That old Arlen Magic Broadway and blues singers honor American songster in ‘Over the Rainbow’

One morning last week, Tom Wopat was shooting hoops at the local Y in Milwaukee. He saw a teenager kicking around on the court and asked the boy if he wanted to play a little one-on-one. Wopat, a Broadway singer who is best known for playing Luke on the TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard,” visits community gyms all over the country when he is on a concert tour. That day, the 53-year-old singer beat the kid. He was feeling plucky and let out a “Dukes”-worthy yelp of pride.

Wopat may also have felt fortified by a performance the night before of “Over the Rainbow,” a touring 100th anniversary tribute concert to American songwriter Harold Arlen. The show will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8, at Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. Wopat, who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, is one of four singers – including Broadway and TV actor Faith Prince (“Spin City”), singer-pianist Loston Harris and singer Barbara Morrison – in the multimedia show, which features home movies and popular standards such as “Stormy Weather,” “That Old Black Magic” and Arlen’s most famous song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

While the concert is certainly a performance vehicle for Wopat’s new recording of Arlen works, it also celebrates the composer, who wrote more than 400 songs and collaborated with 16 lyricists. “Over the Rainbow” won the 1939 Academy Award for best song in a motion picture, and was named the No. 1 song of the 20th century out of a list of 365 songs compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. His tunes became standards for Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland.

The concert has been popular among critics. In Milwaukee, one reviewer wrote: “The success of the evening was, in part, the musicianship of the performers. But a good part of the equation was in the deliveries of songs that went to the heart of the tunes and avoided treating them like precious museum pieces.” A few days earlier, The Greenville News in South Carolina called the show “pure gold.”

Key to the production, said Wopat, is the combination of Broadway singers with jazz and blues singers. Loston Harris learned piano from Ellis Marsalis (father of the Marsalis jazz family), and Barbara Morrison has been a vocalist with many jazz greats, including Dizzy Gillespie, Etta James and Nancy Wilson. Most of the songs are accompanied by a quintet, but Harris also accompanies himself on piano.

“Everybody in the show has their own style,” said Wopat, who was in the 1999 Broadway revival of “Annie Get Your Gun” with Bernadette Peters. “Barbara is hot. I’m old-school standards. Faith does everything. Loston has a Nat Cole vibe. If you’re not a huge fan of one vocal style, just wait a second and you’ll be treated to another.”

“It’s eclectic and wonderful, and that’s who Arlen is,” said Faith Prince, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Miss Adelaide in the 1992 Broadway revival of “Guys and Dolls.” “Arlen crosses all styles of music: standards, Broadway, Cotton Club, torch songs. The show has a universal feeling. It’s not for the elite. It’s for everybody.”

In the course of the two-hour concert, Prince performs more songs than anybody in the cast. Her contributions include “Get Happy,” “Down with Love,” “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” and music for Glinda, the Good Witch in “Oz.” She decided to do the tour to team up with her old friend Wopat, with whom she did “Carousel” years ago at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..

“It’s a grueling schedule,” said Prince. “But I’ve had a lot of practice doing eight shows a week on Broadway. You have to really want it. You have to have the drive.”

As with Wopat, Prince grew up in a rural setting. She’s from Lynchburg, Va., where she sang in the church choir and school choruses, and played leads in high-school musicals. “Art was a big part of the community,” she said. “I did plays as a child, and all my teachers and people at church helped form who I am. It really does take a village.”

Harris, who is less well known than his colleagues, said the production is a chance to step out of the jazz circuit – he has played with the prestigious Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – and into a more varied style. In the show, he performs “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and “If I Only Had a Brain.”

“Arlen’s claim to fame was fusing popular music with jazz,” said Harris, who originally studied percussion and switched to piano under Marsalis’ advice. “I’m having a lot of fun bringing my own jazz thing to it. After doing the show, I have a greater appreciation for how many songs I’ve heard but didn’t associate with Arlen. For all of us – the musicians and audience as well – this is an education. Arlen didn’t get the claim to fame that Cole Porter and Gershwin got, but he’s nevertheless just as relevant to the history of music.”

“Over the Rainbow” is making its way around the country and will make a special stop at Carnegie Hall in New York on Feb. 14, the eve of Arlen’s 100th birthday.

“Over the Rainbow” will be performed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For tickets and information, call 581-1755 or (800) MCA-TIXX, or visit www.MaineCenterfortheArts.org. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.