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...
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I felt that after this morning's piece on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, we needed a Sara Cleansing, so here's another terrific video from the equally-terrific Sara Niemietz. (Perhaps it's the missing "H" that does it.) Thus far, we've largely had some joyous, upbeat recordings from here, like this one -- a 1920s jazz arrangement of "Love Yourself" -- and this, a 1960s-style version of "Just What I Needed." But today's goes in a completely different direction. It's slow and sultry, yet may be more outlandish and fun than her others, and even show off her talent the best. This is her smokey jazz version of..."The Theme to Pokemon." No, really. And it's absolutely wonderful. Honest! What I love about this -- and why I say it may show off her talent and craft the best -- is that she doesn't take it as a joke and sing down to the words. But she invests herself in it as if this was her Grammy-winning jazz standard offering, complete with some scat singing thrown in. I put it in the same category as the brilliant performance of the "Chicken Fat" exercise song by Robert Preston, who threw himself wholeheartedly into Meredith Willson's song for the President Kennedy national physical fitness program. Just the same, Sara Niemietz here takes the Pokemon theme song dead-serious for over five minutes, not a hiccup in site, and in doing so, most especially each time the chorus swings around, actually makes it wonderful -- and hilarious. 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) age 69 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 -- 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'm 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 past Friday in Los Angeles, the Muppets put on a big show, The Muppets Take the Hollywood Bowl. At the end (right before the finale), it should not come as a shock, Kermit sang the signature song, "The Rainbow Connection," written by Paul Williams and Kenny Asher. It's one of the more heart-warming performances of the number -- which is saying a lot, since anytime Kermit sings "The Rainbow Connection," it's pretty heart-warming. But this time, things were ratcheted up a bit because halfway through the number, Paul Willams himself came on stage to join him in a duet. The other Muppets popped in later, as well. (By the way, the bearded-human who comes on stage towards to end to participate, is Bobby Moynihan, formerly of SNL, who was the evening's host.) One small thing occurred to me with Kermit's introduction. I've heard him sing the song countless times, and I don't recall hearing him ever credit the song's writers, as he does here. I have a feeling that's to give a sort of advance notice to the audience so that they'd know it's Paul Williams when he walks out on stage, if they're from a few recent generation who doesn't recognize the singer. This is a rough video posted on YouTube, but you still get a pretty good version of it all. A lovely performance all around. 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. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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