Chip Deffaa Presents George M. Cohan’s Broadway!

Chip Deffaa Presents

George M. Cohan’s Broadway!

With an All-Star Cast

(Garrett Mountain Records)

June 29, 2026

Reviewed by Jacqueline Parker

Yes, it’s that time of year—fireworks, parades, and flag waving—and this year we celebrate our exceptional nation’s 250th birthday! What better way to mark this landmark event than to listen to some of the music that helped mold America’s consciousness in the early years of the previous century.

You can watch James Cagney tap his way through the life of George M. Cohan, the real granddaddy of American stage music, but Chip Deffaa is offering his new CD, George M. Cohan’s Broadway!, which is an excellent way to hear many of the songs from Cohan’s shows, which were on the Great White Way at the time.

But first a bit about Deffaa. It’s hard to find anyone as dedicated to honoring and preserving the legacy of songwriters such as Cohan and Irving Berlin as Chip Deffaa, producer of at least eight CDs of Cohan (plus five plays!) and a dozen or so of Berlin—each one a gem. In toto, Deffaa is responsible for fifty recordings of music from the first half of the past century, and they keep coming!

This CD has 46 tracks, 75% of which are tunes that are unfamiliar but well worth knowing. The other 25% offers brief cogent commentary about Cohan’s life, era, and legacy. Most of the singers will be well known to devotees of Deffaa’s work, with some well-known Broadway and cabaret stars rounding out the cast. Familiar themes, such as Broadway (10 titles), family, love, patriotism and Ireland, abound.

Lee Roy Reams, Broadway’s showman par excellence, leads off the collection with the well-known—and apt—“Give My Regards to Broadway,” which also ends the recording, this time done by Seth Sikes. After remarks by Deffaa, a tune that was written by Cohan when he was a teenager but was never recorded, “The Broadway Girl,” is tenderly rendered by Dea Julien.

Ragtime was the rage during Cohan’s time, and his homage to it was “The American Ragtime,” here duetted by Deffaa and Jon Peterson. Peterson, who played Cohan superbly in Deffaa’s play George M. Cohan Tonight!, not only sings, but taps his way through “Belle of the Barber’s Ball,” a rousing number made all themore exciting by Peterson’s full-throttle interpretation.

A star in the making, Ethan Mathias, is featured on two tracks—one with Deffaa—for the penultimate tune, “Life Is Like a Musical Comedy,” Cohan’s final work. One of the marvels of Cohan’s music is that it captures the innocence as well as the optimism that is so uniquely American. Almost a century later, it still is vibrant.

This music is the gift our country gave the world at a time when it was sorely needed. Cohan’s songs written during World War I inspired and comforted a world at war, just as Irving Berlin’s did during World War II.

It’s fair to consider Cohan the progenitor of the American musical as we know it. Certainly, Irving Berlin thought so, as did Oscar Hammerstein II, who were both responsible for the statue of GMC that stands proudly in Times Square. Check out Cohan through Deffaa’s CDs, of course, and the film Yankee Doodle Dandy. There have been several books about him, most recently one entitled Yankee Doodle Dandy:  George M. Cohan and the American Stage by Elizabeth T. Craft. To know him is to appreciate all that he’s given to American entertainment and to the world. They didn’t call him “The Man Who Owns Broadway” for nothing!

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Jacqueline Parker

Like Ethel Merman, lifelong New Yorker Jacqueline Parker began her career as a stenographer. She spent more than two decades at the city's premier public agency, progressing through positions of increased responsibility after earning her BA in English from New York University (3.5 GPA/Dean’s List). She won national awards for her work in public relations and communication and had the privilege of working in the House of Commons for Stephen Ross, later Lord Ross of Newport. In the second half of her career, Jacqueline brought her innate organizational skills and creative talents to a variety of positions. While distinguishing herself in executive search, she also gave her talents to publishing, politics, writing, radio broadcasting and Delmonico's Restaurant. Most recently, she hosted Anything Goes! a radio show that paid homage to Cole Porter and by extension the world of Broadway musicals and the Great American Songbook. Other features of the show were New York living, classical music, books, restaurants, architecture and politics. This show highlighted the current Broadway scene, both in New York and around the country through performances and interviews with luminaries including Len Cariou, Charles Strouse, Laura Osnes, Steve Ross and Joan Copeland. Her pandemic project was immersion into the life, times and work of Alfred Hitchcock, about whom she has written a soon-to-be-published article. Jacqueline has been involved in a myriad of charitable causes, most notably the Walt Frazier Youth Foundation, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Sisters of Life, York Theatre, and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. She is a proud Founder of Hidden Water. Her greatest accomplishment is the parenting of her son, a lawyer specializing in mediation. She has many pretend grandchildren, nieces and nephews, on whom she dotes shamelessly, as well as a large circle of friends to whom she is devoted. Her interests in addition to theater and cabaret are cooking, entertaining, reading, and spending time on Queen Mary 2.