Winchell: The Musical – A Noisy Empire That Came To A Silent End

Review by Dawoud Kringle

Keith Levenson‘s resume is a veritable who’s who of the music business, spanning from Annie and Dreamgirls to working with The Who and the London Symphony Orchestra. Now, from his home studio and as a Parkinson’s patient at the Cleveland Clinic, he has undertaken his most personal project: resurrecting Winchell, the 1991 Broadway musical that MFM member Levenson co-wrote with Martin Charnin (Annie). This new recording, featuring a stunning roster of guest artists like Roger Daltrey, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Sally Struthers, is more than a cast album; it’s a benefit for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Centre for Brain Health, a cause Levenson knows intimately as both a patient and a volunteer.

The subject, Walter Winchell, was the most influential news personality of the 1930s and 40s. He invented and pioneered the blend of news and gossip. Levenson’s score does not merely accompany this story; it embodies it. He has composed the sound of a headline. The music is a masterclass in pastiche, evoking the sounds of Gershwin and Porter but consistently subverting them to reveal the moral compromises at the story’s heart. The masterful orchestration is brilliantly telling, using snare drums, brass stabs, and chugging tonic/dominant harmonies to become the sound of Winchell’s life and the pounding pressure of the news cycle itself.

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