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Harpo Tribute Page Message Board

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Harpo Tribute Page Message Board
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piano book

I was watching "A Night at the Opera" this evening on TCM and it reminded me about Harpo who I loved watching as a child. I remember watching him do a routine with bananas and his whistling to get other people's attention. He would always hang his leg over the straight man's arm too. Anyway, I teach piano to youngsters and when they introduce the pedal the song is called "Harp Song" and it consists of playing a broken G chord and D7. The picture on top is of Harpo in costume playing the harp. I get a kick out of it each time. I always ask the children if they know who Harpo is and almost always they don't. Then last week I had a hit, I asked the student how she had heard of him. "Well," she said,"I want to learn the harp and I looked it up and found his name." So today I thought I'd see if I could find a picture to show the students from now on.
(By the way that movie had several scenes from Il Trovatore and the music was played straight. I wonder if that was really Kitty Carlisle singing? I once sang the duet that was shown at just before the end of the movie. Great stuff.
Beth S.

Re: piano book

I saw an interview with Kitty Carlisle in which she said that really was her voice in the movie. Apparently she was an opera singer as well as an actress. So yes, that was her all right.

I was pretty surprised. I grew up watching her as a celebrity guest on game shows and had no idea that she was famous for anything else, but immediately recognized her name.

Tell me the name of that piano book. I'd like to see a copy.

Re: Re: piano book

The piano book is from the Alfred Piano Series. I believe it is book 2 and it is brown. It is at the introduction of playing the pedal.
It is great that we can still see the old movies. I loved Groucho also. I can remember my Dad laughing at him when he was on TV.