Well, dear readers, quite a few folks on Facebook have been asking me to post more tracks I love from my recordings. So, I just posted one – Meadowlark, sung by Susan Egan on The Stephen Schwartz Album. I told the backstory on the track, which I only talk about in a general way in Album Produced by. But I’ve never told the whole story, so here it is.
I knew we had to do the song on The Stephen Schwartz Album because, you know, you just had to. I’d already recorded an amazing version with Liz Callaway, and I didn’t want to just do a clone of it with a different singer. I wanted to do something with it that had never been done and I decided that we’d do the whole opening verse slow, rubato, like a once upon a time thing that would go into tempo at the end of that. I wrote a little orchestral intro for it and that’s the way we did it. But that’s not the interesting part.
I’d cast the song with a singer I adored and still adore. She was all in for the slow beginning and she and Todd Ellison worked out the way she’d ebb and flow with it and he marked all of that down, as we were recording the orchestra in LA. We did and I have to say I found David Siegel’s orchestration breathtaking. We sent the singer the track, she listened, and called me and said she couldn’t work with it, even though it was exactly the ebb and flow she’d asked for. So, three days before the vocal sessions in New York I had no singer (second time for this album – the original singer for the Beautiful City/Day by Day opener also had to be last-minute replaced). So, I called someone I knew could not only do it but do it wonderfully – happily, the singer was in NY playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret – Susan Egan. We sent her the track and she came in on our Monday session, we did several takes and she hit it right out of the park, just as I knew she would. But that’s not the interesting part. Here’s the interesting part.
About a decade later, maybe a bit less, I heard another singer using my arrangement of the song – same instrumental intro, same slow part, then going into tempo at the same place. I happened to mention it somewhere and someone actually tried to tell me that no, I wasn’t the first to do it that way, that that’s the way it is in the score. I just laughed because every recorded version of the song prior to our album had always been fast from the start, beginning with the cast album right through Liz Callaway and all the others. He said he could prove it to me and sent me the version from the complete score. And there it was – my opening instrumental and everything else. I laughed again, because I had the score, and this was different – this was from some reworked version of the show done AFTER our recording. I couldn’t believe it, really. No one had bothered to ask me or even mention it to me. But now, our version is what everyone uses when they sing the song. I just heard twenty different singers on YouTube doing exactly that. The ONLY people who still do it the way Stephen originally wrote it, are people who’ve been doing it for years – like Patti and Betty and Liz and whoever else did it before our recording. Well, that was long. And so is the song, so here it is. And a huge thank you and hug to Susan for saving the day and being the pro she is.
https://youtu.be/04hK9qmhRQ0?si=sd4ClGosaZjEPTaA
I did manage to watch a new HBO documentary about Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook massacre. It’s infuriating to watch, and it’s very cleverly put together so that its emotional pull was strong. Alex Jones is a big piece of scum and boy does he come off horribly in this, from start to finish. The second half of the film was the two defamation trials to determine what he’d be paying the families, as he’d already been found guilty. I watched all of those sessions a couple of years ago – the damages he had to pay were over a billion dollars. Do you think this scumbag has paid a single cent? No, he filed for bankruptcy. Well, hopefully justice will prevail, and his company and show will bite the dust, although, sadly, he’ll probably never pay them a cent. And he’s still on doing his daily crap. I also skimmed through another high school production of Phantom of the Opera, this one the polar opposite from the no-frills school that had no money but still poured their hearts and souls into it.
This school apparently has a LOT of money. First of all, the theater is huge, with a huge stage, flies, wings, everything state of the art. And I will tell you that whatever the cost of the production, it wasn’t cheap, probably close to $200,000, maybe even more. They had the chandelier, and it did just what it did on Broadway. Beautiful costumes and huge sets and a real orchestra. And yet, somehow, I felt more watching the on-the-cheap production. Go know.
Otherwise, yesterday was okay, kinda sorta – a little frustrating at times but what day isn’t? I got almost eight hours of sleep, was up at eight and out the door at eight-thirty and breakfasted at Hugo’s – a bacon, cheese, and scallion omelet and a small side Caesar salad. Calorie count varies depending on which site you’re looking at, but definitely under 1,000. Then I went to the mail place and picked up some junk mail, then I stopped at Gelson’s and got some apples, then came home. Once back home, I answered e-mails, did some work on the computer, was happy to see that the hardcover is now available on Amazon, then, later, I had an apple and later again had another. So, another successful diet day. I’ll talk a bit more about that in tomorrow’s notes.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll wait for the call from the glasses place and when it comes, I’ll go retrieve them and hope they work as they should. Then, since I’m right next door to a Gelson’s, I’ll see what goodies they might have for food – I could do ribs again or get another steak – we shall see. Or I could actually go somewhere and have a nice salad or something. We shall see. Then I’ll come home, pray for a modern major miracle, and then watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same. Not sure what’s happening on the weekend yet, but there is a chance that the Darling Daughter might come for a visit, so I’m leaving it open.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, wait for the glasses call, go pick them up, either get food to bring home or go somewhere to eat that’s nearby, pray for a modern major miracle, and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall sing my version of Meadowlark in various keys.