Judy Garland - The Essential Judy Garland
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Artist: Judy GarlandEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-06-27
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- Life Is Just A Bowl of Cherries
- I Happen To Like New York
- Comes Once In A Lifetime
- If I Love Again
- The Far Away Part of Town
- Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart
- You Go To My Head
- The Man That Got Away [live]
- I Get The Blues When It Rains
- Come Rain or Come Shine
- Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home
- It Never Was You [previously unreleased version]
- Lucky Day
- Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe
- Hello Bluebird
- By Myself
- April Showers
- Why Was I Born [alternate take; previously unreleased]
- Rock-A-Bye Your Baby (With A Dixie Melody)
- Over The Rainbow [live]
Music reviews of The Essential Judy Garland
Music Review: Odd choice of tracks to use but 3 previouly unreleased Gems at least.
Rating: 5 Stars
Worth it & well mixed but BAD NOTES 10/28/2006
Reviewed by: JT (read more about me) from United States
The worst crediting of arrangers I've ever seen.
Whoever writes the notes for the Garland releases that the Suits at EMI are so stingy with should at least be taught to read. These are a joke. Great recordings but strange choices of which versions of songs to use and almost hopelessly wrong credits. EMI Needs a new staff in this department and Capitol doesn't even exist anymore. Get it right. They always mishandled her like a red headed stepchild. They were to busy with their heads buried up somewhere in Sinatra's overrated [...]
Their disregard for recording her live when that was what she did best and contrary to her Daughter's sudden memory to the contrary, you'd have to be an idiot or someone who's never sung live or read anything about Garland to believe she preferred being in any studio to having an audience at her feet. She lived for as any performer does. I think Lorna's starting to back slide.
-Life Is Just...Nelson Riddle arr. '56 record "JUDY"
-April Showers...ditto
-Anyplace I Hang My Hat...ditto
-Come Rain Or Come Shine..Riddle arr. Paramour cond. 1960 Stereo Remake.
-Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe...Ditto
-Lucky Day...ditto but actually conducted at a much better tempo than Riddle used in the original '56 session. This is the tempo she would always use live for this song and much much better than in "JUDY"
-Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart...Riddle arr. cond. from Album Judy In Love..correct.
-I Happen To Like New York...Gordon Jenkins arr. for a 1959 Metropolitan Opera Concert & Tour.
-I Get The Blues When It Rains...Gordon Jenkins for album "Alone" ...correct.
-The Man That Got Away...According to Mort Lindsay either a Buddy Bregman or Nelson Riddle Arrangement post A Star Is Born...here conducted by Mort at Carnegie Hall. '61
-Rockabye & Rainbow...Hal Mooney arr. Former...cond. by Paramour for London '60 Rainbow..Cond. Lindsay at Carnegie '61
-Far Away Part Of Town...Andre Previn for film Pepe '60 ...correct
-If I Love Again...Jack Marshall arr. cond. That's Entertainment Album 1960
-You Go To My Head...That's a tough one. Either a Bregman or Riddle arrangement here conducted very slowly by Paramour for London '60
-Comes Once In A Lifetime...correctly credited to Lindsay for the above noted single 1962.
-Hello Bluebird & By Myself...correctly credited arr./cond. by Lindsay
-Why Was I Born...Lennie Heyton's 1946 Arr. for wife Lena Horne's solos in Till The Clouds Roll By. Here slightly reworked and conducted by Paramour in London '60. Very interesting attempt by Garland to take the expected route and I suspect even steal the superior but inimitable version sung by Gogi Grant for the Soundtrack of "The Helen Morgan Story" It's fascinating to compare them side by side and hear Garland who was in absolutely flawless voice for all of the London sessions, sounding absolutely pristine. She sang the same arrangement on radio in 1949 with the same quiet ending released as part of the London sessions exactly as Heyton arranged it and I suspect Skip Martin or Roger Edens wrote the vocal arrangement with the artistically discrete pulling back on the end avoiding the more predictable showy money note at the end she was in good voice so I do believe she really wanted to see if she could go the hair raising route as Grant did definitively and due to her greater range, effortlessly but, Judy seems to go for it tentatively almost discernibly hesitating before the last phrases where she goes in the other direction and one can clearly hear that she fails to take a much needed breath before belting the last word, "You" and runs out of gas. In reality the note was just a tad out of her reach. Sure she could have hit it with a few takes but her final original version is tasteful for her. While Grant wails it to perfection matching the note she starts the song on, well Gogi Grant had a range twice that of Garland. So this alone should make one want to get their hands on all three albums as well as the four disc box "Judy" or "Judy on Radio and hear her earliest rendition of Why Was I Born. Fascinating little character study. People forget that Singers listen to other Singers, Not themselves. A contractor recently told someone I know to be an irrefutable source that he was once part of a crew doing a job in Barbara Streisand's house and she was listening to Gogi Grant's Soundtrack! Some get all the accolades but that doesn't mean they have a better voice, even Garland and certainly not Streisand. Gogi Grant is in a different league as to power and range. Still sounds almost the same now in 2006 as she did in the sixties.
