Best Little Whorehouse in Texas film on DVD

It's a little T & A for my musical Year. Well, a lot of T if you're looking at Dolly Parton. And just to keep everyone engaged, there's some nice A in the football team locker room scene in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

This show seems tailor-made for the personas of Ms. Parton and Burt Reynolds, although I think several songs written by Parton were added to the film version. And Mr. Reynolds, while not embarrassing himself musically in his one number, wisely does not perform the other songs for the Sheriff from the stage version. I had know that Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" (as made famous by Whitney Houston), but didn't know it was in this film.

The music for chorus is really the draw for this show; from the back-up singers for Melvin Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) to the girls of the Chicken Ranch and the boys of the Aggie's football team, the group numbers are fun, funny and upbeat. The couple of solo or duet numbers don't really reach off the screen.

Sorry, sis, by I need to tell one personal story about this show. When my sister and I were in our twenties, my family went to visit her and see her in a community theater production of this show. I don't remember much about the production, except that it was well-done, and that I have rarely been more embarrassed than I was sitting between my mother and grandmother watching the football locker room scene. You're familiar with the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?" well this was "Is he gay in Peoria?"

Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
Music and Lyrics by Carol Hall
Book by Larry L. King
Film released in 1982 based on the 1978 stage musical
Cast: Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise

Ain't Misbehaving Live Performance

This is the second "jukebox" musical in my Year so far, and this one is far superior in my opinion to the previous one. Although perhaps this one should rightly be called a "jukejoint" musical.

A cast of five and a band of eight took the stage at the Goodman Theatre for today's matinee of Ain't Misbehavin' The Fats Waller Musical Show. I had heard bits of Waller's music before and recognized several of the song titles, but didn't know much about the man or his music. Fortunately, both his story and his music are interesting--varied in style, and well arranged in this revue that was created in 1978.

Here was what I was missing in Smokey Joe's Cafe: a good variety of songs and performance styles in musical arrangements that offered everything from intimate accompaniment to "blow the roof off" numbers. As staged in this production by Goodman Theatre Associate Producer Chuck Smith, the show uses the stage well. And there was a set and costumes that said something about the era of this music. All things that Smokey didn't have.

The standout in the cast has to be E. Faye Butler (pictured) . Ms. Butler is a singer and actress of accomplishment in Chicago, and that experience shone in her performance. The other four performers were each good in their way and made the most of their moment in the spotlight. I may be turning into my father, but I did have a lot of trouble understanding a lot of the lyrics, and most of the jokes were lost on me because I couldn't understand the words. But the music shone through and the incredibly racially diverse audience ate it up--myself included.

Ain't Misbehavin' The Fats Waller Musical Show
Music by Thomas "Fats" Waller and others
Lyrics by Andy Razaf, Richard Maltby, Jr., Billy Rose and a whole bunch of others
Show conceived by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Murray Horwitz
Live Performance at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago
Directed by Chuck Smith
Cast: E. Faye Butler, Parrish Collier, John Steven Crowley, Lina Kernan, Alexis Rogers