American Music Summer 2016 © 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois JAKE JOHNSON “That’s Where They Knew Me When”: Oklahoma Senior Follies and the Narrative of Decline For two years I served as musical director and arranger for a musical revue, consisting entirely of performers over the age of fifty-five, known as the Oklahoma Senior Follies. As part of the much larger Senior Follies movement, the Oklahoma Senior Follies makes a place on the musical stage for aging musical theater performers. I experienced up close the remarkable local talent represented by the cast members and likewise witnessed the importance of having an opportunity to express one’s voice in all stages of life. Yet the ageist conditions that necessitate a theater like the Senior Follies call for a complicated response. Inasmuch as the Oklahoma Senior Fol- lies attempts to reframe aging as positive, performers frequently resort to the same ageist stereotypes they hoped to frustrate. I see this compli- cated response to conventional narratives of aging arising from a con- flict between the musical format of the follies and constraints effected by the local theater industry. I use my experience with and proxim- ity to the Oklahoma Senior Follies to construct a case study that gives explicit attention to how seniors have attempted to resist marginaliza- tion through performance. I examine the effects of the Senior Follies Jake Johnson is a doctoral student in musicology at UCLA, where he is complet- ing a dissertation on the relationship between Mormons and American musical theater. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for American Music, Tempo, Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, This Land, The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, and The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies, among others. Jake is also a highly sought after collaborative pianist and vocal coach, having served on vocal coaching and accompanying faculties at Oklahoma City University, DePaul University, and the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two children, and their standard poodle named Alice. AM 34_2 text.indd 243 6/28/16 5:40 PM