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In honor of CASUAL FRIDAY, the 30th anniversary of @PatinkinMandy’s seminal album Dress Causal, quote this tweet and talk about your favorite song from the album. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_liuaYkOvNF94hzBjZSzqrZcQzuD3G2LhM
Starting with "Doodle-Doo-Doo," a song associated with Eddie Cantor, Mandy asserts that he will once again draw from the vaudevillian well that characterized his first album. Subbing Cantor for the first album's Jolson is a step up -- no more "mammy" songs to cringe through here.
Sheet music for "Doodle-Doo-Doo" is part of the collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (my favorite Smithsonian). https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_670961
Joining "Doodle-Doo-Doo" with "When The Red Red Robbin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along" makes sense both because of the reliance on nonsense syllables and the sense both songs give (in these arrnagements) or the world waking up.
Of course, "Red, Red Robbin" was associated with Al Jolson, but also with Ukelele Ike, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and a host of others. I first encountered this song in fifth-grade chorus at the E. A. Jones School in Stoughton, MA, a few years before Mandy recorded it.
Concluding the medley with "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)" from Lady in the Dark (Weill/Gershwin) feels a bit like a left turn, since instead of nonsense syllables this lyric plays with real names, and Danny Kaye introduced it about 20 years later than the previous two songs.
However, by connecting the vaudeville of the 20s with the musical-comedy-rooted-in-vaudeville of the 40s, Mandy is establishing a thesis that there's a throughline from those specialty numbers to the kind of entertainment he exceled at in the 90s (and today).
Ending this frantic medley on a quiet note is our first taste on the album of one of Mandy's trademarks: going from 0 to 60 or 60 to 0 on a time for dramatic (or, occasionally comedic) effect. It enables a gorgeous transition into "On the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe."
Mandy knows that while he might be able to ape Jolson, he can't really compete with Judy Garland, so he wisely takes a very different approach from her famous rendition (also different from Johnny Mercer's).
Dress Casual on some level is about the interplay of nostalgia and the present, and this performance of "Atchison, Topeka" leans hard into the glowy haze of nostalgia until we get to that money note/cathartic scream that knocks us into the now. No one in the 40s sang like that.
But after CAL I FOR NI A we get another unexpectly gentle ending for a smooth glide into a very different kind of nostalgia piece - Bein' Green, rethought here as a gentle, pizzicato waltz.
As someone a generation younger than Mandy, it's fascinating to listen to his "Bein' Green," since I think he is old enough to have nostalgia for it as a parent hearing it as entertainment for his kids, whereas I grew up with it as a song for me.
There's a definite sense of lullabye/blessing to Mandy's "Bein' Green." He's not singing it for himself; it's an incantation for his children.
So it makes sense to follow this with a bonkers take on children to lighten the mood, "Triplets" from The Band Wagon. We get three of Mandy's favorite character voices -- and Mandy singing not only a duet but a trio with himself is a trademark Mandy move.
(He also sang a trio with himself on his first album, "Pretty Lady" from Pacific Overtures.)
Act One of the album ends on a quiet note with a gentle, straightforward "I'm Only Chasing Rainbows," a lullabye to put the "childhood" section of the album to bed before we get to the two nighttime fantasies of Evening Primrose and Pal Joey.
(I'm going to take an intermission now to get some work done. More CASUAL FRIDAY tweeting to come.)
