Broadway Star Solo Albums — Page 2

I second Sutton Foster's Live at the Cafe Carlyle. It's one of my favorite albums period. I love listening to it, as we get a glimpse of her personality along with several songs from her album WISH and her Broadway roles.

I also enjoy both of Laura Osnes's albums, DREAM A LITTLE DREAM, also a live album at the Carlyle, and IF I TELL YOU, an album of Maury Yeston songs based on a concert she did at 54 Below. The live album is obviously a better mix, though I probably slightly prefer IF I TELL YOU.

Josh Groban's STAGES is also excellent, as is Alice Ripley's DAILY PRACTICE, which is an album of acoustic rock covers.

I tend to prefer the quirkiest of solo albums, so here's a selection of those:



Colm Wilkinson- COLM C. T. WILKINSON. Before his incarnation as Broadway leading man, producers weren't quite sure what to do with the eclectic tenor, and this (bootleg?) compilation has everything from folk rock to broad easy-listening pop, with a few bizarre but convincing stabs at Seventies hard rock. The best cut, "R&R Music," sounds like Led Zeppelin playing the score to Rocky Horror.

Mandy Patinkin- MANDY PATINKIN. It's not the best known or best-regarded of Patinkin's albums, but it's the strangest and most fascinating. The "somewhat overindulgent" star embraces everything from Sondheim to blackface-era minstrelsy, memorably impersonating an entire diner on "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup."

Tim Minchin- SIT (as Timmy the Dog). Acclaimed musical star and composer Minchin has released several albums of his live act, but only one out-of-print studio album which has no overlaps with his other released material. The usual elements are there, with wordplay, jazz piano interspersed with singer-songwriter pop, and monologue-like lyrics.

Tim Curry- READ MY LIPS. Curry's high-camp second solo album (his first, "...From the Vaults," was canned and not released until a few years back) is full of grandiose and bizarre gestures- it's Bob Ezrin meets Harry Nilsson, with a dash of the Muppet Show. Like the better-regarded Nilsson, Curry bounces between genres with an eye for the kitschy and the sentimental; he shares Nilsson's love of phony accents and Caribbean rhythms. The moments played straight (pun not intended- for a man who has never been open about any element of his personal life or sexuality, this is a really REALLY gay album) are among the best- "Sloe Gin" is a long, dark blues number, and "Alan," one of the most Nilssonesque pieces, is a slice-of-life portrait of two lovers heading home after another night ended in an attempted gay-bashing.

I love Betty Buckley's Ahh, Men (not to mention the wonderful new Story Songs).

Gavin Creel's is also very nice.

Ute Lemper has some nice jazz standard albums and also "Berlin Cabaret Songs". That one is done in both German and English. Her "star" status here is lesser known than Europe. She did do Velma Kelly in Chicago for a while here on Broadway, also more well known in London. She did Sally Bowles in Paris.

The "Berlin" cd has some great songs especially for Pride Month..."The Lavender Song"; "When The Special Girlfriend".

No one can go back twenty years - they were barely born way back THEN :) Otherwise, dont'cha think someone would have mentioned, oh, I don't know - Liz Callaway and any of the albums we did, Laurie Beechman, those you've mentioned, Rebecca Luker, Brent Barrett - when I began recording B'way singers no one was doing those kinds of albums anymore, save for the occasional Betty Buckley or Barbara Cook and those bigger singers or a handful of cabaret folks. Nothing like it is today. "

Rebecca Luker showed a lot of creativity with her treatments of Cole Porter standards that we've heard two hundred times, but whoever advised her to use that photo on the album cover did her no favor.

Kelli O'Hara has been a Broadway star of increasing importance for over ten years and she just released her second solo album. Mostly songs that she sings in concert.

Do you have to appear in a few films and TV series, no matter how dopey, before you have a shot at commercial success?

I know little about the recording industry except as a consumer, but it sounds like a helluva fun way to make a living compared to what I did.

Quite a few decades ago the Harvard Lampoon did a parody of Time magazine with the cover story "Does Sex Sell Magazines?" The cover photo really put that premise to the test for many men.

I would have thought that if you have a beautiful woman you display her on the front and put the cute and witty photo on the back.

Gorlois said: "I love Bernadette's live album, Sondheim, Etc.



Just before she'd lose her voice, Julie Andrews released two albums, one of lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and another by Richard Rodgers. Apparently it was to be a series of albums with different lyricists (and maybe composers, too?) but alas, it was not to be. We're lucky to have these anyway, and while her voice isn't in it's prime, she sounds so warm and rich and she's very much in control.



"

Peters' pop album, "Bernadette Peters," with songs by Carole Bayer Sager and the like, is also fantastic.

And I'd recommend Ellen Green's holiday album, "Songs for a Winter Night." I especially like her take on "Morning Has Broken."

This thread is making my Spotify queue grow by the minute.

Not sure who originally brought up the Paige O'Hara album, but thank you. I wasn't aware of its existence and am now on a mission to track it down.

Josh Groban's Stages album is wonderful, and the Target deluxe edition has a couple of extra tracks, including "If I Can't Love Her" - interesting that, considering he wound up doing a version of "Evermore" from this year's live action Beauty and the Beast which to my mind is a bit of an inferior version of the former.

Billy Porter's new soulful Richard Rodgers tribute has been steadily growing on me. It's got some interesting arrangements, and his duet with India.Arie on "Carefully Taught" is sublime.