Hello Dolly Sheet Music
Saurabh Cloudas
When you talk to a great person at the end of a career, a doctor or a lawyer, a mother or a father, or if you hear a great coach talk about what it takes to win a championship, they'll say that after all the knowledge and all the skill, what it finally comes down to is character. It's true in music, too. The greatest performances go beyond virtuosity, beyond music even, to an assertion of humanity. And in 1964 there was a shining musical moment made almost purely by strength of character.
Louis Armstrong had not heard of the musical "Hello, Dolly!" before recording the title tune. It had been brought to him by a music publisher. The song itself is not a particularly high achievement. At the recording session in New York, December 4th, 1963, Armstrong expressed no great enthusiasm for it. But the songwriter, Jerry Herman, is a canny Broadway craftsman who knows how to write for stars. He gives great performers great opportunities. But he recently told NPR that even he had his doubts about "Hello, Dolly!"
"When a man from my publishing company called me and said, `Louis Armstrong wants to record that,' I laughed. I thought it was the silliest idea that I had ever heard. But I said, `Let him have a good time. I'm delighted,' you know. And when I heard the recording, I fell out of my chair because he turned my 1890's valentine into one of the most famous pop songs of all time."
How did he do it? The song sounds predictable. In fact, it bears such a striking similarity to a 1949 tune by Mack David, "Sunflower," that David sued for plagiarism and got an out-of-court settlement. The treatment of the song is, well, a little corny. There's that banjo. And what's that string section doing there? But as the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis has said, `In everything he ever recorded, there comes a point where Louis Armstrong let you know that he was Louis Armstrong.' On one level, that point comes right at the beginning when the maestro sings, "This is Louis, (emphasis on the S), Dolly." But for me, the moment is a purely musical one at the end of the first eight measures of his trumpet solo.
First of all, it's a terrific solo, hard-swinging, as Armstrong's always are, but there's this little phrase at the end of the opening. It's that individual stamp, that celebration of freedom and joy that Armstrong tried to put into everything and it never came out stronger than in "Hello, Dolly!"
Arvell Shaw was Armstrong's bassist for over 20 years, including the "Hello, Dolly!" session. He says Armstrong was so unimpressed by the tune he forgot about it. Famously, he seldom listened to the radio, preferring the tapes that he carried with him everywhere. In the winter of 1964 in concerts in Iowa and Nebraska, people in the audience began to shout for "Hello, Dolly!" For a few nights, Armstrong ignored them. Finally, he turned to Arvell Shaw one night and asked, `What's "Hello, Dolly!"?' 'Well, you know, Pops, it's that tune we recorded.'
Armstrong called New York for the sheet music. A rehearsal was held. That night Louis Armstrong and the Allstars played "Hello, Dolly!" and the crowd went wild. By May, the record had incredibly pushed The Beatles out of the number-one spot on the Billboard top 40 for the first time in over three months. And at age 63, Louis Armstrong had become the oldest person ever to have a number-one hit record.
I asked Arvell Shaw, `Why?' He said, `I've been trying to figure that out for 40 years. If somebody could write a book about what made "Hello, Dolly!" a hit, they'd make a fortune.' My answer: Louis Armstrong, pure and simple, the force of his personality, his irresistible humanity. Well, Arvell's not entirely sure about that. He thinks it also had something to do with the timing of a big Broadway hit show and the release of the title tune by a big star. But as he talked, he agreed, nobody else could have taken that song and made it a hit.
Louis Armstrong played for audiences all over the world; for millions in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and for kids eating ice cream on his front porch in Queens. And everywhere he went, audiences responded to him the same way. It used to puzzle me. Musicians have told me, `It's impossible that all those people really understood his music. What they must have responded to was his spirit, his integrity and his life force.' What they understood was Louis.
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Hello, Dolly! debuted at the Fisher Theater in Detroit on November 18, 1963,[1] directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick. It starred stage performer Carol Channing as Dolly Gallagher Levi, a role theatrical audiences of the world would forever associate with her.[2] The show moved to Broadway in 1964, winning 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Channing. The awards earned set a record which the play held for 37 years. The show album Hello, Dolly! An Original Cast Recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.[3] The album reached number one on the Billboard album chart on June 6, 1964, and was replaced the next week by Louis Armstrong's album Hello, Dolly![4] Louis Armstrong also was featured in the film version of the show, performing a small part of the song "Hello, Dolly!".
