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Research for The Bowery article
http://www.musicals101.com/lybowery.htm

"The Bowery" Music by Percy Gaunt Lyrics by Charles H. Hoyt

This song was introduced by Harry Conor in the Broadway musical A Trip to Chinatown (1892). Although it had nothing to do with the plot of a show set in San Francisco, the number was so popular that it proved to be a major factor in the show's success.

This is the lyric as it appears in the original sheet music, published by T.B. Harms & Co. (NYC) in 1892. The entire song is in 3/4 time.

http://books.google.com/books?id=l8qJI3ak-UsC&pg=PA483&lpg=PA483&dq=%22the+bowery%22+song+HOYT+GAUNT&source=bl&ots=xs6X5mIjCC&sig=LWAIsBUVMmPxYES53KSlvt19Hts&hl=en&ei=bQqTSY6pIYzAMczvoPkL&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

America's Musical Life By Richard Crawford

sold more than a million copies of sheet music remeained familiar into the latter twentieth C Major key, piano intor, verses w/ cho between

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/76169/the-Bowery

street and section of Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S., extending diagonally from Chatham Square to the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street. It follows a trail used by the Indians in their skirmishes with the Dutch, which later became the road leading to Gov. Peter Stuyvesant’s bouwerie (“farm”). The street was named the Bowery in 1807. The city’s theatre life once centred there (1860–75), but by the 1880s the Bowery had degenerated into a skid-row area of cheap cafés, flophouses, saloons, dance halls, and pawnshops, patronized by ne’er-do-wells and derelicts. The district’s sordid reputation was widely publicized after 1892 by the popular Percy Gaunt-Charles Hoyt song “The Bowery, the Bowery!” with its final refrain “I’ll never go there anymore.”



http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-02-22/nyc-life/noise-on-music-central/

The rube who narrates "The Bowery," the biggest hit from the record-setting uptown musical A Trip to Chinatown, knows he should stick to Broadway, but can't resist a Gay '90s Bowery "ablaze with lights." He's buttonholed by a grifter and conned by a shopkeeper before entering "a concert hall," where he starts a row because he thinks "A New Coon in Town" is directed at him. Bye-bye rube: "A man called a bouncer attended to me./I'll never go there any more."

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/03/bowery200703

Boho Renaissance Checking in at the Bowery Hotel. by Paul Goldberger March 2007

The Bowery was never an ordinary street. It has a past. Famous for so long as the last stop for derelicts, it lent its name to a hit song by Charles Hoyt and Percy Gaunt from 1891. "The Bowery" ended with the lament "I'll never go there anymore"—a testimonial to the street's decline that is about as far as you can get from Irving Berlin's swoons over Fifth Avenue. The celebrated WPA Guide to New York City, produced during the Great Depression, described the Bowery as a place where "flophouses offer a bug-infested bed in an unventilated pigeonhole for twenty-five cents a night."



http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GauntPercy.html

Gaunt, Percy

From: The Oxford Companion to American Theatre | Date: 2004 | Author: Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak | Â© The Oxford Companion to American Theatre 2004, originally published by Oxford University Press 2004. (Hide copyright information) Copyright information Gaunt, Percy (1852–96), composer. The Philadelphian was best known as musical director for Charles Hoyt, whom he joined in 1883. He composed the scores for several of Hoyt's farce‐comedies, most notably A Trip to Chinatown (1891), which included “The Bowery,” “Push Dem Clouds Away” (played at his funeral by an organ‐grinder), and “Reuben and Cynthia,” this last adapted from an older song. Many felt his early death deprived the musical theatre of a promising melodist.



http://nfo.net/cal/tg1.html

Percy Gaunt b. 1852, Philadelphia, PA, USA. d. Sept 5, 1896, Palenville, NY, USA. At he turn of the century, that is, the late 1800's, there were a number of 'burlesque' shows touring the country. Two examples are the Harrigan and Hart shows and the Charles H. Hoyt shows. These were not 'girlie' shows, but rather abbreviated versions that often mocked the full scale original Broadway productions. Percy Gaunt's career is tied up with the Charles H. Hoyt shows.

