Also from 1968, the same Laura Nyro song, from Liza Minelli on "The Ed Sullivan Show":
I'm watching these old videos because I just finished listening to Andrew Hickey's podcast, "500 Songs Bonus: 'Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro'" on Patreon (which you need to subscribe to and really should).
Hickey called the Sinatra special "truly bizarre." And wasn't it? Does 1968 look like that in your memory/imagination? Hickey didn't mention the Liza performance. Isn't it great? She's in her prime and really belongs in that performance, but it's also fun to watch Sinatra bewildered, wandering around. We're urged to think he was "do[ing] his thing." It wasn't his thing, and those weren't his clothes.
The family took music *very* seriously. They had a Steinway piano they'd bought cheaply from a customer of Lou's...
Lou, her father, was a piano tuner.
... and encouraged Laura to play it, and when Lou worried that she would scratch the valuable instrument, rather than discouraging her from playing piano, he bought a second piano, for her bedroom, and told her to play that instead. She only had a handful of lessons, because she didn't get on well with her piano teacher, and would never have much musical vocabulary, but she developed a unique harmonic sense, largely inspired by a favourite composer of her teenage years, Vincent Persichetti...
At that point, the podcast plays a half-minute of Persichetti's "Piano Sonata no 3: 1, Declaration." My link will get you to Spotify. I'm interested in whether you can understand that as a large part of Nyro's limited musical vocabulary.
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Those girl singers are spectacular. They understand the spirit of the song. I notice that when Sinatra starts singing with them, he looks each of them in the eye for a one-two count. I think (could be wrong?) that it's very unusual for the lead singer (male or female) to do that at times that they join the chorus at the mic. I enjoyed it.
Liza really nails the sloppy-drunk character in that phase where fun/sloppy is morphing into depressing/sloppy.
Gotta read about Laura… now there’s some talent!
Todd Rundgren had some strange/funny comments about the times he was working with her.
Thanks. Yes, the influence is clear.
Ah, Frank. Proving that old fools are indeed more foolish than young fools.
Fringe!
Yes, the Liza performance is fabulous. She's so of the moment, yet I can imagine her dominating musical styles in the MTV era. With her role as Lucille 2 on Arrested Development she shows she has a great instinct for herself and how she can fit into the current flow.
"I'm interested in whether you can understand that as a large part of Nyro's limited musical vocabulary."
Maybe the dissonances of the Persichetti piece are what gives Sweet Blindness its tipsy feeling, like a drunk singing off-key and off-rhythm.
"it's also fun to watch Sinatra bewildered wandering around. We're urged to think he was "do[ing] his thing." It wasn't his thing, and those weren't his clothes."
But digging the groovy chicks definitely was Sinatra's thing. He's paying a lot of attention to them.
Frank looks like Austin Powers in that video.
Laura died way too soon and not from drugs. She inherited the wrong genes from her mother. Like her mother, she died of ovarian cancer. Liza Minnelli has made it to old age. She's had her mother's troubles with drugs, but she keeps chugging away. I guess we've made more progress with drug addiction than with cancer.
The outfits in the Sinatra clip look like they were stolen from the set of Star Trek.
Really awful.
I lived that era, but you forget how bad and at the same time how awesome it was : )
The 5th Dimension was the first group I loved. The first single I ever bought was Age of Aquarius, and my first LP was their Greatest Hits. I still have the LP, 53 years later. They were fortunate to have the two best songwriters in LA working with them, Nyro and Jimmy Webb, and one of the greatest pop producers, Bones Howe.
Frank acts like he only found out about this bit when the wardrobe guy held up the jacket and said, 3 minutes Mr. Sinatra. He barely knows the words, even with a teleprompter, and he starts out looking annoyed, like somebody's gonna get fired for this. He likes the ladies though, and what the hell, why not?
The really hilarious thing about this clip is that it's being used to sell a DVD set, like: check it out, this is the best part!
Liza's having a ball. I never liked her voice -- too much warble, like her mom -- but she's got loads of talent.
I love Andrew Hickey's podcast, but I started very late and I don't want to jump ahead. I'm on episode 78, “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles. My head is still in the late '50s, and this hilarious mash-up of LA Soul Groove meets Sour Vegas Drunk is 10 years in the future.
