- Movies and the stage both romantisized life in the frontier. In honor of Oklahoma coming to town, let's look at some of the songs set in the old American West.
One pleasure of seeing "the west" onstage is the roughness and anything-goes energy, usually from the men. Here are some of those fun-and-fancy-free numbers, the Buffalo Bill show, and Belly up to the Bar.
* Colonel Buffalo Bill - The opening number to "Annie Get Your Gun," David Garrison from a studio recording (also featuring Thomas Hampson as Frank)
* Belly Up to the Bar, Boys - Tammy Grimes is the title character in The Unsinkable Molly Brown
* The Lonesome Cowboy - from Crazy for You, the reworking of "Girl Crazy" set in a Nevada mining town
A few songs about the slow, often lonely pace of the West.
* Bidin' My Time - the quartet from Crazy for You lyin' about on stage makes for my favorite rendition of this Gershwin classic
* Lament (Lonesome Polecat) - Matt Mattox from the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
* They Call The Wind Maria - Opera star Bryn Terfel is Welsh, but channels the lonely calling of the western wind in this classic from Paint Your Wagon.
* Joey, Joey Joey - Another 'wind calling you away' song, thi time from the original cast of The Most Happy Fella.
When you're lonely, you go looking for companionship. Sometimes you find it, sometimes you just keep complaining that it's not there.
* The Wild Wild West - When America headed west, so did Fred Harvey's restaurant chain...and so did a lot of young waitresses who didn't know how wild the frontier was. Virginia O'Brien's character thought it would be a lot wilder, though, and has one of the fun songs from this 1946 film.
* Bless Yore Beautiful Hide - Howard Keel in the 1954 answer to Oklahoma's success
* Doin' What Comes Natur'lly - Bernadette Peters won a Tony for her 1999 revival of Annie Oakley's story; this song revels in the facts of the birds and bees with her little siblings.
* What Takes My Fancy - Lucille Ball took a spectacular flop on Broadway with "Wildcat," which includes this rough-and-tumble duet between a crotchety varmit and a sassy gal who come to a mutual understanding.
Just a few more songs to wrap things up...
* Hand Me Down That Can 'O Beans - from Paint Your Wagon, Robert Penn and the men celebrate a gal coming to town.
* On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe - the big number from The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland. You can live in the Wild West, but it sure helps to be connected to civilization once in a while with a train!
* March of the Doagies - an outtake from the Harvey Girls, with Judy Garland
And finally, some people just like civilization a lot better.
* Way Out West - from the film Words and Music, with Betty Garrett.
A few other shows that feature cowboys and the west:
- Will Rogers Follies: The restless Rodgers broke in horses for the British Army, was a trick roper in South Africa, roped on Vaudeville, and eventually worked up a routine for Ziegfeld's follies. His story's told in an Ahrens-Flaherty musical set up like a Ziegfeld show.
- Roadside: The 2001 musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, following a traveling tent show on an Old West adventure. Also based loosely on "Green Grow the Lilacs," the play that birthed "Oklahoma"
Desperate Measures - a reworking of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
Girl of the Golden West - a 1938 film with Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald.
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