Dec. 24, 1971: Illustrious cast of local touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar"

 

Introducing several folks we've come to know and love (see the Footnote) in a rare Friday edition of TV Topics. In those days, The News didn’t publish on Christmas. 

Dec. 24, 1971 

‘Superstar’ Began

With Yule Present 

APOSTLES: “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening.” 

        The principal people from the Buffalo area’s only touring cast of “Jesus Christ Superstar” are sitting around Earle Webber’s parents’ spacious West Seneca living room. They’re passing around that day’s newspaper.

        Nobody’s happy about it. Not Earle, or Joe Head, or Tom Callahan, or Sonia Socha, or Doug White – or, if you will, Christ, Judas, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene and King Herod.

        There has been a school board controversy over their Williamsville appearance, now set for Jan. 8 at South High School. The troupe fells they were misrepresented.

        For one thing, the story gives the impression that the cast is from New York City. And furthermore, the cast thinks there’s nothing inherently evil about the show.

        “We’ve done it in other high schools,” Sonia says.

“I think it’s just a different way of looking at Christ,” Earle explains.

* * *

“REGARDLESS of what religious beliefs you have,” Joe Head says, “it gets you thinking.”

        At least three times Doug has seen people walk out crying. Joe Head got a letter from a guy in Penn Yan who thought he was better than the guy in the national touring company.

 

MARY MAGDALENE: “Try not to get worried. Try not to turn onto/ Problems that upset you, oh, don’t you know/ Everything’s all right, yes, everything’s fine …”

 

        It was a Christmas present from Erie Community College to its students, one show at noon, another at 2 p.m.

        “That first show started really well,” says Doug. “The adrenalin was flowing, the band was good, everybody was feeling right. But after that first number, there wasn’t one bit of applause. It snaps you back to reality. It makes you work on getting people clapping.”

        Everybody felt it. The whole show turned stiff and self-conscious until Doug did his dancing bit, romping across stage in between verses of the mocking, imitation ‘20s “King Herod’s Song.”

 

JESUS: “If every tongue was still, the noise would still continue/ The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing.”

 

        It all started with the record. Earle got it from his parents last Christmas. Earle was already working with a chorus.

        The Rev. Don Kirkwood of St. David’s Episcopal and United Church of Christ in West Seneca, who had heard a youth choir record, tapped Earle three months earlier to work with a group of kids and they were, according to Earle, “doing kinda folk stuff and going nowhere.”

* * *

IT TOOK HIM until just before Easter to get the show together. Their first performances, concert-style in St. David’s, was backed by folk guitars.

        “We were absolutely atrocious,” Joe Head says.

        That was back when they had exclusive performing rights in the Buffalo area for two weeks, until costs and legal hassles made them drop it. Now they’ve dropped a solo and some chorus parts, added a reprise at the end, just enough to call it “excerpts.”

        The second show is looser and more dramatic. Jesus is stronger. There’s applause this time. Afterwards, the cast divides their fee.

        Other fees have covered those new Shure column speakers, the rented floodlight and the new programs which the printer didn’t have ready. There’s no other source of funds and this is the first time any of them have paid themselves for this show.

        Sonia missed five classes at Buffalo State, Tom Callahan got up at 7 a.m. so his voice could hit the high notes, Doug got off from work at a downtown department store, Joe gave up work and a game of ball hockey and West Seneca High School gave up the 15 chorus members. For Earle, “Superstar” is a full-time job.

 

PILATE: “I dreamed I met a Galilean/ A most amazing man …”

 

        Earle, Joe and Doug had been in a rock band, Maintenance, until drummer Don Crowell left for commercial rock in Cesar’s Children.

Next Joe fell in with Tom Callahan, whom he’d met at Canisius College, and bass guitarist Steve (Cheese) Kosinski to form The Notorious Ego Brothers. Then Earle called and asked if Joe wanted to sing Judas.

        “Joe and I came over to visit Earle to get my Poco album,” Tom says, “and he said, ‘We need a Pilate.’”

        Tom brought Cheese in, but the big change came with pianist Rick (Pinky) McGirr, who some of the chorus kids knew. Pinky had the musical charts for “Superstar” and he reorganized it musically early last summer. That’s when they went electric.

        “Then the Episcopal Church came through again,” Earle says. “Father Kirkwood worked out arrangements for us to play July 21 at a youth conference at St. Bonaventure University. It was the first show with the cast we have now.”

* * *

“IT WAS the hottest day in the past 253 years,” Tom says. “The archbishop was there and it was one of the most emotional shows we’d ever done. Not to that point, but up to now. The closest we came to matching it was West Seneca State School.”

 

JESUS: “The end … / Is just a little harder when brought about by friends.”

 

        There’s never been a shortage of professional ambition in the cast. Pinky and Tom Callahan left this fall to join a “Superstar” cast in South Carolina, Tom coming back saying that inhospitable locals there killed his dog.

        Joe Head considered joining Cesar’s Children and after Bernie Cesar’s son, Mike, started playing “Superstar” piano, the troupe got Cesar’s publicity associate, Dave Elias, to handle personal management so Doug and Earle could stop sitting up nights worrying.

