Chicago (musical)

Chicago is a musical, first performed in 1975, based on the play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins. Its book was by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb.

The Numbers and the Vaudeville acts they were modelled on

• "Overture" - performed by a pit-band
• "All That Jazz" - a number in homage to famous speakeasy performer Texas Guinan
• "Funny Honey" - modeled on Helen Morgan, singing "Bill"
• "Cell Block Tango" - the "merry murderesses" evoke the "ethnic numbers" of Vaudeville, and the death by hanging is staged as a "tightrope" act
• "When You're Good to Mama" - a "Sophie Tucker"-type double-entendre song, playing on the perceived homosexuality of the character
• "All I Care About" - a striptease based on Sally Rand and her fan dance, with the performer modeled on clarinetist and bandleader Ted Is Everybody Happy? Lewis
• "Little Bit of Good" - a female-impersonator reminiscent of Julian Eltinge singing a Jerome Kern parody as Marilyn Miller
• "The Press Conference Rag" aka "We Both Reached for the Gun" - a ventriloquist act
• "Roxie" - an autobiographical, observational stand-up comedy routine
• "I Can't Do It Alone" - half of a "double-act" (or an acrobatic "sister-act")
• "My Own Best Friend" - a torch song, subverted by the fact the singers are praising themselves
• "Me and My Baby" - a cakewalk, a la Eddie Cantor
• "Mr. Cellophane" - a clown number reminiscent of Bert Williams' 1915 Follies song "Nobody" performed wearing the costume of Emil Jannings from the final scene of The Blue Angel
• "When Velma Takes the Stand" - evokes vaudeville's courtroom comedy sketches, and staged as a parody of Rudy Vallee's numbers featuring collegiate chorus boys with megaphones
• "Razzle Dazzle": the lawyer Billy Flynn assumes the persona of Clarence Darrow in a juggling circus act.
• "Class"
• "Nowadays" - in the style of bandleader Ted Lewis
• "Hot Honey Rag" - in the style of bandleader Ted Lewis