The first time I saw the movie "The Music Man" was in the summer of 1962.
I was visiting my Aunt Belle and Uncle George who lived in Biltmore NC. My uncle repaired watches at Bright's Jewelers in downtown Asheville, and my aunt was a housewife.
She was a fabulous cook, too...and she'd go in the kitchen to "fix a mess of somethin'" and come out 20 minutes later with plates and platters of wonderful stuff.
One day we caught a bus and went downtown. We visited my uncle for a few minutes and then she took me to a theater where "The Music Man" had just opened that week. The place was packed.
I was mesmerized for the entire movie. My aunt liked it a lot, too.
When I returned to Greenville SC that weekend, I bought the soundtrack. I played it THOUSANDS of times.
Four years later, when I entered college and learned that "The Music Man" was the first play of the season, I already knew the songs by heart...and was very familiar with much of the dialogue, courtesy of that "quarter novel" I'd found.
Of course, the play is different...but when you play a train conductor ("River City...next station stop River City") and a townsperson ("Trouble, Trouble, Trouble")("Shipoopi, Shipoopi, Shipoopi") ya don't need to know more than the lyrics.
