Presenting Bushy Wushy, the musical voice of St. Louis

By Diane Toroian
Of The Post-Dispatch

KETC-TV (Channel 9) will take St. Louis out to the ballpark one more time when it airs "Continental Harmony," a one-hour documentary that looks at an ambitious music project and the beer vendor who helped make it happen. It airs at 2 p.m. Sunday.

The project started three years ago when composer Phillip Bimstein was commissioned to write a piece about St. Louis. Bimstein was born in Chicago and now is the mayor of Springdale, Utah, but he traveled to St. Louis and considered the city's music and literary heritage as his inspiration.

What really intrigued him about our hometown was St. Louis' love of baseball.

"There were a lot of ways I could have gone, but I like the idea of baseball and Busch Stadium as the place where all the strata of St. Louis society comes together," he said.

Bimstein spent several days at Busch hoping to find the voices to serve as the vocals for his score. His search turned up Bushy Wushy, aka Robert Logan, a longtime beer vendor with the call of a Budweiser bullfrog.

Bimstein took Bushy Wushy's voice, mixed it with sounds of the ballpark and layered it over ragtime music. The end result -- "The Bushy Wushy Rag" -- acknowledges St. Louis' best traditions while giving the city a new way to experience itself.

"I interviewed all kinds of people, Tony La Russa, the guy who shoots fireworks, umpires, lots and lots of fans," Bimstein said. "But Bushy Wushy stood out to me. This piece was supposed to celebrate St. Louis, and he personified a friendly Midwestern quality, an entrepreneurial spirit, and he is a real hard worker. I think anyone could immediately relate to him."

Local wind ensemble Equinox Chamber Players performed the piece at Fair St. Louis in 2000.

Bimstein is one of 10 composers profiled in the documentary, but dozens more participated in the "Continental Harmony" project.

Launched three years ago by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts, the program set out to create music as varied as America. Fifty-eight composers created original works for 58 communities.

"The documentary really does a good job of capturing the excitement for the project," Bimstein said. "Not only the musicians' but the communities' excitement of having music written especially for them."

Top collage by J Kearns.

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