Jerry Herman to Get His Due : Songs from the prolific composer-lyricist’s many musicals will be sung by Broadway stars in a Hollywood Bowl fund-raising tribute

“One of the only things that bug me,” says Jerry Herman, “is that through the years, when people introduce me, they always say, ‘the music of Jerry Herman.’ So many people don’t know that I write my own lyrics, too.”

Indeed, Herman is the only composer-lyricist to have had three musicals run more than 1,500 consecutive performances each on Broadway. (Andrew Lloyd Webber may be prolific, but he writes music only.) Wednesday evening songs from those shows--”Hello, Dolly!”, “Mame” and “La Cage aux Folles”--and such other Herman musicals as “Milk and Honey,” “Dear World,” hispersonal favorite “Mack and Mabel,” “The Grand Tour” and “Jerry’s Girls” will be performed at the Hollywood Bowl in a tribute billed as “Jerry Herman’s Broadway at the Bowl.”

With Dolly herself, Carol Channing, as host, the show also stars Bea Arthur, who won a Tony Award as Miss Gooch in “Mame”; Michael Feinstein; current “Phantom of the Opera” Davis Gaines; George Hearn; Florence Lacey, Lorna Luft; Rita Moreno; Karen Morrow; Lee Roy Reams, and Leslie Uggams, with video toasts from Angela Lansbury, Liza Minnelli and Paul McCartney. Herman’s longtime musical director Don Pippin conducts members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and there will be a fireworks finale.

A joint benefit for the L.A. Philharmonic Musicians Pension Fund, the Starlight Foundation and the Starbright Pavilion Foundation, the tribute was the idea of Herman’s goddaughter, Jane Dorian Haspel, who is active in Starlight, an organization that grants wishes for terminally or chronically ill children. Herman himself has worked on Starlight’s behalf for several years, focusing on the wishes of children with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Money raised from the evening--which includes pay-per-view airings, and possibly a home video and a recording--will be used to fulfill their requests.

“This evening is the pinnacle for me,” says Herman, sitting in a Bowl conference room shortly before an audition to select child performers for the show. The two-time Tony Award winner (for “Dolly” and “La Cage”) and double Grammy Award recipient, who turns 60 July 10, speaks in a tone tinged with awe. “To have all these people I’ve worked with, and the L.A. Philharmonic . . . . It’s all so overwhelming to me.

“I told myself, ‘You’re going to have two of the wildest weeks of your life, so exercise and gear up.’ I’m thinking of it as the opening of a show. I’m busy and excited, but I haven’t been able to take it all in yet.”

In fact, Herman, who today joins Channing as co-grand marshal of the Gay Pride Parade, has taken an active role in putting the show together. “The details are endless. I couldn’t sleep, because I was thinking: ‘Does Leslie Uggams have the right shoes for the opening? Did Don Pippin change the key for ‘We Need a Little Christmas?’

“I wanted a fun evening, to represent my life’s work,” he adds. “Our executive producer, Gregory Willenborg”--who has staged tributes to Bob Hope and Elizabeth Taylor--”hired all the best people for lighting, sets, everything.”

Most of those on the bill are established musical theater stars. Just exactly how, then, does ex-Beatle Paul McCartney fit in?

“Paul McCartney is my music publisher,” Herman replies with a smile. “He bought the company, E.H. Morris, about 15 years ago. So he’s really my boss. It was Greg’s idea, to ask him if he’d say a few words about the time in his life when he was a young Beatle and all of his songs were No. 1--until a musical opened and Louis Armstrong’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’ pushed him off.”

The musical part of the program includes what Herman terms “expected standards, so the audience won’t be disappointed,” but also lesser-known selections, such as the comic “Take It All Off” from the revue “Jerry’s Girls,” and “Kiss Her Now” from “Dear World.” Despite the seriousness of his mission--to increase people’s awareness of pediatric AIDS as well as raise money for Starlight--the evening will be entirely upbeat, he says.

“Whatever’s written in the program is one thing, but during the show there will be no mention of (pediatric AIDS)--when people get in their seats, I want them to be entertained,” he says. “You watch the 6 o’clock news and you can’t believe what you hear. We need a little piece of entertainment.”

That philosophy is also the hallmark of Herman’s career. “I love happy songs. I love to write optimistic, uplifting songs,” he says. “It’s hard for me to find source material, because I don’t want to do a downer.”

It is perhaps not entirely coincidental, then, that Herman fell in love with musical theater at age 3, after his parents took him to see “Annie Get Your Gun” by Irving Berlin, another composer and lyricist known for his uplifting material. Indeed, in a phone interview, Carol Channing, the performer perhaps most closely identified with Herman, attributes his popularity to the fact that he has “that Irving Berlin beat, that razzmatazz. Americans want optimism--’Crime and Punishment’ is not one of the big hits here.”

Channing, who refuses to let a recently broken collarbone prevent her from performing a “Hello, Dolly!” production number, as well as “The Best of Times” from “La Cage” (with Herman) and other songs, recalls that during “Dolly’s” pre-Broadway tryout, Herman came up with the rousing “Before the Parade Passes By” as a first-act finale. “That’s optimism. Jerry knew what to write there, and he made a hit. And because he can do both lyrics and music, he can say what he means to say.”

That music, Herman says, “pours out of me. I could go to a piano right now and write something. The lyrics are harder, especially intricate, internal rhymes, like in ‘Gooch’s Song’ from ‘Mame.’ That can take a month to write.”

When crafting a song, he adds, he thinks of the general idea first, then begins to put lyrics and music together “like a jigsaw puzzle.” Once a show has opened, “I love it when a song can jump out and have its own life.”

A number of Herman’s songs have done just that. Davis Gaines, who played Cornelius Hackl opposite Channing in a 1983 “Dolly” tour and is at the Bowl to help judge the children’s audition, says that “Jerry writes music people love to sing, melodies people can remember. They’re fun to sing, and they’ve become part of everyday life.”

Herman agrees that his penchant for writing simply and melodically is the key to his longevity: “I say that in retrospect, because I didn’t know that at the time I was doing it.”

Writing that way “happened naturally,” he says. “People like to hum when they leave the theater. They like to take something with them.”

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“Jerry Herman’s Broadway at the Bowl,” 8 p.m. Wednesday , Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. Special gala tickets including dress rehearsal passes, dinner and post-concert party, $1,000; deluxe tickets including pre-concert reception and dinner, $250; regular box seats, $75-$125; bench seats, $5-$40. For gala and deluxe ticket information call (213) 850-2050. For all other tickets and information call (213) 850-2000. Tickets also available at box office.