(Director, writer, and filmmaker Floyd Mutrux, above.)By Terry Keefe
It was the 1960s and a foursome took over the popular music charts in America, but they didn’t wear mop-tops. Right before the British Invasion, the girl group known as the Shirelles soared with hits such as “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Soldier Boy,” “Will You Still Me Tomorrow,” and “Baby It’s You,” amongst many others. The Shirelles were discovered by Florence Greenberg, an ambitious and very prescient New Jersey housewife who founded Scepter Records, and consequently changed the face of popular music forever. In her business life, Greenberg was a woman who dove right into the middle of a male-dominated record industry and created one of the most successful independent labels of the time, and on the personal side, she left her first marriage for a union with African-American songwriter Luther Dixon. The story of Greenberg, the Shirelles, Dixon, and their journey through a portion of pop music history forms the backbone of Baby It’s You!, the new musical playing this month at the Pasadena Playhouse through December 20th. Baby It’s You! is directed by Floyd Mutrux, who is the co-writer along with Colin Escott.
Mutrux is also a film director who has had some of his greatest successes with stories either directly about rock 'n roll, or with a rock 'n roll theme and soundtrack. His films include American Hot Wax, which centered around the life of famed DJ Alan Freed and also featured performances by Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, and Aloha Bobby and Rose which starred Paul Le Mat, who played the drag-racing king John Milner in American Graffiti; The Hollywood Knights which starred Michelle Pfeiffer and Tony Danza; and There Goes My Baby, which starred Rick Schroeder. His screenplay credits include Mulholland Falls and American Me.
Under the collective title of American Pop Anthology, Mutrux has written a number of rock and roll bio stories for the stage, of which Baby It’s You! is the newest installment. Another show by Mutrux and Colin Escott, Million Dollar Quartet, based around a legendary jam session at Sun Records between Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, has been a huge success in Chicago and is on its way to Broadway shortly.
Baby Its You is produced by Jonathan Sanger, Jerry Katell, Joan Stein, and Mutrux. Sanger is the Academy Award-winning producer of The Elephant Man, Frances, The Producers, and Vanilla Sky, amongst many other projects.
We spoke to Mutrux at the Pasadena Playhouse a few days before previews began on Baby It’s You! Since then, the show has opened to numerous rave reviews and an extended run. Prior to coming to the Pasadena Playhouse, the show had a very successful workshop run at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood.
Obviously, you’re an aficionado of the period and the music, but had you known much about the behind-the-scenes story of the Shirelles prior to starting the project?
Floyd Mutrux: I knew a lot. About everything. All rock’n’roll, you know. My misspent youth. The literature of my youth was an AM car radio, so it was like, you know, I basically, just got into it.
Also, Kenny Vance was the lead singer of Jay and the Americans, a group in the ‘60s. He was in American Hot Wax. And when Kenny was in Jay and the Americans, they had four or five hits. He was friends with Florence Greenberg. When Florence was sick, at the end of her life, or in a retirement home, the last four or five years, Kenny went to visit her, a few times a week, and Kenny really had her story in his head, and was telling it to me. And I was gonna do this as a movie, at Paramount, in the early ‘90s. I was gonna do it with Bette Midler, Eddie Murphy as Luther, and Arsenio Hall. And the genius executives at Paramount decided not to do it, so I just forgot about it. Later, when I was doing this, I decided to go back and reinvent that story.
On stage this time.
You know, I’d done a number of rock’n’roll bios, even ones that didn’t get made, like about Jim Croce and stuff, and I’d always done music-driven stories. All the movies I directed were always music-driven, like American Hot Wax, which was Alan Freed’s story. A lot of people kept saying to me, “Why don’t you just do a show?’ I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna do a series of rock’n’roll bios.” So I sat down, and for a couple years I wrote American Pop Anthology, a series of stories that chronicled the music and the people who made it. The stories and the lives of people who changed the culture of our country. I started with Sam Phillips and Million Dollar Quartet. I wrote five of the stories to take us through, the last story, which is that of Legs McNeil and CBGB’s. The story of the Shirelles is the second one I chose to do [in terms of producing], although it wasn’t the second one I wrote. I’m kind of doing them out of order, but someday they might all get in the right order.
Did you talk to many of Florence’s relatives or friends in creating the story?
No, but like I said, Kenny knew her well. Kenny saw her thirty or forty times a year. For three or four years, he went there and spent the afternoon with her. But I knew the story, and I could just follow the records. I knew the songs, and the through line, I knew she was with Luther, and that she was Jewish, and came from the 1950’s, actually 1940’s, headset. She’d been married in the late ‘30s, before the war, you know, Eisenhower - backyard barbecue - station wagons. So I knew her through line, and I kinda had her voice. She was very direct, very polite, very smart, knew what she liked, and she’d figured out the business. She figured out when something’s gonna be a hit. You know when something’s gonna be a hit? Do you know how you know? If you wanna hear it a second time. So she figured it out. And she knew what she liked. Remember, she was in a dead area. There was Rock’n’Roll, and then Rock’n’Roll died. You know, Elvis went in the army; Little Richard had a bad plane flight and got religion; Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin off the air; Chuck Berry took a minor bus ride into jail; and Buddy Holly died. Rock’n’Roll is dead.
