It's Talk Like a Pirate Day once again, and as always that gets me to think about the quite-wonderful video I've posted here before, but not for several years, Ahaarrrr.  Today seems the ideal day to bring it back.

This is one of my favorite videos I've ever tracked down.  It's a little British film, 13-minutes long, which I came across back in 2010 and have been passing it around since -- mostly to friends of my who do voice-over work, on either side of the microphone.  Oh, boy howdy, do they ever empathize with it...

I don't know much about its history or the wonderful creative mind behind it, Jonathan Kydd, who wrote and stars in the short film (as both the voiceover artist and the director!).  But it did win the (Mid Ulster) Critics choice at the DIY Festival LA.  As it happens, I know very little about that festival -- other than that sentence I just typed. 

I do see on the iMDB that Mr. Kydd deservedly has had a long career with a great many acting credits -- not shockingly, most over the past 20 years in voiceover work, notably eight Harry Potter video games, as well as the Toy Story That Time Forgot video.  And for the animated series, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, he provided the voice of Paddington.  But yes, mixed in among that and especially before getting involved with voiceover acting, he has also done a good deal of live-action, on-camera TV work.

As the description below says, this is indeed the voice over session from hell.  

​The other day, I had a video of The Muppets Take the Hollywood Bowl, with Kermit singing their signature song, "The Rainbow Connection" along with Paul Williams, who co-wrote the number.  Here's another version of the song done on The Muppet Show.  

Beyond being hugely creative and funny, The Muppet Show series was impressive in the Big Star guests they were able to attract to host, often far out of their comfort zone, which was much of the fun.  But I suspect the Muppets had built up so much goodwill that people just simply wanted to perform with them.  And so you didn't get typical results for the show, which help lead it to being so creative.  And funny.

I tracked down a bunch of those big name, unlikely hosts and will post them from time to time.  But I thought that "The Rainbow Connection" was the best place to start.  And given that this is such a signature song for the Muppets, and they could have sung it was anyone of their choice (and I'm sure they did it more than once on the show), I find it fascinating that they did it here with Debbie Harry.

It's a lovely, sweet rendition -- but then, most especially when you have Kermit involved, I think it's pretty hard for the song not to be.  So, here from 1980 is "The Rainbow Connection" yet again.

I posted this a long while back, but it deserves another airing for a few reasons.  Most notably because it's so wonderful.  But also, it seems like they've cleaned up the fuzzy image.  And further, when I previously posted it, it was part of a longer video, and this is the single song alone. 

It's country singer Reba McEntire onstage singing "Can’t Get a Man with a Gun" when she appeared on Broadway in the Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, replacing the revival's original star, Bernadette Peters in 2001.

I don't tend to like to post stealth videos of Broadway performances, but do under certain circumstances.  At the top of that list is when a performance is so special that it risks being lost forever because of the ephemeral nature of the theater.  There shouldn't be a likelihood of the performance having an afterlife, on DVD for instance.  And I try under the best of circumstances to keep the video short.

This production almost did have an afterlife.  Reba McEntire was reportedly so great in the show that there was talk of recreating it in a TV production.  But for a range of reasons that didn't happen.  And so the performance was indeed lost forever.

I want to put this in perspective.  My folks saw the show on Broadway with its legendary original star, Ethel Merman, in one of her great performances.  For decades, my dad especially would enthuse about that production, and if ever there was another version of the show that came up in conversation, he'd dismiss it without a second thought.  There was no one for that role but Ethel Merman.  (In fairness to my dad, he wasn't alone in this opinion.)  And he kept it up as long as I can remember, half a century.

A few years ago, when I came across video of this particular song I wanted to show it to him, even knowing the "risks."  It's a tremendous interpretation of the song.  Not just adorable, whimsical, sexy, pure-country, shy, and brassy -- an impressive and difficult combination -- but perhaps most-impressively for me, she nails every single joke.  Which is no small thing because there are a lot of them.

It was difficult to get my dad to agree to watch it -- among other things, he had no idea who Reba McEntire was -- mainly because I got The Lecture.  There was no one for that role but Ethel Merman.  But I finally got him to watch.  And let the video of the song run.

He asked to watch it again.

It's that terrific.  

Ethel Merman remained his gold standard for the show, and deservedly so.  From the tales of legend she owned the stage.  But my dad wholeheartedly acknowledged that Reba McEntire gave a performance that was not only great and valid, but something that Merman would never or could ever attempt. It was her own.

This is a little bit odd.  Not the video, but the reason for posting it.  It's a segment from about a year-and-a-half ago on the Chris Hayes show, All In, on MSNBC where he sits down with the creator and star of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda to talk about the looming debt crisis in Puerto Rico, only weeks away.  As Hayes notes, Puerto Rico has no representatives in Congress, so it was sort of left up to Miranda -- whose father was born there, where Lin-Manuel would vacation as a kid -- to be the voice of the crisis.  And so, Hayes sits down, as he put it, with "my friend of 25 years, Lin."

And that's the tale.  Which I learned only yesterday.  That's when Michael Moore was a guest on Hayes' show, and he brought up it up.  In fact, Moore was so amazed by the fact he had only just discovered that he brought it up even before Hayes could ask him a question about himself, and seemed happy to keep discussing the topic until Hayes himself moved things back to focus.

As Moore asked, when he interrupted Hayes, "Is it true that you actually directed Lin-Manuel Miranda's first musical??!"

And so it is.  Hayes explained that he and Miranda went to high school together.  And Lin-Manuel had written a 20-minute musical, which he directed.  "I can even still hum some of the songs."  You sensed that Moore was dying to ask Hayes to hum them, but that's when they got the conversation back on track.

