The Days of Plaid and Roses : * Stage: In the Old Globe’s latest, New York playwright Stuart Ross takes a loving look at four bumbling innocents out to sing their way into the hearts of ‘60s America.

Sparky, Smudge, Jinx and Frankie are Forever Plaid, four “good guys” who sing ‘50s tunes in velvety, four-part harmony. New York playwright Stuart Ross created the young innocents, and then he killed them off.

They were about to embarrass themselves.

They were about to sing “Three Coins in a Fountain” in plaid tuxedos for their first gig. In 1964.

Definitely uncool.

“It was a blessing they didn’t suffer that humiliation,” Ross joked last week at the Old Globe Theatre, where his hit musical “Forever Plaid” will open July 18. The comedy is now running off-Broadway, in St. Louis and in Washington.

Ross is in San Diego to direct the West Coast premiere. He talked about the Plaids and what inspired him to base a show on “crew-cut music.”

“When my older brother left for college in 1956, when I was just turning 4, he left me all his 45s--of Perry Como, the Four Lads, the Four Aces, Four Freshmen, Peggy Lee, Tennessee Ernie Ford. . . . On top of that, my parents owned a diner. They couldn’t afford a baby-sitter, so I’d stay in the diner, and the jukebox guy would come and give me all the records nobody was playing anymore.

“Rock ‘n’ roll was just coming in, so I got all these Kay Starr records . . . and I had the Four Lads singing ‘Standing on the Corner Watching All the Girls Go By.’ Truly, when left alone, that’s what I would play. . . .

“So, a while ago, when I was doing another show, I looked at these album covers and wondered, what’s the mind behind these really clean-cut, square-looking guys, singing all about love. You just know they never had a clue as to what that was. All they cared about was singing, creating romance, making people happy. That’s what attracted me. Why would these guys do that? That’s what started this show.”

Ross joined talents with James Raitt--cousin of singer John Raitt, Bonnie Raitt’s father--to create the musical.

“James has done a brilliant work on the arrangements, expanding them quite a bit,” Ross said. When members of the original singing groups saw the show in New York, “they were floored,” he said. The Four Aces, for example, thought the music was even better than their own, according to Ross.

“They were amazed that we were able to put (their music) into a theatrical context and make it build theatrically, and make them laugh at the same time.

“Most of those guys never did choreography, though they said they always wanted to,” Ross said. “They would just stand there and do a couple of moves. But, on their album covers, it looked like they did tons of it. So I basically got inspired by the album covers, and that’s where the comedy comes in, in the staging.”

In retrospect, the songs are also amusing. “Lady of Spain,” “Day-O,” “Papa Loves Mambo,” “Shangri-La,” “Sixteen Tons” are five of 28 songs included in “Forever Plaid.” Ross believes he’s able to have fun with the music because it was popular before his time. Otherwise, he would have hated it or, like his brother, “been totally reverential toward it.”

“I don’t think of this (show) as a spoof or parody,” Ross said. “We take it sincerely, earnestly, but with a sense of humor.

“What would happen if four guys, who were misfits in society, were left alone in their basements to do their own choreography and their own arrangements?” he asked. There’s an innocence to that. It’s pretty funny, but it pokes fun at how naive we all were--in, I hope, a loving way.”

He recounted a musical number in which the Plaids wear sombreros for a Caribbean song. “They get a little confused,” he said, laughing.

Ross spoke of what was, in his view, an American period of plenty, from 1954 to 1964, when the mentality was to create avocado and turquoise refrigerators--”to make people want something they don’t need.”

“Everybody got caught up in the idea that they should be spending, they should really be successful, which got everybody frustrated. . . . The only time they would settle down, the only time they wouldn’t fight, was during ‘Ed Sullivan’ or ‘The Milton Berle Show.’ I don’t mean rich people. They were probably drinking. I mean lower-middle-class and middle-class people who were trying to live up to this American Dream and were just exhausted from it. At least that’s my perspective, from my family.”

Ross’ family lived on a farm near Brewster, N.Y., “near where Marlo ‘That Girl’--where Ann Marie was from,” he quipped.

“I remember going into this kid’s basement, you know, the white people with the Cutty Sark bottles and all those preppy things, who served baloney sandwiches on white bread for lunch, and had plaid carpet and plaid ice buckets--seriously! We never had that. I was amazed.”

Ross also remembers Bonnie Plaid Stamps, an incentive program, like Green Stamps, for grocery shoppers to fill up stamp books, then go to the Plaid Redemption Center to collect a premium. He still has a table radio he got from Plaid Land.

In those days, the ‘50s and early ‘60s, plaid represented wholesomeness and traditional values, Ross said. His tongue-in-cheek definition: “Plaid. A woven fabric, comprised of crossbar patterns and colorful squares, signifying family (pause) and home.”

When the conversation shifts to plaid, Ross has to refrain from launching into endless spinoffs along the lines of “Revenge of the Plaids” or “The Plaids Go to Hawaii.”

He did reveal, however, that he’s working on “The Official Plaid Handbook: How To Be Plaid,” with handy recipes and tips on oral hygiene. Some of the shows have plaid mugs and pins on sale, along with such concessions as sloppy joes, hot Smudge sundaes (named after one of the characters), and Rice Krispie squares. One production even had a plaid museum, to which the audience could contribute plaid-obilia.

“Forever Plaid” has been recorded, and Ross and company are working on a Christmas show, while looking for a variety of after-lives for the Plaids.

“I was always, always, always doing the weirdest, most far-out comedies or very strange, intensely serious plays off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway, and (“Forever Plaid”) is what I did in my spare time, just for fun, to lighten up. . . . I realized this music had been forgotten, and it was beautiful. I wanted to see how it would affect people, to hear these harmonies sung live. . . .

“When we first started doing (the show), we’d hear the laughter and then at the same time hear ‘Ooooooh,’ ” Ross sighed romantically. “Couples would put their arms around each other. It made me feel good inside. This is more than just a little idea!”

He turned it into a play at the bidding of a New York producer, but “it was long and awful and didn’t work. Everybody dropped it. So I produced it myself, put it on my VISA card, cut an hour off the show, and killed them,” he said, referring to his Plaids.

The strategy worked. The show was picked up, Ross paid off his charge card, and the hit was born.

Ross says the Globe’s production is larger, with more scenery and effects than the cabaret or supper-club settings the show’s been in elsewhere. And this production includes the New York cast--Stan Chandler, David Engel (who is from Irvine), Larry Raben and Guy Stroban.

Ross likes the fact that Jack O’Brien, Old Globe artistic director, is treating the work seriously, understanding that, “while it is silly, it is also delicate and touching.”

The Plaids, once dead, get a chance to “come back to restore harmony to the planet,” Ross said. “That’s their mission. They come back to do their little bit.” They represent a nostalgic, all-American notion, he explains.

“Be good to people, be good to your parents, take care of each other--not that I’m such a good example,” he said with a laugh.

Still, he thinks such values have a place. “I would love to see little kids with plaid lunch boxes singing ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ and ‘Hot Diggedy’ and laughing and having harmony in their lives. I’d love to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Plaids. Let them be happy and sing about how good it could be, without getting syrupy or goodie-two-shoes.

“The show never gets goopy or goodie-two-shoes,” Ross insisted. “There’s always an edge. The Plaids “always screw up or say something wrong. . . .”

“I don’t like that goopy stuff. Oh no. I like romance, yearning, hoping, dreams. . . .”

“Forever Plaid” opens Thursday at the Old Globe Theatre and runs through Aug. 25.