| Considered for but not written for Cabaret | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:03 pm EST 12/07/24 | |
| In reply to: re: Adam Lambert's "I Don't Care Much" video. - Chromolume 11:40 am EST 12/07/24 | |
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| This subject has come up here a number of times over the years, and I've posted some of the history here in the past on those occasions. Some of the story has already been posted in the thread, but I think it's not altogether clear as it's been posted in bits and pieces. So here is the story. Basically, I'm reposting a post from the past, slightly adapted to this specific discussion. I will be repeating a few things that have already been said, but it would take a while to adjust this and eliminate repetitions of what has already been mentioned. The song was not written for Cabaret. It was written early in Kander and Ebb's collaboration. It was on The Second Barbra Streisand Album, which was released in late August or very early September 1963. Kander and Ebb had not been hired for Cabaret when they wrote it. If they wrote it in 1962 or very early 1963, Hal Prince might not even have yet been considering trying to make a musical of the source material. If Sandy Wilson’s memory is correct, Prince did not get the rights till late 1963. In any case, work on the Cabaret score did not begin till 1965, after Flora, the Red Menace opened. In Colored Lights, the book of interviews with them about their career, the discussion of the song starts on page 23, in a chapter where they talk about their earliest work together. Below is what Kander said about the song (in response to an audience question) at a Dramatists Guild group discussion about the creation of Cabaret. This was probably in the early 1980s, clearly before the 1987 revisal. This is taken from the transcript in Otis L. Guernsey's Broadway Song & Story, but the discussion first appeared in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly. Important note: I've come to think that the first sentence was incorrectly transcribed and that what Kander said was that the song was not written for Cabaret. "'I Don't Care Much' was written for Cabaret. It was written when Fred and I were having dinner together with a couple of friends. This was early in our collaboration, and we were showing off about how fast we could write a song. We bragged about it, so the other two people cleared the table. We said we would write it between dessert and coffee. So they said fine, and we went to the piano. Fred said, 'What will we write about?' I just responded with, 'I don't care much.' So that's what we did. I started playing some sort of waltz rhythm, and Fred started singing, 'I Don't Care Much,' and in fifteen minutes we had the song. That's the truth. "It was a song Hal liked particularly. For a time we considered making it one of the Berlin songs because we always saw it being done by somebody in a trench coat up against a lamp post. But it was never seriously considered. "Then, when we were previewing in New York, Goddard Lieberson, who was producing the original cast album, felt that 'Cabaret'—which was by that time a hit song—should be in the first act. He thought it would be stronger there. He thought that we could put another song, perhaps 'I Don't Care Much,' where 'Cabaret' had been. For some reason which I will never understand, Hal agreed to that. And for two performances, that it is the way it was played. And never again. It was a disaster." It seems odd to me that even though it had already been recorded by Streisand, it must have been seriously considered for Cabaret (in spite of what Kander said). It was in the original publication of the vocal selections, in addition to, as already mentioned in this discussion, being included in the entr'acte, though that section was left off the cast recording. (In those days, it was fairly common for both individual songs and the vocal selections book to be published before a show opened out of town.) So it seems that including it in the show was seriously considered. And the song was on one of the demos for the show, with Ebb introducing it as one of the "Berlin songs" mentioned above, the group of songs that were to be sung by different people when Cliff when first arrives in Berlin. Ebb says on the demo that it is to be sung by a street walker. Much of that demo, including “I Don’t Care Much,” was included one of the CD issues of the OBCR. The fact that the song was known, thanks to the Streisand recording, explains something that Prince wrote about the song in his book Contradictions (and this was also included in his much longer update, Sense of Occasion). As Prince told the story there, the suggestion to move "Cabaret" to where "Don't Tell Mama" was and to put “I Don't Care Much" where "Cabaret” had been was made to him repeatedly, both by friends and in letters written to him by strangers who knew that they were fixing the show. (That last part about strangers making the suggestion still sounds a bit odd and unlikely to me.) Getting back to the one or two performances when the song was performed in the show during New York previews in 1966, Prince wrote that once he felt confident that the show was working. he felt he could take a chance and try doing what had been suggested: moving "Cabaret" to replace "Don't Tell Mama," and adding "I Don't Care Much" where "Cabaret" had been. It was (as Kander said) a disaster, and things were quickly put back the way they had been. |
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