Nothing is really known of Percy's childhood. We know that he was the musical director for the touring Barry and Fay Theatrical troupe. But, his career becomes notable when in 1883, he got the musical directorship for the Charles H. Hoyt company. In the same year, he worked on his first Hoyt production, A Bunch of Keys, produced at the San Francisco Opera House. In 1893, he wrote a successful song called "Love Me Little, Love Me Long", to his own lyrics.

Over the following decade, he not only conducted the pit orchestra, but also was one of the principal composers for Hoyt shows, including: A Parlor Match A Brass Monkey A Rag Baby A Hole in the Ground A Tin Soldier A Midnight Belle (Maude Adams made her debut here.) A Trip to Chinatown (This show toured for a year, then came to the      Madison Square Theater in N.Y.C., where it played for 650       performances. It had the longest run of any play up to that time.       Gaunt had three hit songs in this show: "The Bowery"; "Reuben       Reuben"; "Push Dem Clouds Away". "The Bowery" is still a popular       song to this day. Some other songs were interpolated into the       show, notably "After the Ball", words and music by Charles K.       Harris. The was also the first show to earn a fair income from       the sale of sheet music.      A Runaway Colt      A Contented Woman      A Texas Steer      A Black Sheep

In 1894, Gaunt left the musical stages to write an opera, his lifelong ambition. Ill health hampered his efforts, and he ran out of money, too. The next year, 1895, his friends held a benefit for him, and Hoyt gave him back his old job. But Gaunt was too ill. He never rejoined Hoyt, and died the next year, 1896.



http://www.worldofsigns.com/products.php?id=435

Bowery

> Location: New York, USA> Type: Street name> Comments: Located in Lower Manhattan, it extends diagonally from Chatham Square to the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street, following a trail used by the Indians in their skirmishes with the Dutch, which later became the road leading to Gov. Peter Stuyvesant's bouwerie (“farm”). The street was named the Bowery in 1807. The city's theatre life once centered there (1860–75), but by the 1880s the Bowery had degenerated into a skid-row area of cheap cafés, flophouses, saloons, dance halls, and pawnshops, patronized by ne'er-do-wells and derelicts. The district's sordid reputation was widely publicized after 1892 by the popular Percy Gaunt-Charles Hoyt song “The Bowery, the Bowery!” with its final refrain “I'll never go there anymore.”

http://www.musicals101.com/1890-1900.htm

Broadway in "The Gay 90s"

Although few (if any) Broadway musicals of the 1890s would merit a revival of today, they appeared during an era of extraordinary theatrical bounty. It was not unusual for fifty or more musical productions to open in a single season. While revivals and European imports were common, the overwhelming majority of these shows were homegrown originals. Farcical musical comedies were standard Broadway fare in this decade. Following the Harrigan and Hart model, these shows had loose plots involving "ordinary people," offering enough gags and dialogue to get from song to song. Any number of composers might contribute to the score.

Producer-playwright Charles Hoyt mastered this form, which reached its peak with A Trip To Chinatown (1891 - 657), the story of a widow who accidentally maneuvers several young suburban couples into a big city restaurant – where a rich man loses his wallet before true love wins out in the end. (Did anyone say Hello Dolly?) The show was cobbled together in an almost haphazard fashion, with songs by a multitude of composers. Thanks to interpolations made during the New York run, the score eventually included the perennial favorites "Reuben, Reuben," "The Bowery," and "After the Ball." A Trip to Chinatown toured for several years, and its record-setting Broadway run would not be surpassed until the early 1920s. Its fame was lasting. When the 1927 musical Show Boat needed an emotion-packed song to symbolize the sound of 1890s, Hammerstein and Kern interpolated the evergreen "After the Ball."