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Music

Retro treats on CD

Published 04/02/2009
by Gregg Shapiro

Originally released between 1968-72, the three studio albums and one live recording that Liza Minnelli released on A&M Records have been gathered together on the double-CD set The Complete A&M Recordings (Collectors' Choice Music). The pre-Cabaret and Liza with a Z Minnelli sounds like a performer in search of an identity. Minnelli had already established herself as a Broadway actress, which might explain why three of the four albums have showtune material. At the same time, Minnelli also sounded as though she were trying to find a place for herself on the pop c

harts, with songs that would appeal to a cross-section of generations. She covered Lennon & McCartney, Randy Newman, Sonny Bono, Nilsson, Gordon Lightfoot, Aretha Franklin, and John Denver, among others, and even dabbled in Brazilian music (found in some of the bonus material). She also had a legitimate hit single with "Come Saturday Morning," from the movie The Sterile Cuckoo, in which she starred. This set will undoubtedly make countless gay men (and quite a few lesbians) very happy.

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http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/68710-liza-minnelli-the-complete-am-recordings

Liza Minnelli

The Complete A&M Recordings

(Collectors' Choice/Universal/A&M)
US release date: 25 November 2008
UK release date:
by Steve Horowitz

Crazy, Sexy, Cool

While every generation has its own archetype of the crazy but sexy girl, the late ‘60s version was best embodied by Liza Minnelli. And because this time period was so extreme, Minnelli personifies the quintessential hot but nutty chick. Much of this is due to her Oscar nominated role as Pookie Adams in the 1969 movie The Sterile Cuckoo. She wonderfully played the character of a kooky and vulnerable, sexually adventurous teen-age girl. This movie made Minnelli a star, and she followed it with a similar part as the title character in the flick Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon. Minnelli then made movie history as the Oscar winner for Best Actress in her next film, Cabaret, starring a simil ar character in the guise of as Sally Bowles.

It was during this period, from 1968-72, that Minnelli released four albums on the A&M record label. They have just been released, with bonus tracks, on a two-CD set. The four albums are so different that this compilation could have been easily titled The Four Sides of Liza Minnelli. Two of the four albums here are excellent, and some of the bonus tracks are outstanding as well. In fact, there’s a thin line between performing in the persona of a crazy person (think of David Bowie’s Alladin Sane) and being somewhat nuts. Minnelli performs several songs in the guise of a recognizably mentally ill narrator. She sings the others straight and these are disturbing in a much different way.

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The first album, simply titled Liza Minnelli, is a delightful slice of folk pop. Minnelli covers three quirky Randy Newman tunes with a light touch, as well as a spirited version of a song by her soon-to-be husband, Peter Allen, “(The Tragedy of) Butterfly McHeart”. These tunes all have idiosyncratic protagonists. She also does inspired versions of Lennon/McCartney’s “For No One”, Bacharach/David’s “The Look of Love” and the title tune from the musical The Happy Time. It’s the other two tracks that are problematic.

Minnelli covers “My Mammy”, a song her mother Judy Garland performed on many occasions along with other standards from the Al Jolson songbook. Certainly blackface minstrel music was considered gauche by 1968, but Minnelli could get away with this simply because her mother was so well-known. The Freudian implications of the dramatically performed song were self-evident, which points to another reason Minnelli’s identification with the crazy girl was so prominent. Everyone knew about Judy Garland’s troubles, and so by osmosis or inheritance, it was assumed her daughter had them as well.
The other cover was a strange medley of “Married” (from the musical Cabaret) and Sonny Bono’s divorce anthem “You Better Sit Down, Kids”. The first song is light and happy, but the second one is played for full melodramatic effect with pounding drums, somber strings, and blaring horns. Minnelli belts the tender words to the children she deserts to her husband as if she was a general barking orders to her troops. The effect is downright weird.

The outtakes from this album include three lovely collaborations with Brazilian Luiz Henrique. While they don’t quite fit the mood of the original record, the songs deserve to be heard.

The second album’s name, Come Saturday Morning,comes from the from the Oscar-nominated song from the film The Sterile Cuckoo. Minnelli’s version lacks the elan of The Sandpipers, who performed it on the movie soundtrack, and on the whole the album seems diffident. Minnelli sings material as diverse as Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park”, Aretha Franklin’s “Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream”, Frank Loesser’s “On A Slow Boat to China”, and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wherefore and the Why” in the same sing-song rhythms. The album appears to be the product of a tranquilized mind. Still, taken individually, each song has a certain, laid back charm.

