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[[image: graphic of two men carrying oversized musical instruments]]

OUT OF THE PITS

Broadway musicians are no longer "heard but not seen..."

Time was when Broadway musicians were relegated to the subterranean depths of the orchestra pit where they played their music mostly unseen and unapplauded. But now all that is changing. At Ain't Misbehavin', Beatlemania, Dancin', I Love My Wife, Runaways and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, musicians are not only visible center stage playing their instruments, but in cases like I Love My Wife, they are taking a slice of the plot and acting and singing as well.

Usually the decision to put the orchestra onstage rests with the show's director. In the case of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas co-directors Peter Masterson and Tommy Tune wanted their band, a blue grass group called Rio Grande Band, "up there because we were striving to create a Texas dance hall atmosphere."

Masterson and Tune had discovered the Rio Grande some months before at the Pickin' Parlor in Nashville, where they were playing for the hat. The group's style, according to Rio Grande leader Craig Chambers, is "more Count Basie than Merle Haggard." With the exception of Craig, who had appeared in a high school production of Androcles and the Lion, none of them had ever been on stage before. But now that they've tried it for a few months, Rio Grande Band is all for being part of the show. "Having the musicians on stage," says Craig, "provides a tighter link with the actors. Of course, there's one disadvantage in that you can never relax. You can't pick your nose or anything like that." ... Nor can you listen to a basketball game on a transistor radio with ear plugs, play chess or checkers, read a book, or simply loll about - activities sometimes engaged in by unseen pit musicians. But as compensation for being "on view," the onstage musician receives $33 a week above the union minimum of $380, a figure which he (like all other Broadway musicians) can escalate by playing more than one instrument ($42 for the second instrument, $21 for every additional one after that).

No matter what else a musician does on stage his main function is always to play 

by Bernard Carragher

18

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