Songs you can never hear anyone else sing.. except the original performer!- Page 3
Songs you can never hear anyone else sing.. except the original performer!
#50Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 9:31am
Thanks for refreshing my memory henrikegerman. I saw that production at City Center. Kerry O'Malley has come the closest to matching Jill O'Hara.
Dionne and Dusty's versions were more straight on pop recordings sung out of context from the actual show so I will cut them some slack. Chenoweth's version left me a little cold and Buckley's diction on the London cast album grates on my nerves. Someone failed to tell her that Knowing When To Leave are 4 separate words. She barrels through it as if it were a run on sentence.
But I still love Jill O'Hara's best.
#51Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 9:35am
thanks, best12, did Garland ever record or perform the verse?
henrik---not to my knowledge. The "pop" recording of the song by Garland was released to coincide with the movie in 1939. It's not the soundtrack version. It has a different orchestration (and no verse intro).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0HxsKggSEs
The soundtrack version we all know and love wasn't available on a released recording (album) until 1956.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra recording of the song was already at #1 on the pop charts when the movie was released.
It also didn't have the intro/verse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbdOrtVDMRA
To my knowledge, the first recordings to include the verse were by Frank Sinatra and Doris Day in the 1940s and early '50s. Sinatra's version had an abridged verse in the middle, mostly sung by a chorus.
Sinatra:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ZLk2p9J9E
Day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=894ASWtNKN8
The Ella Fitzgerald version has been "yanked" off the web by EMI. So it's not on YouTube, but you can get a taste of it on Amazon by playing the sample. It's my favorite, outside of Judy's, and I would also rank Eva Cassidy's up there as well.
Ella:
http://www.amazon.com/Over-The-Rainbow/dp/B001NZAFOC
Eva Cassidy (no verse, but beautiful just the same):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5EesOU5oc0
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#52Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 9:43am
Best 12, as always, the resource! Here's Monheit who does the verse in the middle, at 0:52.
Jane Over the Rainbow
#53Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 9:54am
Shani was way too delicate for the role of Nancy. The only way she would have survived in Dickens London was if she were living in an upper class house.
Or if she had a menacing boyfriend like Bill Sykes, who would kill anyone who messed with her. Ironic, since he killed her himself.
So the answer is, she didn't survive.
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
#54Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 10:01am
"Don't rain on my parade" - Babs. Her vocal styling on that song is literally flawless. No one can touch it.
"I Miss the Mountains" - Alice Ripley.
"Rainbow High" - Patti Lupone
#55Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 10:02am
Dorothy Loudon singing Fifty Percent. I love other versions, too but Loudon is the best, so far.
Also, Judy is the only one who can do the Trolley Song. omg and the story goes that she did it in one take. (with an incorrect lyric but who cares?)
#56Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 10:20amElaine Stritch - The Ladies Who Lunch. Many have come close. None surpassed.
#57Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 10:23am
"Also, Judy is the only one who can do the Trolley Song."
I actually love Carol Burnett's version.
#58Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 11:19am
Ok, so I just watched carol b's version of Trolley Song. Not bad but she just doesn't have it.
Judy just has an aura - her voice, her presence. Nobody close.
#59Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 11:33am
As others have pointed out there's a huge difference between favoring the original performance of a song and not being able to listen to other interpretations. There are many songs that I think no one can do better than the original, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy others.
Off the top of my mind, Liza's Cabaret, Maybe This Time, New York New York, The World goes round, and pretty much the whole set list from Liza with a Z as well, most of the Barbra's Funny Girl, specially My Man, Heather's Aida and of course Patti's Evita.
I agree that Memory belongs to Elaine.
I also have trouble listening to other versions of songs that Judy has introduced or covered, and that includes Swanee, Stormy Wheather, The Man that got away, Over the Rainbow, and her soul melting Old Man River, no one can top her IMO.
Chilling
Updated On: 7/25/13 at 11:33 AM
#60Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 1:03pmyep, agreed. Nobody but Judy for The Man That Got Away. and, i'm afraid that is one song that I have not enjoyed hearing anyone else sing. Judy's version is just burned in my mind, every nuance. well maybe I haven't detected every nuance yet. There is so much there.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#61Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/25/13 at 1:04pm
"Dorothy Loudon singing Fifty Percent."
Yes, Comden Green! At least to the extent that if there were any song I could never hear anyone else sing, if there were one song which I would tell anyone else who would try "why bother!" that would be it.
#62Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/26/13 at 12:08am
I have extreme difficulty listening to anyone but Glynis Johns sing "Send in the Clowns." I suppose I could say the same thing about Yvonne DeCarlo's "I'm Still Here", though I like Elaine Paige on the recent FOLLIES album, and in the theater, too.
In terms of "not in context of a show" songs, Bernadette's "Not a Day Goes By" will never be topped, and neither will Judy's "The Man that Got Away."
I'm all for new interpretations, too, but when some Tony-winning actresses decide to hold out "Isn't it RIIIIIIICH...", I gag, and cry in a corner.
#63Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/26/13 at 8:48pm"Another Hundred People" - Pamela Myers
#64Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/26/13 at 11:41pmBarbara Harris - "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?"
broadwayishome
Swing Joined: 7/27/13
#65Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/27/13 at 1:28am
"Over the Rainbow" Judy Garland
"The Sound of Music" Julie Andrews
"The Hammer" Bertie Carvel (NO ONE can top him)
"Defying Gravity" Idina Menzel
"Popular" Kristen Chenoweth
#66Songs you can ever hear anyone else sing.... except the original performer!
Posted: 7/27/13 at 10:15amThat's interesting, Demitri, I have always heard and loved the Eydie Gorme version of "What Did I Have". I love her interpretation and the arrangement. I just haven't heard the original Barbara Harris version. (Except for a bit on Youtube I just watched. It was very good.) How do you feel about the Eydie version?
Videos