This American biography through song received rapturous acclaim when it opened on Broadway featuring Alfred Drake, Burl Ives and Juanita Hall.
Only three performers appear throughout the show; the rest of the parts may be cast as desired. The story begins in Puritan New England, with its many repressions. Through its scenes wanders a fellow out of legend, one Barnaby Goodchild, who is imprisoned in the stocks in the first scene, and condemned by Parson Killjoy to go singing and dancing through the ages. Barnaby moves blithely with American music through history, bringing his singing ways to a Civil War campfire, to Texas of railroading days, to the Gay Nineties and the Roaring Twenties, and into the world of today.