Though it used to be said that Broadway musicals (some of them, anyway) were intended for "the tired businessman," they were not usually about business until The Pajama Game. And not only was the show set in a factory, the story also revolved around a labor dispute, not, you might have thought, the sort of thing a tired businessman would want to watch after a hard day. But the show managed to poke fun lightly at its subject matter while actually focusing on a traditional romantic plot (the man was part of management, the woman part of labor), and, most important, it boasted a frisky score by
Richard Adler and
Jerry Ross, a young songwriting team making a transition from Tin Pan Alley (they had written "Rags to Riches" for Tony Bennett) to the musical theater. They brought with them a knack for the kind of novelty material that was finding success in the pop music market. For example, "There Once Was a Man," a love duet for the two leads, was an up-tempo, Western-styled romp of the kind associated with Frankie Laine rather than a tame ballad.
Adler and
Ross could write more conventional show music fare in the Rodgers and Hammerstein mold, such as "A New Town Is a Blue Town" and "I'm Not at All in Love," and even introduce new wrinkles to it, but they excelled at witty numbers like "I'll Never Be Jealous Again" and "Think of the Time I Save," both well-delivered by Eddie Foy, Jr. And, not surprisingly, they also wrote some hits. Archie Bleyer was in the charts within two weeks of the May 13, 1954 opening with "Hernando's Hideaway," and Patti Page soon followed with "Steam Heat." Both of those songs reached the Top Ten, but
Rosemary Clooney did even better later in the summer with "Hey There," which went to Number One in September. (Andrew Vélez's liner notes to the 2000 reissue unquestioningly quote producer Hal Prince's erroneous assertion that the record topped the charts before the opening.)