The third record, New Feelin’, takes the exact opposite tack. Minnelli sounds simply manic as she roars out selections from the Great American Songbook: Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale , Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather” and “Come Rain or Come Shine”, the Gerwshin brothers’ “The Man I Love”, etc. Minnelli displays little subtlety in her approaches to the material. Basically she begins each of the songs slowly and quietly then builds to climaxes and closes at the top of her lungs. This seems most offensive in her take on Billie Holiday’s fragile “God Bless the Child”. Minnelli may sing “Mother may have / Father may have” as the daughter of famous parents, but she sounds less like a child than a circus impresario announcing the acts. The bonus tracks from this record are better than what is on the original disc, simply because she peforms them in a low key fashion. She performs “Frank Mills” from Hair and Bacharach/David’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “This Girl’s in Love with You” without the unnecessary over-singing.

The fourth release, Live at the Olympia in Paris allows Minnelli to go over the top in a way appropriate to the live stage. She engages the audience in repartee and shows off her talents to an appreciative crowd. While there is something definitely bizarre in an opening medley that includes “Consider Yourself” from the musical Oliver, The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You (Won’t You Tell Me Your Name)”, and the Broadway show tune “I Gotta Be Me”, Minnelli=2 0pulls it off through the strength of her personality. While she redoes “My Mammy” and the “Married/You Better Sit Down, Kids” medley from her first album in ways that are extreme and exaggerated, she is able to carry it off by poking fun of her own pretensions and parodying her immoderate behavior in patter and delivery. She even does a jazzy version of “God Bless the Child” that shows a bit of restraint.

The centerpiece here is a French version of “Liza with a ’Z’” that allows Minnelli to engage the audience on an intimate level while still showing off her many talents. The song was written for her to perform on stage and she knows how to milk it with double-takes, asides, and other theatrical tricks. Minnelli charms throughout the song and the concert as a whole. She is one of the very few people who have won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy award. This live performance reveals her abilities as a quadruple-threat artist.

Rating : 7 (out of 10)

January 16th, 2009

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LIVELY LIZA

Something else that has made this month in New York especially glorious: "Liza's at the Palace," which has been extended yet again, now through January 4, turning a planned two-week run into a five-weeker.

First off, the lady looks sensational: trim, healthy, glowing. More importantly, she's in full control. There's no doubt this time that she's going to make it, full-steam, through the entire show, despite some self-effacing referrals to her age (62). People will be talking about this turn for years to come.

For those who can't shoehorn in during the next 16 days, the show already has been preserved on a Hybrid Recordings CD that won't be available until February except in the Palace lobby during this engagement.

Also highly recommended, and something that already is available: "Liza Minnelli: The Complete A&M Recordings" from Collector's Choice Music, which encompasses 51 Liza renditions from the rarely heard to the Minnelli essentials.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter





AARP review of the A&M set:

http://www.aarp.org

Liza Minnelli
"The Complete A&M Recordings"
Collectors' Choice


The four albums Liza-with-an-M released on the A&M label between 1968 and 1972 went relatively unappreciated at the time. While the world wanted rock, Minnelli was steeped in standards, jazz, and show tunes. And while she had the good taste to sing three Randy Newman songs on her 1968 album, "Liza Minnelli," today it sounds like a warm-up for the following year's "Come Saturday Morning," a rich, risky blend of thoughtful songwriting rendered with subtle drama. (And who's brilliant notion was it to have her combine Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" with"Didn't We," the B-side of Richard Harris's hit single?)
 
Another great idea was to let Minnelli record "New Feelin'," an album of standards, in R&B-steeped Muscle Shoals, Ala. She sounds like Dusty Springfield after a long run in a Broadway cabaret. By 1972, Minnelli was too busy being a movie star to record a fourth studio album, so A&M wisely chose to release "Live at the Olympia in Paris," an energetic 1969 performance that concludes with her first live version of "Cabaret," the song that got her the part that made her a star.

