Best Musical: Tony vs Grammy - Part 3

Shocking Grammy Losers

I have already mentioned the glaring Grammy omission on the resume of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent. The same omission is true for two other Tony/Pulitzer shows-Fiorello! and, believe it or not, A Chorus Line. In 1960 Fiorello! had tied with The Sound Of Music for the Best Musical Tony award, but SOM won the Grammy outright (remember Mary Martin and that thing about Best Actress?), besting not only Fiorello! but also 1961's Best Musical Tony winner, Bye Bye Birdie (a show about the recording industry, no less!). Birdie's shocking lack of a Grammy apparently is a case of a show with a Best Musical Tony falling victim to the vagaries of eligibility timing, having the unfortunate luck of being Grammy-eligible in the same year as a show (or in this case, two shows!) that also won the Best Musical Tony, but in a different year. In 1975, A Chorus Line lost to The Wiz (another Tony winner); the same thing that happened to Birdie happened to A Chorus Line, despite its Pulitzer Prize and despite Donna McKechnie's Best Actress Tony. Shocking. Go figure.

Two shows which won the Tony for Best Musical in the 1980s and were written by well-regarded recording industry songwriters making their Broadway debuts were shockingly defeated at Grammy time by the recordings of West Side Story and Follies mentioned in Part Two. They are Big River by Roger Miller and The Mystery Of Edwin Drood by Rupert Holmes, co-starring jazz legend Cleo Laine. I have already noted above that in that same decade, The Phantom Of the Opera was unable to break the London cast album drought that Grammy has imposed since the beginning. And Man Of La Mancha and "The Impossible Dream" (a hit for Jack Jones and many others) lost to Mame in 1966.

But a stunning event similar to what took place in 1960 occurred in 1964, when not one but two Tony-winning Best Musicals were defeated for the Grammy Award in the same year. But these two shows were defeated by a show which was not itself a Tony winner, and they went on to become the longest-running Broadway musicals up to their time. For Fiddler On the Roof to lose the Grammy is shocking enough. But the other show, Hello, Dolly!, not only took home a slew of Tony prizes including Best Musical and Best Actress, but it won for composer/lyricist Jerry Herman the "Song of the Year" Grammy Award for its title song, even defeating the Lennon and McCartney "Hard Day's Night!" The show recording that defeated them both? Funny Girl, as discussed earlier. Not a shocking win for the Streisand/Jule Styne biography of stage and radio star Fanny Brice, but shocking losses for Dolly and Fiddler, nonetheless.

I will simply list the other shows which won the Tony for Best Musical in their Main Stem bows but were not named the same by the Grammys. Whether they had the bad luck to be Grammy-eligible in the same time period as another Tony champ, whether their recordings are just not as good as the shows which spawned them or whether one of the other factors we have discussed led NARAS voters to cast their sentiments elsewhere, I leave it up to the reader to decide if these show's Grammy losses are as shocking as the ones just mentioned:  A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum, Hallelujah, Baby!, 1776, Applause, Two Gentlemen of Verona, 42^nd Street, Nine, La Cage Aux Folles, City Of Angels, Crazy For You, Kiss Of the Spider Woman, Sunset Boulevard, Titanic, Fosse, Contact, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Avenue Q.  Great recordings it would seem, and great shows, of course (some my personal favorites). Perhaps Grammy will smile upon them at revival, concert or studio cast album time in the future, though another Tony-winning musical may have to step aside for that to occur.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

The eagle-eyed reader will know that I have been holding out-good for you for keeping me honest! I have not mentioned in these articles the fourth of the Grammy-winning recordings that originated with a Broadway revival, the Grammy-winning show recording for 2003. It was the recording of the revival of Gypsy, starring Bernadette Peters. Well, that's not the only thing I have held back. The fact is that, in the second year of Grammy history, there was a tie in the category of what was then called "Best Broadway Show Album." Tying with the thoroughly deserving Redhead of Gwen Verdon was…the original cast recording of that same Gypsy, starring Ethel Merman in what is universally regarded as one of the very best original cast albums ever made, a classic that every reader of this article should immediately purchase if you don't already own it.

There is no readily apparent statistical or trend-based reason that either of these recordings should have won the Grammy award. They just happen to be fantastic recordings of a fantastic score of the same fantastic show, with two legendary leading ladies giving what may prove to the pinnacle performances of both their careers-Tony Awards or no Tony Awards. Now, I'm not predicting what will happen at the upcoming Tony ceremony, or at next February's Grammy ceremony. (And notice that every Broadway revival of Gypsy has produced either a Grammy Award or a Best Actress Tony, but never both.) But I do know that a certain classic musical about an awkward tomboy-turned-stripper and her legendary stage mother is being revived yet again.

If you can point me to the Tony-winning Best Musical from this season, maybe one written by or starring a recording industry personality, with its cast emphasis female and African-American and with a recording definitely radio-ready and buyer-friendly, I would say you have a sound Grammy prediction. (Why The Color Purple didn't win is now up for discussion, by the way.) But until and unless that happens in the next few months, my money goes on Rose and her daughter, Gypsy. Let the reader take note: Grammy does what she wants, but sometimes there is a method, if not method acting, in that February madness.

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