Playbill Baby It’s You is a new musical, which tells the story of how a housewife from New Jersey discovered The Shirelles in the 1960s and subsequently established a record label to showcase new in the pop music industry. The following description is taken from the press release provided by the Pasadena Playhouse, where the show has been running since 13th November:
Wrapped in the sensational songs of the ’60s, [i]Baby It’s You![/i] is the new musical about the groundbreaking girl group, The Shirelles, and Florence Greenberg, the New Jersey housewife who discovered them. With the help of African-American songwriter-producer Luther Dixon, who became her lover, Florence took on a male dominated industry and revolutionized pop music. Her company, Scepter Records, created the most important songs in the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll, from artists including The Isley Brothers, The Kingsmen, Chuck Jackson and Dionne Warwick.
So it’s a reverse gender Jersey Boys? But if we look at the photos – here are just two from a larger gallery at Playbill –
– perhaps it looks more like a low-key, low-budget [i]Dreamgirls[/i] with one extra dream.
Florence Greenberg is a fascinating woman – she gave Bacharach many of his early breaks too – and if focused on could make a good musical. But yeah, those pics look like a cheap Dreamgirls.