Can-Con 45 Of The Day - January 2

[radiofan]

Today's Can-Con 46 is from 1969 ... From the Rock Musical Hair ... Three Dog Night and "Easy To Be Hard" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIffz-72B8Y

[Richard Skelly]

The CBC tended to ignore the fact that Hair music composer Galt MacDermot passed away last month. Montreal-raised, MacDermot studied music at Cape Town University in South Africa before moving to New York.

Meanwhile, lyricists James Rado and Gerome Ragni had beavered away on lyrics and script for what would officially be titled Hair: The American Love-Rock Musical. The pair began writing it after collaborating on a flop musical in 1964. Impresario Nat Shapiro eventually introduced Rado and Ragni to MacDermot...and the rest was history.

Easy To He Hard solidified the momentum of Three Dog Night after their breakthrough smash One. But it was only one of four major Hair hits that would be successfully covered by other artists. Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In by The Fifth Dimension, the title track Hair by The Cowsills and Good Morning Sunshine by Oliver were all massive hits. More than three million copies of the Original Cast Soundtrack were also sold.

Hair hits and other songs from the musical were sampled by rap and hip hop artists in ensuing decades. MacDermot won a Tony for his work on a subsequent musical Two Gentlemen From Verona.

RIP Galt MacDermot and Cory Wells of Three Dog Night. (Chuck Negron sang lead on Easy To Be Hard.)