Aaargh. I've not subscribed to his Patreon page for....reasons. But I love Laura Nyro and think she is among the most underrated song writers of her generation. But this apparently is a Patreon bonus chapter. Damn...
Hickey drives me nuts with his progressive sensibilities. His lengthy trigger warnings before and during his otherwise brilliant podcasts. They're idiotic and make him sound like a broken human being. Add to that his typically snarky throw ins about conservatives along the way (which do not get any trigger warnings because, well...I guess we don't merit them.) Whatever.
I have a rule against supporting people who show they hate me because of views I might hold. I'll have to think about this one.
Blindness?
Is daddy making wine or coffin varnish down there?
I went to one of her concerts only because a friend wanted to go. I've never felt such a strong, personal, real time, connection with a performer before or since. She somehow shared her deepest self, and it was more than just the music - the way she moved and talked between numbers and body language while playing. Every other performer seems to have a stage persona, while she seemed simply her very vulnerable self. Her passing hit me harder than any of there others who died way too soon.
Andrew Hickey is apparently quite thin skinned. His dislike of J.K. Rowling is so intense that mere mention of her in any kind of positive comment will earn you an immediate Rock and Roll History in 500 Songs site ban.
Yes. alternating major and minor chords, sometimes a driving beat. Nyro's music is great, with perhaps a bit too much repetition. Died of cancer at 49, just like her mother.
Yes, Frank looks funny. He probably still saw himself as doing something to integrate show business. He was Sammy Davis' biggest supporter, and he did a lot to integrate Las Vegas. This might all seem paltry by later standards, but it wasn't. Liza in her golden years always seems so immensely talented, much moreso than her mother. I'm not sure her voice was right for gospel/soul, which was kind of what Nyro and the 5th Dimension were doing.
It was too long ago for me to remember if Ed Sullivan permitted lip sinking but the male background singers were not present on stage (there were more than two) and the dance choreography was a bit too stressful and complex to do that well with nary a glitch in the Minelli's singing or dancing.
As for the Frank Sinatra and Company rendition, "Sweet Blindness" was not among his many recordings. The show producer seemed to have had to work especially hard to find some lines for him to sing solo - despite Sinatra's infamous abuse of booze.
I just love Nyro. One of the great geniuses of the 60s, at least for a handful of albums. Even her later recordings have the spark of her greatness. Listen to the 5th Dimension, Streisand, or anyone else doing her songs and then listen to her doing them. Her songs were so good they called out for versions that would hit the Top 40, but, like Dylan, her own performances of them were definitive. Whenever I listen to her, I need a tune of so to get over how sad I still feel about her early death, and its been more than 25 years. My wife subscribes to the podcast, so this one must be a bonus, but Nyro deserves the close look Hickey usually does.
More Persichetti - this conveys the essence of his unique harmonic sense. He's a favorite of mine, as is this. Eight minutes, instrumental.
Vincent Persichetti - Psalm
Let these clips be a lesson to all who think Austin Powers is a ludicrous exaggeration. Egad.
I'd prefer to suffer from sweet deafness...
Yes, you can hear her in the Persichetti piece, particurly in the transitions. Laura Nyro has always been one of my favorites. At 66 I still listen to her. And I'm typically not a fan of vocals. But she was such a dominant force in popular music,though through others: Three Dog Night, The 5th Dimension,Blood, Sweat & Tears, even Barbara Streisand. My favorite song of hers is "Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp." All the emotion you'd expect from her. But while her "musical vocabulary was "limited," her voice was not. She possesed a 3 octave mezzo-soprano range. No number of second hand pianos can account for that type of talent. But even today appreciation of her is niche at best.
https://youtu.be/Q2PeqqNi9bA?si=Sb2PUdWAzpyz55-e
Went back and listened to some Nyro (my ears moved fifty years) and once the Persichetti link is pointed out, you can't miss it. The intervals, the sudden changes, the relentless diatonic nature of it, the combination of sweetness and sadness. Yep. It adds up.
Persichetti is forever linked to Philadelphia, by the way. Don't know if that matters.
If you don't want to involve yourself with Spotify, you may listen to the whole composition here.
As for the Declaration, a bit too dodecaphonic for me. Furthermore, my tin-plated ears failed to detect 12-tone harmonies in the Sinatra clip, though 5 + 1 = 6, and 6 goes into 12. However, the spectacle of Ol' Blue Eyes struggling to dance with Fifth Dimension was worth the trip. (Where's Luca Brasi when we need him? Sleeping with the fishes again, na doot.)
