Here's the story I told (by heart yet) after I finished Ya Got Trouble. Keep in mind that in every single Kritzerland show I have said the same line - "For those who haven't been with us before, I always have to explain that I am elderly and must read from the paper" - referring to my clipboard and notes that I read. So, I finished Ya Got Trouble and said:
Now, I know there are some of you out there thinking, 'He just said he's elderly and must read from the paper and yet he just did one of the wordiest songs ever written for a musical - how did he do that?' Well, I'll tell you how and I'll try to keep it short, but that won't be happening. Back in June of 1962 I was fourteen (at that point I looked at someone in the front row and said "don't do the math"), and the movie version of The Music Man was about to open at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood on a Wednesday, which is when movies used to open back then. So, several days before that I began to badger my mother about going to see it on that Wednesday. Now, those of you who know me know that when I badger it's best to just give me what I want - my mother had learned that early on - so she said that after my father got home and we had dinner that we'd go see it.
Those of you who know me also know that I have no patience so when Wednesday rolled around I got up early, took a bus to Hollywood and saw the first show at noon. I fell in love with the movie, so much so that I stayed for the next show, which you could do in those days. Then I took the bus home. My father got home, we had dinner, and off we went to the Paramount Theater in Hollywood because I'd neglected to mention that I'd already seen it twice. Anyway, I loved it even more the third time. Next day I bought the soundtrack LP and played it over and over again and within a day I knew all the songs by heart, including Ya Got Trouble.
In those days, we had a family dinner at our house every two weeks, with aunts and uncles and cousins and my grandparents, Dave and Gussie Gross. After dinner, everyone would gather in the living room and I'd do The Bruce Kimmel Hour, which was sort of my young Jew version of The Ed Sullivan Show with me doing all the acts. I performed Ya Got Trouble and everyone was properly impressed that I did it by heart, and my grandfather gave me his highest praise when he said, 'What is it, fish?'
A year later I did it for a talent assembly in high school, but since then I've never done the number again. I've seen the movie a lot and seen the show on stage a few times but I haven't looked at the script and haven't seen the sheet music. When I decided to do this show I thought to myself, 'Who am I going to assign this song to? They'll kill me, it's so wordy and so much to learn.' One day I was out jogging and I thought, 'I wonder how much of this I actually remember?' and as I was jogging I began doing it - and did the whole thing just about letter perfect. And that's what I think they call muscle memory. I think my brain has incredible muscle memory, which is more than I can say for my actual muscles, which suffer from both short and long term memory loss.
