Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

[This afternoon at the Komische Oper zu Berlin, the American baritone Kevin Deas sang this captivating little song Aaron Copland adapted as one of his "Old American Songs", and when I got home I emailed him this addendum:]

Dear Mr. Deas,

as Berlin correspondent for www.MusicalAmerica.com I attended - and enjoyed - your concert this afternoon at the Komische Oper, and I have a footnote to Aaron Copland’s arrangement of “I Bought Me a Cat” that I felt a real urge at least to tell you about.  I decided against coming uninvited to the party that undoubtedly took place in the house Casino afterwards; I didn’t want to seem like a party-crasher.

In New York half a century or so ago, circumstances involved me personally in the birthing of that meanwhile famous arrangement Aaron made at that time - but when he himself played the piano part and (more or less) croaked the tune, he always, invariably, incorporated a gimmick I’ve never known any singer to use, but to my way of thinking it adds a final fillip that I find considerably enriches the song’s ending.

Oliver Smith had made a fortune in royalties for having designed that goldmine called “Oklahoma!” and he used that money to set himself up as a producer (of hits including another goldmine called “West Side Story”).  He had a plan to outdo “Oklahoma!” and at the same time bring High Art to Broadway.  With that in mind he bought the rights to Erskine Caldwell’s novel “Tragic Ground”, engaged Lynn Riggs (the born Oklahoman whose play “Green Grow the Lilacs” had provided the raw material for “Oklahoma!”) to adapt the book and write the lyrics, and Agnes de Mille, whose choreography for “Oklahoma!” had introduced ballet to the Broadway musical stage, to do not only the choreography but also stage the entire production.  My friendship with both Riggs and Copland got me involved in Aaron’s spiffy setting of “I Bought Me a Cat.”

Lynn Riggs could not read music but his apartment (at 1 Christopher Street) did have an upright piano, so I got turned into a sort of bilateral amanuensis for both him and Copland.  During early planning discussions, Lynn told Aaron that during his Oklahoma childhood he’d grown up with a local ditty Aaron might find worth incorporating into “Tragic Ground” - and proceeded to sing it for him: “I Bought Me a Cat.”  Aaron took to it immediately, and it apparently set itself, for very soon after that Aaron sat down at Lynn’s upright and both played and sang his arrangement’s official world premiere.

Aaron had had Agnes de Mille’s choreography and dancers in mind, so at the very end of each verse, he’d insert a brief hiatus to clap his hands, twice, before continuing with the final “My cat says fiddle-eye-fee”, doing what he intended to have Agnes’s dancers do.  However - and finally here comes the bug I want to plant in your own ear - at the end of the very last stanza (”I bought me a wife”), he’d clap his hands not the two times the listener expected but, all of a sudden, three times, with an emphatic accent on the third clap, and only then go on to the valedictory tagline.

I’ve always found that little built-in surprise a delightful way to startle an audience, and if you do, too, I offer you this tidbit with my compliments and best wishes.  As far as I know, you’d become the first singer ever to perform that captivating little song the way Aaron himself did.

“Tragic Ground” never did get produced - or, for that matter, even finished.  If you have access to Volume 2 of the memoirs Aaron wrote with Yale’s Vivian Perlis, you might find footnote number. . . .  DAMN!  I can’t at the moment find my own copy, but you can easily locate the passage I have in mind by checking the index for “Alone at Night”, the nearest thing to a conventional pop song Aaron contributed, which he optimistically thought (and for financial reasons hoped) just might have a chance to become a popular hit.

With sincere best wishes,

Paul Moor