Minnelli opens at Palace Theater

WILL YOU feel disillusioned if I say that Keith Richards, the 64-year-old Rolling Stone, might be releasing an easy listening album to include the Harold Arlen-Judy Garland's classic "Over the Rainbow" and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You," Fats Domino's "Blue Monday" and the Jerry Lee Lewis classic, "She Still Comes Around." After more than 20 of such never-before-released songs were leaked onto the Internet, Keith started mulling such a giant step. It'll be great if it happens though diehard Stone fans may throw up.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT, ONE of the greatest women to perform in that second "best trade" -- Liza Minnelli -- opened at the legendary Palace Theater on old Broadway, for a three-week stint. Liza had a great triumph at the Palace back in 1999, in a show called "Minnelli on Minnelli" which saluted her brilliant father, movie director Vincente Minnelli. This time around she's celebrating herself and her godmother, the remarkable singer-dancer-writer Kay Thompson, who is probably best known as the author of the "Eloise" books. (During her years at MGM, Kay coached a lot of the talent, but her style rubbed off most on Miss Garland, who appropriated many dramatic Thompson gestures.) It will be thrilling (and nerve-wracking) as it always is, to sit in the audience and watch Liza. Especially at the Palace. After her own success there, she faltered and regained herself, several times. In the nine years since "Minnelli on Minnelli," she has lived a thousand lives, but she has endured, with a remarkable amount of her dignity intact. This is a feat in itself, because Liza, like so many of us, was often her own worst enemy. Aside from her talent (Frank Sinatra once said he thought Liza was even more gifted than her mother!), Liza has in double doses what her mom, Judy Garland, couldn't sustain -- real discipline. Liza, after hip and knee replacements, still takes dancing lessons every day. Liza, after damage to her throat during an operation to remove some nodules, takes singing lessons every day. When Liza glances twice at a drink, she checks into a rehab center to avoid disaster. Liza, now 62, has outlived her mother by 15 years. And it hasn't been luck, but determination. Many, many years ago, Liza altered the famous lyric from "Cabaret." In the movie, for which she won an Oscar, Liza sings it as Kander and Ebb intended: "...and when I go, I'm goin' like Elsie!" (Elsie, died from "too much pills and liquor," but, life was still a cabaret.) In concert, however, Liza sings, "and I'm NOT goin' like Elsie!" The audience always goes mad, because no matter what her travails, Liza has kept her promise to them. She hasn't ended up like Elsie. Or like Mama. Recently, Liza, who is usually loath to draw comparisons between herself and her mythic mom, did contrast their musical choices, saying that she, Liza, preferred more basically optimistic material, while Judy's choices -- certainly in her later years -- tended toward the dramatically tragic. Liza has stepped into the light, and held onto to hope countless times. She'll do it again at the Palace.

P.S. IF YOU want a dazzling blast of early Liza, in all her fresh-voiced glory, pick up "Liza Minnelli: The Complete A& M Recordings." The two-CD set contains her entire A&M catalog, from 1968 to '72, including her great "Live at the Olympia in Paris" concert.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117996756.html


http://www.timeout.com

Time Out New York / Issue 687 : Nov 27–Dec 3, 2008
Album review
Liza Minnelli

The Complete A&M Recordings (Collector’s Choice)

Let’s face facts: In the four decades since the four LPs collected here were originally released, Liza Minnelli has done a fair amount of damage to her reputation as one of Broadway’s most formidable babies. Still, it’s a testament to her talent—not to mention her force of will—that despite tabloid headlines, Minnelli remains one of America’s most beloved entertainers.

With its many examples of her appealing sass and indomitable charm, The Complete A&M Recordings demonstrates why. As Scott Schechter writes in a thoughtful liner-notes essay, these records—1968’s Liza Minnelli, 1969’s Come Saturday Morning, 1970’s New Feelin’ and 1972’s Live at the Olympia in Paris, plus a handful of singles and outtakes—captured the singer in an in-between phase, after she’d made a splash on the Great White Way but before she’d conquered the rest of showbiz. The music is similarly transitional, with Beatles ballads and Randy Newman numbers rubbing up against show tunes and standards. In Minnelli’s hands, a song is a story no matter where it came from, and her bold performances milk the material for all it’s worth (and occasionally a bit more—see Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wherefore and Why”). Trouble was on the way, but here pure pizzazz held it at bay.

Liza Minnelli plays the Palace Theatre Wed 3–Dec 28.




[December 5, 2008]

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/sound/december0508.html

LIZA MINNELLI
THE COMPLETE A&M RECORDINGS
Collector's Choice

by Rob Lester

Welcome to the Liza Minnelli time vault: it has has opened again. A new 2-CD set has the complete contents of four vinyl albums plus nine other tracks. Start spreadin' the news: even Liza-holics who long ago found the vinyl albums—or some tracks issued on CD as imports—have newly unburied treasures in the form of eight never-before-released tracks. The sound is splendid: visceral and vital. The liner notes by Scott Schechter, who has a Ph.D in all things Liza, are informative, clear and affectionate, even as this second arrival of the material is treated almost as The Second Coming. This chapter of the Minnelli recording career shows some of the most appealing, between the green, youthful early steps and the high gloss superstar of more recent vintage. We have, I think, the best of both worlds: still a youthful, risk-taking, fresh sound with acting chops and the big voice—but some discipline and reigning in, experience showing but no bowing to the passing of time, legend status, the toll of time and vocal wear and tear, etc.