But it's always still about the indefinable "Star Quality" as well as good management and luck. Any great Star will tell you that luck is most of it. Judy had more of the former obviously. Luck had little to do with her life.
While the London Sessions do display Judy's voice for one of the last times, crystal clear in one number after the last with not one flaw throughout, none of the throatiness or cracks that often plagued her due to the introduction of Ritalin and it's cocaine like drying effects on the vocal chords. The decision to use the London versions of Rockabye with Norrie Paramours overbearing conducting of the arrangement burying the wonderfully detailed horns and saxophones so clearly hear in the Miss Show Business recording and even on the poorly recorded Bing Crosby radio broadcasts when she first sang the arrangement. To credit it to Paramour is as bad as using his recording of it. The choice of his recording of the Riddle arrangement of Come Rain Or Come Shine was a good call as it's the only time on record that Judy perfectly nails the last note obviously getting that last breath needed to hold that last note as she herself would often joke about running out of breath on. Watch her magnificent rendering of it on her TV show when Minnelli guested on it. One of the most exciting performances she gave through the entire series...until the last note. Sadly, with the exception of two songs Come's Once In A Lifetime and Sweet Danger with Lindsay for a '62 single, her voice would never again be recorded in such clear flawless condition, And that sadly was a result of drugs one in particular, Ritalin. Her criminally abandoned "Judy Takes Broadway" (thanks again for the support Capitol. Guess you couldn't afford to reschedule), When she didn't have to make an appearance and be so revved up or dieting she could rest her voice and record in the studio at night when she was more up and at ease but the demon Ritalin is a voice destroyer and combined with heavy smoking and then in '65 when her vocal chords were severely and permanently damaged during a stomach pumping following an overdose in Hong Kong resulted in the sad loss of her voice just three or four years after being at her peak when she recorded That's Entertainment & The London Sessions. The only other studio recordings from the post A Star Is Born years which were devoid of that drug induced frog in the throat sound that even she excuses during the Carnegie Hall Concert, were Miss Show Business, The Letter and Judy In Love. Sad but true. As a Singer who's had a history with Ritalin I know of what I speak. It's cocaine to the vocal chords. That was what had her in such terrible voice during her Palladium with Minnelli. Pretty bad when Minnelli is in better voice that her Mother but that would be about the last time for her too. And we know what her drug of choice was. LOL. This reviewer never could stomach her.
God Capitol! Get your act together. You're sitting on a gold mine of recordings by Legends and you can't even figure out what any Garland Fan can look up in one of many books or Documentaries.
One of the worst companies, well really EMI rather than Capitol I guess, For being the Keepers of such glorious treasures.
And Lorna Luft should either watch what she's writing introductions for and get them straight as she seems to have taken the role of keeper of the flame or just go sing and leave the Judy legend to people who know better like John Fricke.
She made it very clear in her self aggrandizing if not interesting perspective of a book Me And My Shadow that she has little regard for what she considers "Judy Fanatics" or people who ask her questions about her Mother. So let the more researched biographers do the writing and tend to your career. I'll at least say your Mother was right. You do have the only talent among her Kids. Your Sister's nothing but histrionic over playing spasmodic who never had a "Voice" At least I'll say Luft makes no bones about being interesting in so much as she reminds one much more of her Mother and has no pretensions about not doing her material while the older one always said she didn't yet always slipped into her unbearable acts songs that were obscure among the Garland catalogue. B.S.
The CD is great but an odd collection of an even odder choice of tracks.
For me it's three songs previously unreleased. Period.
The notes are pathetic but that's not what most buy a Judy recording for except for we "Fanatics"
Though whenever I read some of the sort of stomach churningly sycophantic carrying on by some Garland fans I am actually a little embarrassed to be part of the same Fan Club.
Keep it about the singing please. Leave the gushing to the Authors. She's not going to be reading this for Christ's sake.
Description of The Essential Judy Garland
THE ESSENTIAL JUDY GARLAND features 20 of Judy's classic tracks from her critically acclaimed Capitol Records recording era, 1955-1965, including an unreleased studio version of "It Never Was You" and an unreleased alternate take of "Why Was I Born." Judy Garland has been named the 12th honoree in the US Postal Service's 2006 Commemorative Stamp series entitled "Legends of Hollywood," which will debut the week of June 5, 2006.Broadway & Vocalists CDs
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