The Music Man (Original Broadway Cast Recording 1957)

Just call him 'Iowa Stubborn'.

It took Meredith Wilson eight years and 32 drafts to bring his childhood memories of Iowa onto the stage, but anyone who has ever sat entranced by The Music Man will agree that it was well worth it.

Willson was a strange amalgamation of small-town hick, classical musician and showbiz slickness…all of which somehow found their way into his 1957 musical hit.

He was born in Mason City, Iowa on 18 May 1902 and it isn't hard to see the show's fictional 'River City' peeking out from under the thin disguise of the place Willson called home. His mother was also a much-loved music teacher, so it's also easy to find the inspiration behind Marion Paroo, one of the most endearing of all musical comedy heroines.

But then came Chapter Two in Willson's life, when he went to New York City after graduating high school to enroll in the Institute of Musical Art, which would later change its name to the better-known Juilliard School of Music. By the age of nineteen, he was hired by renowned conductor/composer John Philip Sousa as first flutist in his band and it was only a few more years before he was playing with the New York Philharmonic, frequently under the baton of the charismatic and unpredictable Arturo Toscanini.

This would have been exciting enough for a 22 year-old musician who was still shaking the hay off his Midwestern boots, but Willson soon slid into the even-more-popular world of radio and before his thirtieth birthday, he was one of the major musical forces for NBC Radio.

And for a long time, that's where it looked like Willson was going to stay. Except for a stint in the Army during World War II, he spent the next seventeen years at NBC, writing hit songs such as "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You" and spending each week as the musical supervisor for Tallulah Bankhead's exercise in sonic mayhem called The Big Show.

But one day in 1949, the ingratiating Willson was holding forth to a bunch of his friends about what it was like to grow up in Iowa. In the crowd was composer Frank Loesser, who instantly thought Willson's remembrances should become a Broadway musical.

He originally thought of Willson conducting the orchestra himself, turning around to the audience to offer folksy reminiscences of what it was like back in that kinder, gentler time and place.

And something that Loesser said must have struck a spark in Willson's head. One of the bonus tracks on this CD is of a song called Till I Met You which Willson recorded with Eileen Wilson (only one "l", no relation!) on 25 October 1950.

Except for the fact that the title phrase was later changed to Till There Was You, it's note for note and word for word the same song that anchored the second act of The Music Man (and later became the only Broadway tune covered by The Beatles!).

By 1951, the hot producing team of Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin (Where's Charley?, Guys and Dolls) optioned the show which Willson was at this point calling The Silver Triangle.

It dealt with a shyster salesman of non-existent musical instruments and the noble piano teacher who had the power to expose him.

In that respect, it sounds just like the show that opened on Broadway six years later, but in most other ways, it was a lot different.