A recent reissue package was a collection of Liza's very earliest solo albums on Capitol from the mid-1960s. Now comes the next chapter and the next record label (A&M Records named for founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss). Included is the live recording of her Paris concert with the title song from Cabaret before she was even cast in the film and a French translation of "Liza with a Z." Because the Paris concert plucked material from her albums, this package thus has studio and live versions of a few things: "God Bless the Child" and the chilling medley portraying first an idyllic marriage ("Married" from the score of Cabaret) and then a couple's later separation as it is tearfully explained to the offspring ("You Better Sit Down, Kids," by Sonny Bono). Lastly, the Paris concert tracks and her first self-titled A&M album both had versions of her knockout interpretation of the Al Jolson hit, "My Mammy." Four decades later, she's singing that one again in her new tour and tour de force that began performances on the Great White Way this week.

One song that's been recorded by Liza numerous times is "Maybe This Time." The most unusual version is the one included on this set: a rootsy, funky one from an album called New Feelin', which had bluesy, earthy ambience, back-up singers and a get-down, struttier, tougher stance, though the songs chosen were mostly old standards and torch songs. Though there's pop and folk and Brazilian treatments, for those whose main interest is show tunes, they are sprinkled through this 2-CD set's 51 tracks, several of which are medleys; look for the title song of Kander & Ebb's The Happy Time, St. Louis Woman's "Come Rain or Come Shine" Oliver!'s "Consider Yourself" with special lyrics, ShowBoat's "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and more. We also get Liza's never-before-issued recording of "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" from Promises, Promises (she turned down the role on Broadway). That recording and another included, first-time-release of a Burt Bacharach/ Hal David hit ("This Guy's in Love with You") very much follow the kind of treatment/tempo we've heard others do. There are two selections from a then-current show recently back in the New York stage spotlight: Hair: "Good Morning Starshine" (live) and "Frank Mills" (a 45 rpm single), neatly and sweetly sung.

[Speaking of being back in the New York stage spotlight, so is Liza and I spent Wednesday night at the dazzling and dynamic opening of her return to Broadway, coinciding with the timely return to print of this A&M material. A new studio album, available in the Palace Theatre lobby and set for wide release on February 3, 2009, features some of the numbers in the new show.]

This treasure chest set is especially enhanced by several highlights that underscore the talents of two much-missed talents no longer with us, both important in Liza's career and life, and both named Peter. Peter Matz's arrangements provide some of the standouts: evocative instrumental phrases and figures setting mood, tension in the strings and haunting echoes that work as subtext wise choices of instrumentation selection (a daydreaming mood signalled by a harmonica, muted trumpets that seem to suggest dim memories). The wistful and bittersweet Matz treatment of the Frank Loesser song "On a Slow Boat to China" with undercurrents of rough waters is a gem; "Waiting for My Friend" is a tear waiting to fall and "My Mammy" was (and remains) a classic, a powerful sure-fire smash. Peter Allen, Liza's first husband and occasional path-crosser in her career, wrote a few of the most compelling but quirky (and, most importantly, emotionally effective and daring pieces that show the actress's skills in presenting a specific and sympathetic, needy character: "Simon" and a proposed title song for her movie Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (not known by the public before, and a real find as a lost link). With his former singing partner Chris Bell, Allen wrote the jaunty specialty "(The Tragedy of) Butterfly McHeart."

Some of the poppier pieces use the common "fade-out" style ending so they don't have the button theater songs and concert arrangements have. Some bonus tracks, seen listed on the back cover as just tiles might cause wrong assumptions because of same-titled better-known songs. One is "Snow," and it's not the Irving Berlin one from White Christmas at all, but a cool item by Randy Newman, who is represented on four other tracks on this package. "Once in a Lifetime" is not the musical theatre song but, along with "Snow," is one of four discarded, low-key but marvelous, tasty Brazilian-flavored tracks. Luiz Henrique wrote or co-wrote these tender pieces that show Liza's gentler, thoughtful, restrained side. In a different mood altogether is the even-then oldie, "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover" which is a full of zest, with a Z, like Liza, with zest—then and now.

This time capsule recorded in a slim window of time—1967-1970—is thick with joy and talent and memories.

Note: Also in release is a two-song disc of today's Liza on the new "Let's Make a Date" in duet with, and co-written by Johnny Rodgers—one of her current co-stars. Already available for download (at iTunes), it also includes a solo by Johnny of a Randy Newman song. (He's had longevity, too!) Since it's mostly Johnny, we'll save that for later when we cover another recently received Rodgers release.)