The show has become one of the most enduring musical theater hits, with four Broadway revivals and international success. It was also made into the 1969 film Hello Dolly! by 20th Century Fox, which won three Academy Awards, including Best Score of a Musical Picture and was nominated in four other categories, including Best Picture at the 42nd Academy Awards.
Hello, Dolly! had rocky tryouts in Detroit, Michigan, and Washington, D.C.[6] After receiving the reviews, the creators made major changes to the script and score, including the addition of the song "Before the Parade Passes By".[8] Initially called Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman,[9] then Call on Dolly, Merrick revised the show's title after hearing Louis Armstrong's version of "Hello, Dolly". The show became one of the most iconic Broadway shows of the latter half of the 1960s, and running for 2,844 performances, was the longest-running musical in Broadway history for a time.[10]
Horace explains to his two clerks, Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, that he is going to get married because "It Takes a Woman" to cheerfully do all the household chores. He plans to travel with Dolly to New York City to march in the Fourteenth Street Association Parade and propose to the widow Irene Molloy, who owns a hat shop there. Dolly arrives in Yonkers and "accidentally" mentions that Irene's first husband might not have died of natural causes, and also mentions that she knows an heiress, Ernestina Money, who may be interested in Horace. Horace leaves for New York and leaves Cornelius and Barnaby to run the store.
Cornelius decides that he and Barnaby need to get out of Yonkers. They'll go to New York, have a good meal, spend all their money, see the stuffed whale in Barnum's museum, almost get arrested, and each kiss a girl! They blow up some tomato cans to create a terrible stench as a pretext to close the store. Dolly mentions that she knows two ladies in New York they should call on: Irene Molloy and her shop assistant, Minnie Fay. She tells Ermengarde and Ambrose that she'll enter them in the polka competition at the upscale Harmonia Gardens Restaurant in New York City so Ambrose can demonstrate his ability to be a breadwinner to Horace. Cornelius, Barnaby, Ambrose, Ermengarde and Dolly all take the train to New York ("Put on Your Sunday Clothes").
Irene and Minnie open their hat shop for the afternoon. Irene wants a husband, but does not love Horace Vandergelder. She declares that she will wear an elaborate hat to impress a gentleman ("Ribbons Down My Back"). Cornelius and Barnaby arrive at the shop and pretend to be rich. Horace and Dolly arrive at the shop, and Cornelius and Barnaby hide from him. Irene inadvertently mentions that she knows Cornelius Hackl, and Dolly tells her and Horace that even though Cornelius is Horace's clerk by day, he's a New York playboy by night; he's one of the Hackls. Minnie screams when she finds Cornelius hiding in the armoire. Horace is about to open the armoire himself, but Dolly, Irene and Minnie distract him with patriotic sentiments related to subjects like Betsy Ross and The Battle of the Alamo shown in the famous lyrics "Alamo, remember the Alamo!" ("Motherhood March"). Cornelius sneezes, and Horace storms out, realizing there are men hiding in the shop, but not knowing they are his clerks.
Dolly arranges for Cornelius and Barnaby, who are still pretending to be rich, to take the ladies out to dinner to the Harmonia Gardens restaurant to make up for their humiliation. She teaches Cornelius and Barnaby how to dance since they always have dancing at such establishments ("Dancing"). Soon, Cornelius, Irene, Barnaby, and Minnie are happily dancing. They go to watch the great 14th Street Association Parade together. Alone, Dolly decides to put her dear departed husband Ephraim behind her and to move on with life "Before the Parade Passes By". She asks Ephraim's permission to marry Horace, requesting a sign from him. Dolly catches up with the annoyed Vandergelder, who has missed the whole parade, and she convinces him to give her matchmaking one more chance. She tells him that Ernestina Money would be perfect for him and asks him to meet her at the swanky Harmonia Gardens that evening.
Cornelius is determined to get a kiss before the night is over, but Barnaby isn't so sure. As the clerks have no money for a carriage, they tell the girls that walking to the restaurant shows that they've got "Elegance". At the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, Rudolph, the head waiter, prepares his service crew for Dolly Gallagher Levi's return: their usual lightning service, he tells them, must be "twice as lightning" ("The Waiters' Gallop"). Horace arrives with his date, but she proves neither as rich nor as elegant as Dolly had implied; furthermore she is soon bored by Horace and leaves, as Dolly had planned she would.
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