Charlie Smalls scores for The Wiz, JPB 14-06. Music Division, The New York Public Library.
Charlie Smalls (1943-1987) was a composer and songwriter best known for writing the lyrics and music for the Broadway musical The Wiz (1974). The Charlie Smalls scores for The Wiz date from 1974 and contain piano-conductor scores and parts used during rehearsals and performances of the show.
Charlie Smalls (1943-1987) was a composer and songwriter best known for writing the lyrics and music for the Broadway musical The Wiz (1974). Born in Queens, New York, he studied music from the age of three, and attended both the Henry Street Settlement and the Juilliard School during his childhood and teen years. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1961.
During the 1960s, Smalls was the pianist in the New York Jazz Repertory Company, and he toured with such artists as Harry Belafonte and Hugh Masekela. In 1974, he was recruited to work on The Wiz by the show’s producer, Ken Harper. The Wiz opened in Baltimore in 1974 before its Broadway premiere in 1975. The show won the 1975 Tony award for Best Musical, and also brought Smalls the Tony for Best Original Score, as well as a Drama Desk award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics.
While in Belgium in September, 1987, Charlie Smalls died of cardiac arrest during emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. He was 43 years old.
The Charlie Smalls scores for The Wiz date from 1974 and contain piano-conductor scores and parts used during rehearsals and performances of the show. Some are annotated.
The scores are divided into parts and piano-conductor scores.
Mildred Harper, the mother of Ken Harper, the creator and producer The Wiz who died in 1988, donated her son's papers to the Schomurg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1989. The scores were separated from those papers and transferred to the Music Division
Donated by Mildred Harper in 1989.
Compiled by Matthew Snyder, 2014
For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.