Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
Carol only eats organic food
Cleveland Press July 17 1972
Carol Channing arrived in Cleveland last night, a little breathless, an over-sized yachting cap perched on her head, a blue sailor type blouse over white skirt.
"I can't take the hat off because I wore it all the way on the plane from Los Angeles and my hair is flat," she explained as she alternately talked and sipper ice water in her hotel suite.
Miss Channing will appear Sunday night at Blossom Music Center with much off the sa me show that was booked for one month in Australia and which then played for two. It's also something of the show she did in London at the Drury Lane.
Actually, it's all pretty flexible. She will be joined here by the Imperials, a recording group, and she will be adding some country music to the show.
"In Australia the audiences were just great," she said. "But then they're so glad to see anybody there. It's so far."
It's also a place where they impounded her food. Miss Channing eats only organic food and her cook had prepared several meals in advance, frozen them and packed them in dry ice.
"I'm allergic to chemicals in food so I eat only organic foods," she explained. "I've never missed a show so it must be doing something.
I had enough food wit me to get started and then can always find something. But I waI ked into Melbourne with nothing to eat and there might not have been a show except that th impresario got h old of a farmer who raised organic lamb.
"Organic food is easier to get there than here. They don't use as much pesticide and they don't shoot their animals full of hormones.
"We get our food from a 4-H farm-all of our fowl, lamb and pork And then I can have fish anywhere.
"People hear about this and they bring me things young people especially. They show up with loaves of bread and tomatoes. They're just grand."
Miss Channing, who does just abou t every thing in show business ("George Burns once told me to do as many things as possible or you won't keep working"), has added country music to her field. She made a couple of recordings in Nashville, will go back there soon to record enough to complete an album.
"There's nothing like Nashville for making records," she said. It's totally unlike New York or Hollywood. I arrived and handed the orchestra members lead sheets with a melody line my conductor had made out.
""What's on this here piece of paper?' they asked. 'Don't you read music?' I asked them."
" 'Not enough to hurt,' they told me. And then someone would yell for Zeke to get on the sweet potato."
"So we just fooled around with the music. They get the feeling from you and you get it from them. It' wonderful.
"My father came from Georgia and I was singing country music from before I can remember. I'm going t record some he taught me. Some of them are so sad."
