#159 The Broadway Musical: Setting the Stage

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2013

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Broadway Musical is one of New York City's greatest inventions, 150 years in the making! It's one of the truly American art forms, fueling one of the city's most vibrant entertainment businesses and defining its most popular tourist attraction -- Times Square. But why Broadway, exactly? Why not the Bowery or Fifth Avenue? And how did our fair city go from simple vaudeville and minstrel shows to 'Shuffle Along', 'Irene' and 'Show Boat', surely the beginning of the truly modern American musical? This podcast is an epic and wild musical adventure in itself, full of musical interludes, zipping through the evolution of musical entertainment in New York City, as it races up the 'main seam' of Manhattan -- the avenue of Broadway. We are proud to present a tour up Broadway, past some of the greatest theaters and shows that have ever won acclaim here, from the wacky (and highly copied) imports of Gilbert & Sullivan to the dancing girls and singing sensations of the Jazz Age. STARRING: Well, some of the biggest names in songwriting, composing and singing. And even a dog who talks in German! And featuring our new sponsor Squarespace! www.boweryboyspodcast.com Twitter: boweryboys Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys episode 159, the Broadway musical, setting the stage.
0:05.5	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:07.1	Hey, the Bowry Boys is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it
0:12.8	fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
0:17.4	For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and use offer code Bowry.
0:24.5	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:27.1	And this is Tom Myers.
0:28.7	Welcome to the Bowry Boys holiday show for 2013.
0:32.6	And it seems like Christmas came early to us here at the Bowry Boys Greg.
0:36.0	We've got a lot of new presents under the tree of brand new artwork decorating our podcasts now,
0:40.8	wherever, and you're probably looking at it right now on whatever device you're listening to.
0:45.4	And you also might have noticed a new sponsor, but that doesn't mean that Ero Chippo has gone away.
0:50.4	Oh no, Ero Chippo is still here and literally right here.
0:54.7	And we still have hotels in New York City.
0:57.2	But the Bowry Boys also have a new sponsor that we're very excited about.
1:01.2	You'll hear a little bit more about Squarespace later in our show.
1:04.6	Greg, 86 years ago, 86 years ago, this month, on December 27th, 1927,
1:12.4	crowds gathered at the Ziegfeld Theater for the opening of a new musical that would change
1:18.2	the world of musical theater. That musical was called Showboat.
1:22.6	Why is Showboat such an important musical in the canon here of American musicals?
1:28.2	That's what we're basically going to tell the story of in tonight's show.
1:31.8	We're going to talk about what the musical scene was because it was quite a bit different
	...

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