Music Monday —1776

 I will have two posts today.  The first will be about today’s theme,

And the theme?  National Day.

So what could be more appropriate than songs about the founding of a nation?

I am a history geek.  I admit it.  I revel in it.  

I am also a Broadway nerd,  especially musicals.

So when the two cross paths …

1776.

I saw it on Broadway with Brent Spiner (of Star Trek fame) as John Adams. I saw it at City Center, in a production where everyone wore modern clothes and John Larroquette played Benjamin Franklin.  I saw a production at a small Long Island theater.

And every year, around the 4th of July, I watch the 1972 movie starring William Daniels. I’ve seen the movie so many times I can recite dialogue.

They strove for historical accuracy but occasionally missed the mark.  It’s a movie, they have to take some dramatic license.  But …

Well, what they did to Caesar Rodney …

Rodney was a delegate to the Continental Congress from Delaware.  In the movie he is portrayed as an old man, dying of facial cancer, who drags himself off his deathbed to return to Philadelphia and break the deadlock in his delegation, so that Delaware votes for independence.

Not exactly accurate.  

Rodney was 48 years old in 1776, not exactly elderly.  He did die of cancer, but in 1784.  In 1777 he was elected President of Delaware, and served in that role until 1781.

And what Rodney did vis a vis the vote for independence?  It was actually heroic. He was in Delaware when he learned that Congress would vote on independence.  He rode on horseback, 70 miles, at night and during a thunderstorm, arriving in Philadelphia just as the voting was starting, and yes, he did break the deadlock so that Delaware voted in favor of independence. There was actually a movie about Rodney, a 1938 short called The Declaration of Independence, that accurately portrays Rodney’s ride.

But back to the musical.  Here are a few songs from the show. 

  

Bonus tracks.  Did you think I’d discuss one musical about the Revolution and ignore another?   A few selections from Hamilton are in order.  I don’t even try to find the inaccuracy here, I just enjoy …