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Working with Ms. Carroll, she mentioned, was a “magical” expertise.
“It all came together so perfectly,” Ms. Grant advised American Theater journal in an interview this yr. “It was a fortunate meeting between us: I needed somewhere to present my work, and she needed the new work to present because of who she was — having original works brought out her creativity, rather than trying to repeat something that was already done.”
The two girls additionally collaborated on “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” an acclaimed gospel-infused musical that opened on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 429 performances. Ms. Carroll wrote the e-book, and music and lyrics had been by Alex Bradford, with further songs by Ms. Grant.
Two years later, Ms. Grant was one of many 5 songwriters behind the musical “Working,” which was based mostly on the author Studs Terkel’s e-book of interviews with on a regular basis folks about their jobs. The group was nominated for a Tony for greatest unique rating.
In one in every of Ms. Grant’s songs in “Working,” a lady laments: “If I could’ve done what I could’ve done/I could’ve done big things./With some luck to do what I wanted to do/I would’ve done big things./Swam a few rivers/Climbed a few hills/Paid all my bills.”
She returned to Broadway one final time, with a musical, “It’s So Nice to Be Civilized” (1980), which closed after eight performances.
Her different credit embrace the English-language lyrics to songs in “Jacques Brel Blues,” which debuted in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1988, and “Don’t Underestimate a Nut,” a musical based mostly on the lifetime of George Washington Carver, the agricultural scientist who promoted the cultivation of peanuts. It was commissioned by a kids’s theater in Omaha, Neb., in 1994.
In the late Nineties, Ms. Grant spent two years with Lizan Mitchell on a tour of the United States and South Africa as they performed the centenarian Delany sisters in “Having Our Say,” Emily Mann’s Tony Award-winning play.
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