        Then suddenly they were performing for big crowds in schools rather than in churches. There’s TV and radio talk show appearances and traveling, like to Utica in mid-January. At least one member wonders if it’s the right step – going semi-professional.

* * *

THERE WAS TALK of forming a full-fledged touring company and talk of how the national touring company had probably quenched most of Buffalo’s thirst to see “Superstar.” Doug and Earle wonder whether there’ll be any demand for the show next summer. Nobody sees it going on forever.

        “It was kind of a fluke,” Doug says. “It turned out more successful than we thought it would. Aside from that, we just wanted to do something. It’s sort of a launching pad for show business.”

        A real test shaped up for last weekend. Earle flew to Albany for an audition with a commercial group and came home with a job playing bass and singing lead.

        One of the cast was to fill in for him at Williamsville and Doug is taking over directorship, but the show might be in trouble if Earle isn’t replaced soon.

        “I think it’ll stay together,” Sonia says, “if we can just find another Christ.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Like a Gold Thread 

        When Earle Webber was running a church folk chorus in West Seneca a year ago, turnout would vary from five to 20. When “Superstar” started, it became a constant 15 and they rehearse once a week if they aren’t performing.

        “It’s probably because we like the show so much,” Earle’s sister Jean explains. “We’re at ease, you know, and we enjoy doing it and putting on a, you know, professional show.”

* * *

THE CHORUS is like a gold thread running through the fabric of “Superstar,” but it isn’t the only unexpected talent the show has inspired. Take Bob (Cowboy) Grosstephen, a precision lightman who says he previously didn’t know a bulb from a socket. The leaders feel a continual challenge.

        The cast, while not zealously religious, says there have been something like mystical experiences during several performances.

* * *

ONCE JOE HEAD became so absorbed in Judas’ agonized death song that several were afraid he would fall. And Earle picked up eerie overtones during a performance in church last Good Friday:

        “Here I am, being crucified, much as we do it now, only not as dramatic. And the chorus was laughing, like they’re supposed to, and suddenly the audience started laughing.

        “At first I was kind of upset and I just started pointing to people, saying: ‘Into your hands, into your hands.’ Then it got into my mind that the audience had become like the chorus. And they were playing the part perfectly.”

* * * * *

TOP PHOTO CAPTION: “Superstar stars” – From left, Joe Head, Sonia Socha, Earle Webber, Tom Callahan and Doug White. Bottom photo is the entire cast with no IDs.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: How completely out of character it is to see one-time altar boy Joe Head as Judas. He has the voice of an angel, which made it such a treat to hear him singing with the folk trio The Thirds week after week in the bar area at Nietzsche’s on Allen Street during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Though I have never caught him doing an opening set for Shakespeare in Delaware Park, he’s done that more than any other artist.

A history teacher at his alma mater, Bishop Timon-St. Jude High School in South Buffalo, Joe’s been a Buffalo Music Hall of Famer since 1992.

        Another Class of 1992 Hall of Famer in this troupe is keyboardist Rick McGirr, for whom this was the beginning of a long and illustrious career. From here he went on to play in the house band at an out-of-town show club, then returned to play with those towering prog-rockers, Rodan.

        After studying music at UB, he returned to Rodan, did a stint with another gang of fabulous players in the fusion band Gamalon and moved on to the city’s premiere good-time Top 40 band, the Party Squad.

        The other Hall of Famer is Earle Webber, who picked up the nickname of Bud. He was a founding member and bass guitarist with the Stone Country Band, which was inducted into the Hall in 1997.

As the band bio there notes, Stone Country was the only country band locally to work regularly in rock clubs and was the last band to play in the legendary (or should I say notorious) Belle Starr before it burned down in the late 1970s.

Stone Country still plays regularly at guitarist Dwane Hall’s honky-tonk tribute to the Belle Starr, the Sportsmen’s Tavern in Buffalo’s Black Rock neighborhood. Sadly, Earle is no longer with them. He died in 2019.  

* * * * *

POSTSCRIPT: The cast’s Mary Magdalene, Sonia Socha, according to an oral history on the SUNY Cortland website, earned her own halo, but not as a musician. She discovered while attending Buff State that she loved organizing student activities. Her master’s degree program at SUNY Albany involved an internship at Cortland. She is credited with bringing many famous artists to campus, notably Billy Joel.

Her LinkedIn biography adds that she graduated with highest distinction from Erie Community College in 1971, was summa cum laude at Buff State with a degree in sociology in 1973 and was summa again at SUNY Albany, completing her special master’s degree program in 14 months.

LinkedIn further notes that she was director of student life for 15 years at Dundalk Community College in Baltimore and later executive director of the South Baltimore Learning Center. Since 2015, she’s been an adult education consultant in the Baltimore area. 

Meanwhile, according to his website, Tom Callahan, who was Pontius Pilate, has become “Buffalo’s own Irish balladeer.” He performs folk songs, pub songs and rebel songs regularly in coffeehouses and festivals, sometimes with Joe Head. In addition to guitar, he plays mandolin, bouzouki, banjo, bodhran and tin whistle.