Lowest note sung ever by a female in a musical?

[morosco]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 8:44pm

Could it be that note Chita hits in when she sings "Scratch my back..." during "The Apple Doesn't Fall" from The Rink?

[ponine24601]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 8:49pm

never heard that, but idina's last note in 'I'm Not That Girl' is pretty low. i think it's like an E or something below middle c.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 9:16pm

Didn't Yma Sumac have the lowest note? She had a five octave range.

[Mamie]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 9:22pm

LOL - This made me think of that other thread - on what would make a good musical. "Spaceballs" came to mind and that scene with Daphne Zuniga in the jail cell singing 'Nobody knows the trouble I seen..."

(Forgive me - it must be the mood I'm in...)

[morosco]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 9:29pm

Yma Sumac! What an interesting character. I was just reading about her at amazon.com...

"Supposedly Yma Sumac is the daughter of the last remaining Inca King and was abducted by anthropologists, seduced by her five-octave range and incredible bird-like trills. As they fled down the mountains of the Andes with their prize, they were pursued by wildly angry natives, distraught over the loss of their Princess-Songbird (picture all this in black and white, like a B-grade movie.) Or, as some would have it, she's really Amy Camus, (Yma Sumac spelled backwards) a Jewish gal from Brooklyn with a fantastic schtick and a great voice. She is supposed to have written 5,000 songs and can sing coloratura opera."

In the right hands, this could be a hilarious musical!

[zoran912]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 9:35pm

Oh wow. Um. Dearest me. Oh my. I don't quite know how to comprehend that.

[Glebb]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 9:39pm

I don't know for sure but I would bet Carol Burnett or Carol Channing might have hit the lowest.

[shermanslave]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 10:30pm

Bea Arthur in the original Threepenny Opera maybe?

[lvpblues]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 10:31pm

How about Lauren Bacall's bass note at the end of "One of the Boys" in Woman of the Year? Yma Sumac is something else. Have you heard Flahooley? Those specialties are really a curio - particularly that death-defying two octave jump she takes from D above middle C to coloratura D.

~Kev Updated On: 7/17/04 at 10:31 PM

[The Goat]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 10:41pm

Morosco: Whoever came up with that bio of Yma Sumac (Sumac herself?) stole it from a 1930s Lily Pons movie--I think it was "Hitting a New High"--in which she plays a native "bird girl" who is happened upon by an expedition. They take her back to New York, where she makes a big hit in operas. So a musical HAS been made of "The Yma Sumac Story"!

[chasing_rainbows43]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 10:52pm

I saw Cheryl Freeman in a reading of a show called "Constant Star"
She sang two or three songs in soprano range and had one number that was just about bass. It was inhuman. Jeff McCarthy would've been jealous of those notes. My vote goes to the Diva Extraordinaire, may she find herself back on broadway very soon.

[GovernorSlaton]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 11:20pm

Definitely not the lowest, but Bernadette makes her note in "Sunday in the Park with George" seem pretty low. "That's you George, you're Bi-ZAAAAARE..."

[lvpblues]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 11:30pm

There's also are those low notes sung by LuPone (and others) in Evita. I think its an E.

[AnothaPartofMe]

Posted: 7/17/04 at 11:39pm

Definitley Carol Channing on her version of Jazz Baby .... I swear Carol is really a man!

[MusicMan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 12:04am

Here is how the above performers (with an interpolation) rate on their lowest note, starting with the highest:

Bacall utters a mere B flat below middle C at the end of ONE OF THE BOYS

Ms. Peters growls a E below middle C on "bi-zarre" as do the EVITAS on "just a little touch of star quality," (aka, "just a little torture, that's what I need.")

Yma Sumac dives into a D below middle C in BIRDS OF ENCHANTMENT from FLAHOOLEY!

Channing, Mary Martin and Bea Arthur tie for C below middle C in the title song from HELLO, DOLLY!, the end of DO-RE-MI, and THE THREEPENNY OPERA, respectively.

And the winner is....


Chita, who plumbs the depths in THE RINK with an A sounding a tenth BELOW middle C. Updated On: 7/18/04 at 12:04 AM

[NYBroadwayNY]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 12:10am

Don't know where this one ranks, but when I think of women singing low notes, I think of Fantine in Les Miz singing the line, "But the tigers come at night....." and then "and they tear your hope apart"...The "part" note is really low...

[MusicMan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 12:24am

Fantine only goes miserably down to a G flat below middle C.

[~FloweryFriend~]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 12:58am

THANK YOU!
I am a VERY low alto, and this is a great list of songs in my range!
Ha!
Do you know how hard it is to find a female song with anything below a B in it?

To add to the list, I think there's like a G in "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miz.

[flaemmchen]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 1:37am

Low notes make me think of Kathy Moss, the original Saraghina in Nine, whose "I will tell you what to do" in Be Italian is preeeeeetty low.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 2:34am

When I saw the question, my first thought was some note hit by Carol Channing or Bea Arthur, but upon reflection I remembered Gretha Boston doing "Mis'ry's Comin' Round" (I think that was the name of the song) from the '90's Hal Prince revival of "Showboat." It was a number cut from from the original '27 production that Prince put back in to add more depth to the character of Queenie. I don't have a recollection of the lowest note in it, but I do recall that the whole number sat very, very low in the alto range.

Also, Mary Testa made my jaw drop with some of the low notes she hit in the recent off-off-Broadway production of LaChiusa's "First Lady Suite." She somehow effortlessly plummed the depths of the low alto range.

It strikes me that somebody's going to have to pullout some musical scores to get a definitive answer on this one.

Updated On: 7/18/04 at 02:34 AM

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 8:20am

Actually Lauren Bacall goes as low as an E flat below Middle C in "One of the Boys". (Remember the line "For barbershop voice, I'm a fabulous baaaaaaaass"?).

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 8:29am

I should also add that Vivienne Segall sung a D flat below Middle C in the 1943 Broadway revival of A CONNECTICUT YANKEEE (Listen to the Decca Broadway CD to hear for yourself). What surprised me was how EASY she sung it!

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 10:00am

Nell Carter - Ain't Misbehavin' - Black & Blue - She does the first few notes down an octave. LOW C. :0

[MusicMan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 10:09am

Flowery, check out songs sung that were sung by DOLORES GRAY, a wonderful alto, such as I SAY HELLO and ANYONE WOULD LOVE YOU from DESTRY RIDES AGAIN or THANKS A LOT, BUT NO THANKS from IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER. Gwen Verdon, also an alto, sang A LITTLE BRAINS, A LITTLE TALENT from DAMN YANKEES as well as other songs from SWEET CHARITY, CHICAGO, and REDHEAD. A lovely pop song called VALENTINE is also suitable for altos. I'll post more as I think of them.

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 7/18/04 at 12:02pm

My Gawd! Kathy Moss sung so low in NINE that the first time I herad her I thought she was a tenor male!

As for Carol Channing, her voice just seems to get lower, and lower, and looooooower each passing year! I heard her sing a B BELOW Middle C in the CD of LORELEI- And I'm not sure that was her lowest note in the show!

If anybody has a recording of her 1990's revival of HELLO, DOLLY! I'd appreciate a comment.