Naples man in New York with second chance for father's music

Gary Kelson's musical paean to his songwriting father has been quietly showing up in workshops on both coasts. But this time, it's in a venue where it can make some noise. 

His musical, retitled "Yours Truly,"  is sleeker and more fused with the script's action. It will get a reading — and singing — in a theater for music lovers who appreciate the effort. It's at the York Theatre, a historic New York City musical incubator, at 2:30 p.m. May 22.

This is, Kelson said, not a performance for producers and directors, as its performance at Playwrights Horizons was in 2013. At this reading, the public gets to weigh in with its response.

He, writer Doug Jacobs and arranger Steve Gunderson doubtlessly have fingers crossed for this edition. It has been nipped and tucked, songs re-arranged to dovetail into the action and even some verses switched around to flow better with the script. Because the title has changed from the iffier "Better Than Sinatra," as Kelson's father was described; there's even a new website for "Yours Truly."

Naples resident Kelson is both patient and impatient for this reading. He has not stopped after 15 years and untold rewrites in his mission to bring the story of his father to the theater. His father, Lee Kelson, who:

• Gave up his music career to stay at home with his wife and raise his son, working as a furniture salesman and doing occasional radio guest stints.
• Left a legacy of the music he couldn't give up, sheaves of romantic ballads he wrote in secret. They were stuffed in a closet for his son to find after his father's death.

To say it made an impact on Gary Kelson would be egregious understatement. Determined to get his father's music — and his fame-to-family man story — a venue, Kelson has kept working to make the story viable for theaters. 

"We have been lugging this little baby up the mountain and we're going to get there," declared Kelson on the eve of another trip to New York. "We've had disappointments. But we've never given up on it."

Doug Jacobs, the Los Angeles writer who has worked with Kelson off and on for the last 10 of those 15, has hopes for this one, too, "But I'm not going to be a prophet in church. I've been very pleased with the last couple of drafts."

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But, he conceded,"the recent one has really tightened it up and the music arranger (Gunderson) has been really pulling out the action in putting into the music, which I like. He's actually rearranged the songs quite radically to pick up on that emotional momentum." 

What the trio have now is more of a cabaret musical, around 85 minutes long, and Kelson is happy with that approach.   

"This is not your big 'My Fair Lady' musical that clocks in at two to 2½ hours," he said.  It's more in the vein of small-theater favorites such as "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change."

Jacobs likes the portability at this size: "You can do it with just a piano or with a jazz trio," he said. Jacobs actually came up with the scale idea from a visit to Oberon, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a disco version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was onstage.

"This is the kind of musical you can do that way — a sort of family stand-up comedy around the kitchen table or around a family bar where one person starts the story and another chimes in and picks it up."

"Yours Truly"  has Kelson's longtime West Coast friend, singer-actor Dan Shor, playing his role in the musical: "Having a friend of 30 years play you — that is pretty cool."

He's hoping that the potential investors who are often in the audience are favorably impressed: "Of course, if it would get a life, that would be great."

But just as much, he's hoping that patrons who hear tunes like "Autumn and Eve" are as impressed with his father's talent as he was.

"I just want people to walk out of the theater smiling, perhaps even humming a tune or two."

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