Stephen Sondheim - Bobby And Jackie And Jack Lyrics

1960...

It's 1960...

And gosh, what a swell year it's been!

So many blessings
Such wonders it has brought
You hardly know where to begin:
There's Xerox
And lasers
The twist and the "pill"
A city in Brazil-

That no one wants to fill

Khrushchev stopped screaming
And Librium came in

And Nixon didn't win

Goodbye then to Ike and the brass
To years that were cozy but crass

It's true Ike was icky

But better him than Dicky-

Now meet the first first family with class
En masse

There's Bobby-

And Jackie-

And Jack-

And myriads more in the back:
There's Ethel and Teddy and Pat alone-

Plus Eunice-

And Peter-

And Jean-

And Joan-

And what's-his-name-?

Stephen-

And hold the phone-
The one in the army-

One in the army?

Captain... Major...

Sargent!

That's it!

So many cards in the pack
You want to know how to keep track?
Well, one is good looking and young and rich
While one is good looking and young and rich
The rest are good looking and young and rich-
There isn't a lot that they lack
Not Bobby and Jackie and Jack
And Ethel and Ted and Eunice and Pat and Joan
And Steve and Peter and Jean and Sarge-
There's probably dozens of others at large
God knows-
And Joe and Rose

We're bringing back style to the White House

I'm painting it beige for a start

We're making it into a cultural lighthouse

For glamour-

And beauty-

And art:

Evenings of the Budapest playing Vivaldi
And Munch doing bits of Ravel
I'll get Leontyne Price to sing her
Medley from "Meistersinger"
And Margot Fonteyn to dance "Giselle"

Together?

Won't it be perfectly swell?

We'll have Bernstein play next on
The Bechstein piano-

And Auden read poems and stuff

And Galina Vishnevskaya

Gesundheit

The Russian soprano-
Just pronouncing her name is refreshing enough

We're bringing back style to the White House
With casual culture the rule

Let's have Tebaldi-

She makes a guy feel good

And Oleg Cassini-
Well, I think he's real good

And how about Heifetz?

And Callas!

And Gielgud!

And later, when everything's cool
We'll push them all into the pool!

All right Bobby, I'll make you attorney general. Now get off my back.

With Bobby-

And Jackie-

And Jack-

The White House is under attack

Eight years is the limit, but eight will do

By then there'll be Bobby-

And Teddy, too

Or Peter or Stephen-

Or even you

Ooh!
And then there's the Colonel-

Colonel?

Major-?

Major?

You know!

Sargent

Yes!

Dozens to take up the slack
If anything goes out of whack

And some day elections will be unknown-

'Cause each of our kids will ascend the throne-

And their kids have more kids with kids of their own-

It's sort of a family knack-

Till most of the nation's
Made up of relations
Of Bobby and Jackie and Jack
And Ethel and Ted and Eunice and Pat and Joan
And Steve and Peter and Jean and Sarge
And Joe and Rose and rows and rows
And rows and rows and rows and rows
The decade is starting anew
And maybe the country is, too