Did you ever see the musical “Sweet Charity” from 1966, with Gwen Verdon in the starring role and choreography by her husband, Bob Fosse? The show was written with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and book by Neil Simon. The musical features the songs “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “Big Spender,” and the subject of today’s blog post, “The Rhythm of Life.” Maybe you’ve seen the movie version from 1969, with Shirley MacLaine, John McMartin, Ricardo Montalban, Chita Rivera, and Sammy Davis Jr.? It’s a fabulous film, with high energy and intensity all the way through. Watch it for free on the Internet Archive.

The taxi dancers sing “Hey Big Spender” in the 1969 film version with Shirley McClaine.

I may have seen the movie when I was in my teens, but I don’t remember much about it. The more memorable moment came in the spring of 2008, when I went with Sandy to Drury Lane Oakbrook, which put on a spectacular revival of the show. I still get goosebumps when I remember how electric the dancing was in the famous Frug scene—what a masterpiece of movement they created on that tiny stage.

The show has a rather strange plot line. Charity is a taxi dancer. If you’ve never encountered that term, it came from a time when men would purchase tickets at a dance hall and use them to dance with the women who work there. (The taxi reference comes from the idea that, the longer you dance, the more you have to pay, as when riding in a taxi.) It was not the most honorable profession, needless to say.

Charity has a big and generous heart. She is not lucky in love. However, she meets the shy accountant Oscar Lindquist when the two find themselves together in a broken elevator, and they become an item. Toward the beginning of the second act, Oscar invites Charity to join him at the church he’s been attending, the Rhythm of Life Church. The song describes how the church got built and what it is there for—to draw people to its charismatic leader. The church is more like a hippie group, with a cult-like following, questionable morals, and freely flowing substances. ‘Daddy’ refers to the minister, played in the original Broadway cast by Arnold Soboloff.

Sammy Davis Jr.’s performance from the movie is a thing of wonder, along with the dancing of dozens of so-called congregants—I recommend that you take five minutes and give it a whirl here. In its more unhinged moments, this song reminds me of the short song “Hashish” from the musical “Hair.” Charity and Oscar look pretty square when compared with the regular congregants!

Dorothy Fields’s lyrics to “The Rhythm of Life” have been changed significantly from the original when the song was adapted to become John Leavitt’s version for choir. You might call them cleaned up, or made more appropriate, or something similar.  The central question of my blogpost is this: how does one get from a song steeped in hippie sensibilities and countercultural morals, to an arrangement for choir that high schoolers (and their parents and teachers and administrators and PTAs) would feel comfortable singing… and one that we at Sounds Good Choir would feel okay singing to our grandchildren?

I wanted to know how lyrics like these got changed.

Fields’s original lyric:

Hit the road, Daddy, leave your common-law wife
Spread the religion of The Rhythm Of Life!

Leavitt’s new arrangement for choir:

Hit the road, neighbor, leave your worries and strife!
Spread the religion of the rhythm of life!

Fields’s original:

Rhythm in your bedroom, rhythm in the street
Yes, The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat

Leavitt’s new lyric:

Rhythm on the inside, rhythm in the street
And the rhythm of life is a powerful beat

Fields’s original lyric (clearly calling for unusual devotional behavior):

Flip your wings and fly to Daddy
Take a dive and swim to Daddy
Hit the floor and crawl to Daddy
Crawl, crawl, crawl to Daddy!

Became Leavitt’s:

Flip your wings and fly up high
You can do it if you try
Flip your wings and fly up high
Fly, fly, fly up high!

I am trained as a musicologist (read: nerd), and we’re taught to go down rabbit holes of inquiry and not be satisfied until we have reasonably good answers as to where things came from. In that sense we are a bit like archaeologists, studying the surviving musical record—with a lot of help in this case from YouTube and Wikipedia—to see what we can learn about the past and how it relates to the present.

Sammy Davis Jr. as ‘Daddy’ performs “The Rhythm of Life” in the 1969 film version.

In this spirit of curiosity, I wrote to John Leavitt, the accomplished composer who arranged this tune for choir. John has created several choral works that Sounds Good Choir has performed over the years. His “Ose Shalom” is a haunting setting of the famous Hebrew prayer, and Good Memories sang his medley of “Oklahoma!” tunes at its second concert in the spring of 2019. As of this printing, John hasn’t replied to me, but hopefully I’ll get some insight on his changes to Dorothy Fields’s original lyrics before we perform our concerts.

I was talking about this song with Sandy over our morning coffee, and she said, “Look, if you wanted to sell thousands of copies of sheet music, you wouldn’t leave in those original lyrics that are pretty disruptive and countercultural. Of course, you would change the lyrics!” I also realize that, in a concert setting where (in our case), we have eight songs of various styles and tempi and moods, we can’t take fifteen minutes for our narrator to set up the context for the audience so that they can understand the Rhythm of Life Church and its place in the musical. No, you want a zippy tune to which people can tap their feet, reminiscent enough of the original so that the people who were born before 1960 can feel like they’re hearing (and singing) something familiar, and accessible to the younger people in the room so that they can feel affirmed and inspired rather than being weirded out.

Even with the lyrics having been changed so much for choir, I still feel that this is a terrific song. The original music is strong, and John Leavitt is one of the best arrangers around these days. Linda Crabtree Powell, our Sounds Good conductor in Oak Park and my partner in selecting our fall and spring repertoire, went through it with me to work out all of the breaths and phrasing and such, and we had a great time with it. “The Rhythm of Life” is just one of eight songs on our fantastic spring program dedicated to Broadway tunes, so if you’re singing with us this spring, know that John Leavitt’s setting is a treat to learn and perform. And if you’re not singing, there’s no need to miss the fun—please come to any of our ten performances this May. They’re free and fun for all ages. Check our website for concert dates, times, and locations. SoundsGoodChoir.org

Note: all lyrics and images are copyrighted by their owners.