Same goes for the Liza Minelli clip, though the dance was quite inventive. Too bad about the hippy costumes, though.
Gingerbeer, thanks for the Chinese Lamp song link. Extraordinary. Very deft imagery.
In that song, the Persichetti influence comes off as Chinese musically.
YIKES!
Around ’79 I saw Liza at the Hollywood Bowl and liked it far more than I expected. She might have even performed this song too. Every concert I’ve been to there had outstanding sound design.
I assume Sinatra's costume was intended to be somewhat ironic. In fairness, did he wear similar duds throughout the special, or only on his numbers with the 5th Dimension?
Liza was/is a great talent, but her performance here was obviously lip-synced.
Hickey drives me nuts with his progressive sensibilities. His lengthy trigger warnings before and during his otherwise brilliant podcasts
His podcasts are truly excellent and I listened to about the first 150 and stopped for the above reason. There's a preening, self-congratulatory quality to his trigger warnings that gets on my nerves. I now read them and use YouTube to listen to the songs I want to hear.
I had a parsimonious employer once who shot a mountain lion. He decided to have it mounted and chose the lowest bidder. When he got it back it looked exactly like Liza Minelli. True story.
Frank diggin' the scene and being groovy.
Thank God, that lasted as long as his marriage to Mia.
Liza had a few good years. She's one of those singer/actors that needed the right roles.
The Fifth Dimension were underrated. The harmonies are heavenly. Champagne Soul.
If Liza were any less of a performer she would have been overshadowed by one of her dancers. The white guy made me think of this dancer that was on her mom's show.
I like the video with Frank. He was a good lookin' riverboat.
I had a parsimonious employer once who shot Liza Minelli in his pajamas. What Ms. Minelli was doing in his pajamas we can only speculate, but Bob Boyd has explained what happened to her carcass.
I had a parsimonious employer once who shot Liza Minelli in his pajamas. What Ms. Minelli was doing in his pajamas we can only speculate, but Bob Boyd has explained what happened to her carcass.
"Hickey drives me nuts with his progressive sensibilities. His lengthy trigger warnings before and during his otherwise brilliant podcasts."
Ain't it the truth. The last trigger warning of his I heard was his clever parsing of sadism. Brian Jones, he said, was a sadist, but not in a good way. Then Hickey covered himself by saying that wasn't being judgmental about people who favor sexual sadism. In fact, he said...he really did.. Some of my best friends are sadists.
I couldn't take anymore after that.
I dunno, I had an opposite take to everyone else. Frank looks ridiculous in those outfits, sure, but he sings it straight and he gets it right. Liza is leaning into her "ain't I just the cutest" shtick and was terrible vocally. This isn't high school coolness factor folks.
Or maybe it is. It isn't an audio recording, it's meant to be a visual performance and he screwed that up...to our eyes. If you get used to watching those 60s TV music shows with Joey Heatherton, Nancy Sinatra and the like, this is standard fare. Even supposedly more modern shows like Hullabaloo had all these jazz dancers on geometric sets, clinging to the last big TV jobs they are ever going to get. Try these. The dancers usually come in about halfway through on these hybrid pizazz/new pop numbers
https://youtu.be/KlZZgPxR3Bk?si=NZ8eG_OqUVNdeHQI
https://youtu.be/ws527jmjNdI?si=ErrBaXKv8YKGOxDq
Franks not that far off from this, really. We have different eyes now.
@Amexpat - I don't know whether to admire you or look down my nose at you for making it to 150. I only made it to around 50. Hickey does a lot of homework, and that is going to be valuable for others down the road. But he's not brilliant - neither dependably solid nor refreshingly original, which are all I'd be interested in, frankly.
What I remember fondly were "The Solid Gold Dancers":
Now THAT was entertainment!
Oh shit, black people appropriating French culture or ancient greek wine culture. Everyone in aluminum foil suits are dicks when they knew it was discovered by Ørsted and Wöhler, all Scandinavisk. Creatures of the Cambrian era cry out at the misuse of the word “daddy”. “it’s painful for us to believe that the dna molecules that formed us have produced these human monsters”
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