John Raitt: classy man behind the voice

When Janis Paige remembers John Raitt, the revered leading man of many musicals who is best known for creating the role of Billy Bigelow in “Carousel,” she remembers “that glorious voice you could listen to forever. It was one of the most effortless, remarkable sounds in the world.”

She also remembers the poison oak.

When they starred together on Broadway in “The Pajama Game” in the mid-’50s, Raitt came to the theater one evening with a rash on his hands. “He had been out clearing land” at his country home, Paige recalled. “He was very athletic.” He told Paige the rash “was all dried out.”

Soon Paige had the rash all over her. She missed three weeks of performances, “and they made me take potassium baths, which made me turn purple.” Raitt felt terrible, she recalls.

She didn’t think anything as little as poison oak would ever get Raitt down. “There are some people you think will live forever, and he was one of them. I had no idea he was 88” -- his age when he died Sunday at his Pacific Palisades home.

Other colleagues also remembered Raitt’s vigor along with the voice.

Craig Barna, his East Coast accompanist for concert tours in the late ‘80s, said that just a couple of weeks after hip replacement surgery, Raitt “bounded on stage like a 25-year-old.”

He also recalled Raitt’s personal qualities with his colleagues. “He was the classiest of them all. We’d walk into a new venue, and if he didn’t know the names of everyone on the crew, he’d learn them.” When Barna’s father was in the audience one night, Raitt introduced him from the stage.

Raitt, a graduate of Fullerton High School, had special ties with the Fullerton Civic Light Opera, which uses the same auditorium where he made his musical theater debut, as a high school senior in “The Desert Song.” He appeared in the group’s “Zorba” in 1990, in “South Pacific” in 1991 and in benefit concerts for the group.

In “Zorba,” he had a bedroom scene with actress Shirley Romano that involved a few caresses. Griff Duncan, the group’s general manager, recalled that when he told Raitt that an audience member had complained the couple was “fornicating” onstage, Raitt laughed and replied, “I may be forgetting a lot, but I think I would remember that.”

Jan Duncan, Fullerton’s artistic director, said another producer once offered Raitt the role of the Starkeeper, an old character in “Carousel,” but Raitt told Duncan that “I know I’m old, but I just can’t think of myself as anyone but Billy Bigelow in that show.”

“In his mind, he was still that big, strong fella,” Duncan said.

However, Teri Ralston, a veteran actress in Broadway and L.A. productions, noted that Raitt accepted a small, non-singing role in her staging of “Follies” for the California Conservatory of the Arts. It turned out to be Raitt’s last full-fledged musical. “He was always ready to perform,” she said.

She also recalled that Raitt flew her to his home to audition for the 1966 Broadway musical “A Joyful Noise,” though she was just a college student. He personally picked her up at the airport and gave her a choice seat for his performance in a local production of “Carousel,” even though she ended up not getting the part in “A Joyful Noise.”

“Everything about him was so gorgeous,” Ralston recalled. “That pure tenor -- his voice had a cry in it. He never lost his beauty, inner or outer.”

The Duncans recall that on the closing night of their “Zorba,” they held a cast party at their home. Among those attending were Raitt’s daughter Bonnie, the blues-rock singer, and son David. Suddenly, John Raitt was at their piano, singing the “Soliloquy” from “Carousel” -- one of the most wrenching and demanding father-child songs in the musical theater repertoire -- as his children listened intently.

Recalled Jan Duncan: “The tears were rolling down everyone’s eyes.”