite orchestrator? Besides yourself, obviously. I'm not my favorite. Oh. I think I've I think I'm good. I don't, but I think also that I I think I'm I think I'm a good craftsman. I think that there are people like Russell Bennett who are so far above me and know a zillion times more than I ever will learn in my lifetime.

Um the difference between, let's say Russell Bennett and me is that between 1900 and 1970, you were guaranteed an orchestra of minimally 25 to 30 players. You know, Richard Rogers, when he had 33 players for Sound of Music, Camelot had 33 players. Yeah. You know, Carousel originally had 38. I mean, they had huge orchestras. You don't get that now. So I feel that I feel that I do good work. I think I did a lovely job with Dearest Enemy. I think I did a lovely job with Jubilee, the Cole Porter show. But I'm not sure I would know what to do with a show like Bright Star. Yeah. I love Bright Star. I think August Ehrlichman, Earlickman, whatever his name is, his work is just so fabulous on catching the sound of Nashville and and country western music or bluegrass music.

Um I I tried on uh Liz's album of On and Off Broadway with Sleepy Man, which I love, and I think I did a lovely job with it. I'm not sure I would have done an entire show for Steve Martin and Edie Brickell as well as Augustine. And you know, some shows, like for instance, I loved Rent. I saw Rent maybe five or six times. And I would just sit in the theater and just marvel at that band because I couldn't have done it. I wouldn't have known where to begin. I'm really I'm really a relic of the Russell Bennett period. Yeah. Um I always felt with with Bruce's albums. Bruce's other orchestrator, he primarily used, is a man named Lanny Myers, who is fabulous. And I always felt that Lanny and I were Bruce Kimball's Russell Bennett and Nelson Riddle.

And those aren't bad places to be. Nope. But you know, I think Jonathan Tunick's amazing. Yep. I think that all the classics, the problem is that nobody goes back far enough to know who did what. For instance, did you know that John Philip Sousa orchestrated one of the pirated versions of HMS Pinafore in the 1870s, 1880s? No. Yes, and Arthur Sullivan liked his orchestration. Amazing. And Victor Herbert was a good orchestrator, but Victor Herbert took credit for doing everything. And what I know now from working on his shows is that he did only the work he wanted to do, and the rest of the work he gave to assistants. And he had two major assistants. They were Otto Lange, who stopped working for him about 1910 because he went to work for G. Shermer, and Harold Sanford, who was his concert violinist.

Wow. And so Victor Herbert did orchestrate and did it very well. But Otto Lange and Harold Sanford were just as good. Harold Sanford's career ended in the 30s, but he orchestrated, he did some work on Dearest Enemy for Rogers at Hart. And so in fact, his only the only existing score from Dearest Enemy is Harold Sanford's. And so I'm happy that my work doesn't sound dissimilar from his.

[50:45] LARRY MOORE: That was fine. Lanny did it instead. I'm sure his work is stunning. And um, so I basically, you know, in in New York, when you do a union job, there's a copyist involved. So if I have to write it out by hand for a recording or whatever project, there's a copyist that copies it. And they do finale, yeah. Yes. So most of my work these days is editorial work. I in 2001, John McGlynn started a project with the Packard Humanities Institute. And he brought me on board to he was going to record all of Victor Herbert and all of Jerome Kern. And he decided that I was I was going to be in charge of all the Victor Herbert stuff, and Russell Warner would be in charge of all of the Jerome Kern stuff. And so the pro the John self-destructed at the end of the first year, which wasn't surprising because by 2001, his megalomania and arrogance had become intolerable to anyone within a mile distance.

And the project lingered on until 2011, when the Humanities Institute closed us down. But most of my work between then and now is editorial work. I spent most of my time looking at period scores for Encores or for the Jerome Moras estate or for whoever. And I'm mostly editing these days. And I like this. I did the Most Happy Fellow for them about four years ago. That's fantastic. No longer than that, maybe six years. Yeah. I've now had the edition of the Golden Apple published. Yeah. I'm now working, I'm also working with Encores. I reconstruct things for them occasionally. They're very good about calling me in. That's wonderful.

[52:40] LARRY MOORE: So LARRY, we can't. We have to wrap up now before you take me so. Yes. All right, what I was gonna say was so I gave up all hopes of ever doing a Broadway show. And in 2009, Rob Berman called me and said, Do you want to do Finnyon's Rainbow? Of course. So but I want to say it overall is that I've always been rather passive about my career. Things have just sort of happened to me. And I've been very lucky though, in that in the last 40 years, there have been very few jobs I've done that I haven't been happy to do or be involved with. So I'm luckier than a lot of people.

[53:16] Robert W. Schneider: And we're lucky to have your artist training.

[53:18] Kevin David Thomas: We are, it's so true. Uh LARRY, I hope you'll join us again at some point, and we can we can discuss uh some specific musicals and your thoughts on those.

[53:30] LARRY MOORE: Okay. Maybe some specific people and your thoughts on those.

[53:33] LARRY MOORE: I have lots of thoughts on those.

[53:35] Robert W. Schneider: The After Hours podcast. I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[53:37] Kevin David Thomas: I'm Kevin.

[53:39] Robert W. Schneider: And this was Behind the Curtain Broadway's Living Legends. Take care.

[53:41] Kevin David Thomas: Bye everyone.

[53:44] Robert W. Schneider: Tune in next week because everybody's favorite Broadway historian, Jennifer Ashley Tepper stops by to talk to us.