When they’re gone, boom, over, no Rock’n’Roll. You’re listening to “Hello Dolly,“ whatever. I mean, there were some ballad groups running around, and the Tokens, but then the Shirelles became the biggest girl group of all time, at that time. And Florence found the girls. This was the girls’ turn. You know, the Dixie Cups, the Shangri-Las, and the Shirelles. This was the girls’ shot. This vapid period, with a quasi-mixture of songs, became the golden era of pop music. The Brill Building sound that sort of permeated the culture for a brief but shining moment, you know, but then, one day, the President was dead, there was an unpopular war in South Vietnam, Martin Luther King’s trying to hook people up on a bus in Montgomery, four guys show up from England with instruments, McGuire sang “Eve of Destruction,” and bang, the culture of the country changed. Just like that: Boom, gone. It’s a new world order. The ‘60s began in 1965. And they were over in 1973.
(The real-life Shirelles, above, during their heyday.)I assume securing the rights to all the songs has been one of the more difficult parts of producing the show?
Not as difficult as you’d think. You know, they’re like women that sit around there, you know, playing gin rummy, who clear all this music, it seems like a gin rummy club over there when they’re clearing the music. They’re not personally invested in it. They’re not, “This is my song!” They’re more like, “We own the publishing. Oh, you want to license it? Good idea. Do you want one? Do you want the green, the blue one, how ‘bout a yellow one?” You know? Look, I mean, some people say, “No, you can’t use my song,” whatever. But they’re in a business. Their business is to license the songs. We’re going to be in a Broadway musical, it’s going to go to New York, it’s going to be a movie—I mean, you know, if all things work out…. We just did seventy sold-out shows at the Coast. It was great, I mean, every night. Rod Stewart’s there, Michael Eisner, Cher, Freddy DeMann.
So, then we came over here and what was intimate and magical over there (at the Coast), needed to be brought over here with, you know, doing major scrims and slides. I always envisioned this thing where movies would meet theatre, and you know, I always envisioned it would be like a set, and there would be a movie screen, also. So anyway, this is some version of that, with stills. But it’s very exciting, and in fact, extremely difficult, technically. And, you know, especially in a quick period of time. Everything has to work as one.
(Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director) Sheldon Epps has been fabulous. He’s my partner, and he’s really the godfather, and the artistic director here, and he really led me through the process, and the show wouldn’t be nearly as good without him. As I was writing scenes, he pointed out mistakes that were in there, that I didn’t see before, and because of him, and his ability to tell a story and to pull a show up, the show is in Pasadena. It’s due in part to Sheldon’s artistic vision, and his ability to coincide with me, and make it play. He’s fabulous. He can come with me on any part of this journey.
(The cast of Baby It's You!, above. Photos by Michael Lamont.)
How close is the Florence onstage to the real one, you think?
Only in spirit, and intelligence.
And obviously the goal is to bring it to Broadway next. Is there any solid plan for that yet?
Well, I’d like to make it good here first, but, you know, yeah, we’re gonna run here through December. And then, Warner Bros. and Universal are both our partners now, and other people.
Did you keep a lot of the same cast from the Coast Playhouse version?
We changed one character that played three different people, and we changed that, we broke it into two parts. And we changed the daughter, because she had to do something else, and that was a little challenging in the middle of all this mix, to bring three new people into it, because it’s a small cast of ten.
Was Florence Greenberg known to the general public at the time of her greatest success?
The public didn’t really know. The public didn’t know who Berry Gordy was. Well, I mean, somewhat, but not really until later.
Have any of the numbers stood out as particularly difficult to nail?
They’re all different. And they’re all challenging in different ways. There’s the challenge of structuring the songs for the wardrobe change, so that the dramatic scenes can roll through them. I’d like to just tell you it was easy [laughs].
(Million Dollar Quartet, above.)You mentioned that one of the projects that you’re working on as part of the American Pop Anthology is the story of Legs McNeil. That sounds very cool.
He’s my good friend. We’re really good friends. It’s called “Yuppie Like Me.” It’s Legs’ journey from the day that he started - growing up in Connecticut and starting Punk Magazine and then finding CBGB. It’s half a dozen different people in Legs’ life. It’s Legs, and then these people, on his journey, from when he discovered the music, punk music, to his run through Punk Magazine, and alcohol and Quaaludes, and sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, and Blondie, and Iggy Pop and Bowie, and then…he comes crashing and burning, getting sober, and then going to work, getting a job to do a story on the virus of the ‘80s, which was yuppies. He wrote a series of articles and it’s the ultimate journey, because the ultimate punk, the king of punkdom, Legs - Punk Magazine and the leader of the pack, had to go underground to write an article on Yuppies, and to do so, he had to become one of them. It’s a true story and it’s a fabulous story. Half a dozen different people play the Greek chorus, they play all the characters in Legs’ life, and all the groups, you know, Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, Blondie, Soft Cell. Think of it as A Chorus Line for rock’n’roll.
BABY IT’S YOU! plays at Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Avenue in Pasadena, through December 20 (Closing Performance: Sunday, December 20 at 2:00 p.m.). Performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Ticket prices are $62.00 - $78.00. and are available by calling the Pasadena Playhouse Box Office at 626-356-7529, visiting the Box Office, open from 12:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. daily excluding holidays, and online at www.Pasadenaplayhouse.org. Group Sales (15 or more) are available by calling 626-737-2851.
More information on Floyd Mutrux can be found at his website.
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