Program

Tom Jones:  Many years ago in a galaxy far away (by which I mean the University of Texas in 1950) I was a graduate student working on my master’s degree in directing.  When I received an offer to stage the annual college musical, I jumped at the chance, not because I knew anything about musicals (I didn’t) or because I was particularly interested in musicals (I wasn’t) but because it paid a fee and it was the first time anyone had offered to pay me for doing what I loved to do.  There was, however, one little problem.  This was October, the show was due to open in January, and the student submitted scripts and songs were terrible.   So I decided to write it myself.  The words, that is.  I could never compose music.  I contacted a student in the Art Department named Harvey Schmidt who played the piano by ear and who had written a couple of tunes for our weekly Curtain Club shows.  And, to make this long story somewhat shorter, Harvey said “yes,” we did the show, it was a smash, and, totally unknown to either of us, our lives had undergone a profound and permanent change.

Creative Team

The choreographer, Persis Hopkins, was the real thing.  She created number after wonderful number for HIPSY-BOO.  Later she choreographed TIME STAGGERS ON.  That's her sitting beside Tom Jones in the photo where he is giving notes to the cast.  Later still, after TIME STAGGERS ON closed and the cast had scattered to the winds, she sang all the lead female numbers for the "cast album."   And, to repeat myself, later still - she opened a dance studio in Fort Worth where, over the years, she taught an endless stream of Texas damsels how to do the "Hipsy-Boo."  They are out there now, centuries later, spread across the state of Texas: an endless line of geriatric show girls.

Freshman Song

Tom Jones:  “The Freshman Song” is the first song Harvey and I ever wrote together.  It was the first number in the show and it takes place early in the morning of the first day of school.  And it’s not bad for two people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.  Most of our early songs were lyrics first (because we didn’t know it could be any other way) but for this I gave Harvey a lot of lyric scraps which he managed to put together with a great jazz piano.  I am still dazzled by the fact that he didn’t then, or at any time later, ever learn to read music.  But in a strange way it made sense.  Music was just a natural part of his emotional makeup and he couldn’t seem to connect it with those little black dots on a piece of paper.

 Music (Lead Sheets)

Texas Western College, September 1951

Program