At the end of the interview, Michael Moore noted that he has special guest stars who make surprise appearances in his Broadway show, and he invited Hayes to come on.  "You can make your Broadway debut!" he added for impetus.  And it seemed to please the host, and he agreed.

Anyway, as I said, this is a pretty straight forward, serious -- and, in fact, quite interesting discussion between Chris Hayes and Lin-Manuel Miranda about the Puerto Rico debt crisis, from April, 2016.  But given the fascinating perspective I found out about yesterday, I thought it appropriate to pop in here.

Besides, I love that Chris Hayes is a really big Chicago Cubs fan, and even threw out the First Pitch to a game earlier this season.  But I digress...

This will be of most interest to musical lovers and theater historians, but I think it's so good regardless, that it should draw in some residual admirers.  Mainly it's that "so good" part that wins out.

But first, I think it's best to put it in a little perspective.

The wonderful Barbara Cook passed away a month ago at the age of 89, which I wrote about here. I included a video of her singing a medley of songs in 1957 from The Music Man, for which she famously created the role of 'Marian the Librarian.'  The year before, she played in another of her iconic roles, 'Cunegonde' in the original production of Candide.  Only a few years later, in 1963, she starred as 'Miss Balish' in the original production of She Loves Me by Harnick and Bock.  It was a good streak of shows for her.  (Though Candide was a flop, it's had a long, admired life.)

I know that that one medley I posted really didn't give her career justice, given all the other Broadway shows she was in.  And given that he kept performing very successfully until very late in her life.  In fact, that's the point of this first video here, to put some perspective of what's coming in a moment.

This is Barbara Cook at (I believe) the age of 82 in concert in Melbourne, Australia, with a wonderful performance of her showstopping "Vanilla Ice Cream" from the aforementioned She Loves Me.  This alone is enough to post here, most-especially for theater historians, and leave it at that, but -- it's only the set-up perspective.

(For those who don't know the show, its source material is what the movie You've Got Mail is based on.  And this song fits in after the scene when Tom Hanks has visited Meg Ryan in her apartment with a cold.  You'll recall that he brings her flowers, and after leaving it's the first moment when she realizes that there might be something to this fellow.  In the stage musical, the woman is brought a container of ice cream.  Which leads us to this song, as Miss Balish returns to writing a note of apology to her pen pal who she was supposed to have met for the first time in a restaurant a few nights before, but it didn't work out.)

And so here, 50 years after creating the role on Broadway, is Barbara Cook doing it again --
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Okay, and that brings us to the video I just discovered.

This is Barbara Cook in 1955 – that's 62 years ago.  More importantly, for perspective's sake, this is actually before both Candide and The Music Man.  The video doesn't say what this is from, but I was curious because it's a full-fledged production number of the lovely song "Many a New Day" from Oklahoma!  And I know she didn't perform that show on TV.  Doing a bit of research, however, I think I've tracked it down.  I pretty certain this is from The Ed Sullivan Show, when did a tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein that year.

(I've always liked this song a great deal, most particularly because of how it builds at the end.)  
 
What impresses me, other than the joy of seeing Barbara Cook in 1955 give such a joyous performance of a musical number, is that she doesn't just get up and sing the song, but performs the character as if it was being done in the show.  Because this was a tribute broadcast to Rodgers & Hammerstein, I suspect the performers wanted to recreate the shows as closely as possible, complete with choreography.

I’m going to guess theater historians may be melted on the floor by the time it's over.  Everyone else -- it still should be good enough.

This is an absolute gem.  For starters, saying that it's Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival should be enough right there, but it's more.  A lot more.

I get the sense that this was a special night a bit separate from the regular performances and was a tribute to Louis Armstrong of sorts.  This appears to be the end of the show, and it's Mahalia Jackson singing perhaps her signature song, "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," and boy, howdy does she wail up a store.  (I especially love it because she was one of my grandmother's favorite singers.  As you might imagine, my grandmother was not particularly big on gospel, but when Mahalia Jackson was on TV, Grandma Rose just was overjoyed.)

And then, to make things better, Louis Armstrong joins her for a duet on the number.

And despite the title of this video saying that that's all it is -- which is plenty enough -- it's not.  Because we then get the big finale.  And we get "When the Saints Go Marching In".  But no, that's not enough, because they follow it with "Mack the Knife."

And when I say, "they," that's part of the treat, as well, because Satchmo and Mahalia Jackson are joined on stage by the great Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  And among them is the legendary Percy Humphrey, who you'll see on the right side of the screen in a ribbon, playing the trumpet.

All in all, quite the rousing joy.

The other day, I posted a video of Lin-Manuel Miranda singing a duet with Lea Salonga outside the theater of Hamilton to entertain the waiting crowd.  I thought it would be appropriate to veer off in the Miranda direction after a few days in Salonga Land.

I've posted this video a while back, and even if you missed it there, you may way have seen it elsewhere.  It's made the rounds -- because it's so wonderful.  But I've watched it numerous time, so I figure even if you've seen it, it'll still be a joy seeing it again.

You may recall in the Miranda-Salonga video, she surprises him with a song that he had once written for a former girlfriend (who it turns out is now friends with Salonga).  He appropriately is mortified, in part I assume because he's now married.

Which brings us to this video.

It's from his wedding that begins with a toast by his father-in-law.  I'll say nothing more than that.  Other than -- it's a joy.

I realized it's been too long since we've had one of those "Comedy Against Trumpism" viideos, and this seems a good time to rectify that.  This time, it's Portugal's turn to chime and and ridicule the American president.

If you don't know what these are -- not to worry, rather than me explain, they do in this video.  And then about a minute in, they even show a little bit of the very first "Comedy Against Trumpism" video that started it all, from The Netherlands (which, for my taste, remains the best).  They've all been pretty good, though.

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