John Lithgow - Sunny Side of the Street
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CD Details
Artist: John LithgowEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-08-29
Music Label: Razor & Tie
Soundtracks:
- Getting to Know You
- On The Sunny Side
- Pick Yourself up
- Baby
- Be Human
- You Got To Have Pep
- Everyone Says I Love You
- Inka Dinka Doo
- I Always Say Hello To A Flower
- The Laughing Policeman
- Song OF The Sewer
- Manatee
- Lullaby In Ragtime
Music reviews of Sunny Side of the Street
Music Review: Why didn't I think of producing these songs?
Rating: 5 Stars
"Getting to know you, getting to know all about you..." So begins John Lithgow's latest children's album, The Sunny Side of the Street, which initially sounds mature, a truly old school song. Soon he shouts out for introductions from his backup singers, the children from United Nations School who fill in the album's young tone, and quickly the fun begins.
Watch Lithgow in action here and you'll see that he has pulled off his transition into children's goofy entertainment very well. Yet this CD is very sophisticated from singing, acting and production perspectives. Lithgow calls on his ability to take on various characters, such as using an English accent in "The Laughing Policeman" and a Brooklyn drawl in "Song of the Sewer." He has an impeccable band and guest singers including Maude Maggart and even Wayne Knight of Seinfeld fame.
Check out the album's namesake, "Sunny Side of the Street," featuring Madeline Peyroux, and you'll hear beautiful singing and the traditional lines of this lovely song. (Adults could use a reminder of the song's message that we have the power to influence how we feel...just choose to walk on the sunny side of life.)
The album features songs from a by-gone era - the Great American Songbook - tried out on kids for their child-level entertainment value. Lithgow seems at home with this style of music and the songs are very catchy. The album invokes a feeling of "Why didn't I think of producing that?" with remakes of songs like the delightful "I Always Say Hello to a Flower."
If your child is in the "why" stage of preschool development, "Song of the Sewer" will create hours of lively conversation about sewers and toilets. It's an amazingly comical song.
It would have been easy for Lithgow to come across as a creepy uncle who doesn't belong with children, but the fact that he acts like a 2-year-old most of the time (as one of his co-singers accurately claims) pulls off the show. His foray into children's music wasn't such a stretch from Third Rock From the Sun since his character Dick Soloman was so entertaining and lively, and he demonstrates his flexibility as an actor as well as his youthful exuberance in this delightful album. Your children's grandparents will love reliving the songs along with their grandchildren, and the lullaby at the end of the album will soothe the little ones to sleep after the dancing is through. -Caity McCardell
Description of Sunny Side of the Street
First, know this: A mystery lurks within the innocence, goofiness, and star-filled songs on John Lithgow?s latest album for children, and his first for Razor & Tie, The Sunny Side of the Street.It doesn?t sound mysterious. Consider, for example, the easy-going opener, "Getting to Know You"; the breakneck, cartoon-energy acceleration of Betty Boop?s "You?ve Gotta Have Pep"; the squawks and shrieks of "I?m a Manatee"; the sly banter with Wayne Knight (who starred with Lithgow on 3rd Rock from the Sun and played Newman on Seinfeld) throughout "Inka Dinka Doo"?; the stylish jazz of Madeleine Peyroux, the Broadway styling of Sheri Rene Scott, the teasing interplay between Lithgow and cabaret legend-to-be Maude Maggart, and of course those kids from the United Nations School, singing along and stealing the spotlight more than once ?
Undeniably, The Sunny Side of the Street is a perfect album for children.
The world hardly needed more evidence, but The Sunny Side of the Street proves unequivocally that there's nothing John Lithgow puts his name on that doesn't secrete charm by the bucketful. This particular CD, his third for kids, is fairly well drenched in it. The spirit of the disc is captured handily by the cover art, which pictures Lithgow as a bumbershoot-toting dandy skipping along Broadway amid an animated coterie; a few songs in, you can practically hear him soft-shoeing it in front of a sweet-sounding kids' chorus on the gently encouraging "Pick Yourself Up." Guest stars abound--the vocal marvel Madeleine Peyroux on the title track, cabaret star Maude Maggart on the lively "Baby!," and Seinfeld's Wayne Knight on "Inka Dinka Doo"--but as on previous discs, Lithgow shines brightest when the spotlight is aimed squarely and exclusively on him. "I Always Say Hello to a Flower" allows him to cut up to such bent-minded lyrics as "I always say bonjour to a lilac/Bonjour bonjour bonjour/But I'm absolutely mute with a bully in a suit/And I never talk to fruit, heaven knows," while "The Laughing Policeman" features him guffawing unstoppably--not to mention contagiously--for a good two minutes. "Be Human," on which the sage advice to "have a tender word for every animal and bird" is doled out repeatedly before a kicky Dixieland band, benefits from a particularly astute ending: "A toucan can't be human," Lithgow speak-sings with characteristic clear-eyed bonhomie before letting out a squawk, "but you can!" Few screwballs make such sweet-sounding sense. --Tammy La Gorce
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