The Music Man

I’ve seen The Music Man at least once a year, since age ten, usually around the 4th of July, which is when the story takes place and is the holiday it embodies so well --- the All-American, fireworking, head-back-looking-up-at-the-sky, patriotic singing holiday of holidays. And all due to the enthusiasm, good-old American stick-to-it-iveness and talent of Meredith Wilson. The entertainment industry doesn’t produce people like Wilson anymore. Born at the turn of the century in Mason City, Ioway (the real River City), he was a musician, composer, playwright, radio star, bandleader, and author. He grew up in Iowa, a son of the Midwest, and became an accomplished flutist and piccolo player, so much so that he attended the Julliard School. He later played in John Phillip Sousa’s band (talk about “76 Trombones!”) and for the New York Philharmonic under the master Toscanini. In 1950, Wilson met playwright and screenwriter Franklin Lacey, and they began an eight-year journey to capture Wilson’s memories of his boyhood in Mason City. Thirty revisions and forty songs later, they produced the Broadway show, The Music Man, premiering in 1957. 

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