[Dixielandjazz] Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra and "Send in the Clowns"

[Harry Callaghan]

By no means taking exception with Mr. Ringwald, but rather Mr. Hajdu who
wrote the article.

While Elizabeth Taylor,Diana Rigg and 2 other actresses did their own
singing in the movie's opening number "Love Takes Time" there has been some
controversy as to whether Ms. Taylor actually recorded "Clowns" or whether
it was dubbed.

It it was dubbed, the producers are to be congratulated as whoever they used
had a singing voice quite similar to Elizabeth's speaking voice, which is
all too often not the case.when actresses are dubbed.

If Glynnis Johns first performed it on stage, there of course is no doubt
that she did her own singing.

(incidentally, GJ was marvelous in "No Highway in the Sky" with James
Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, a non-singing role)

But, I digress.

As to Mr. Hadju's statement that since Ms. Johns, the role has always been
played by non-singing actresses, that is technically incorrect.  While
Catherine Zeta-Jones who received a Tony for her role in the most recent
Broadway adaptation, is most familiarly known to American audiences as a
straight dramatic actress, prior to coming here she sang and danced in
British productions of "Annie " and "42nd Street"

Loved FS version of course.when I first heard it on the "Ol' Blues Eyes is
Back" album but I'm somewhat prejudiced as to anything that Frank has ever
recorded with a Gordon Jenkins arrangement,

The version he does in the video here with Tony Mottola I believe might have
been taken from his "Concert For The Americas"  in the Dominican
Republic.(early 80s)  He was backed for the remainder of the concert by the
Buddy Rich orchestra conducted by Vincent Falcone..

There are also a few different live versions of "Clowns" on YouTube by Sarah
Vaughan..........some good, some bad.

Did I miss anything, MOF?

Tides
HC

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Robert Ringwald <rsr at ringwald.com> wrote:

> Sending Out the Unmusical Elizabeth Taylor
> by David Hajdu
> New Republic blog, March 25, 2011
> Elizabeth Taylor had nothing to do with music -- or, more accurately,
> nothing to
> do with the formal standards of technique that traditionalists still
> conflate with
> musicality -- and that fact has led me to realize something about Frank
> Sinatra.
> In all the encomia to Taylor in all the media this week, one of the few
> aspects of
> her career spared inflation was her brief and tenuous but illuminating
> dalliance
> with theatrical song in the film version of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little
> Night Music,"
> lproduced in 1977. Taylor was cast well as Desiree, the aging but still
> alluring fulcrum
> of the cad Fredrik's moral dilemma. Since the play's first New York
> production in
> 1973, when Glynis Johns introduced the role, Desiree has been played by
> non-singers,
> and Sondheim composed her showpiece number, "Send in the Clowns," as a
> piece to show
> the power of non-singing. Meticulously constructed in short bursts of
> phrases, the
> song calls for an actor's skill at phrasing and interpretation, rather than
> singerly
> technique at tonal production, intonation, and breath control. Taylor took
> on "Send
> in the Clowns" valiantly, unburdened by the musical habits of a skilled
> singer and
> sustained by her considerable talent as an actor.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTbTfsn1iU
> "Send in the Clowns" is so overdone -- and by that I mean not only done to
> excess,
> but done *with* excess -- that I would be happy never to hear it again.
> Still, watching
> the YouTube clip of Taylor's rendition led me to reconsider Frank Sinatra's
> struggle
> with the song in the last decades of his career, and I realized that the
> narrative
> of his efforts to come to terms with the song is the story of his
> transformation
> from a singer to a non-singing actor of songs as a form of drama.
> "Send in the Clowns" was a new and relatively little-known song when
> Sinatra first
> tackled it, in 1973, for "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back," the album he did to
> announce the
> end of his brief retirement from singing in the early '70s. He had begun to
> loose
> the extraordinary voice that had served him since the mid 1940s, and
> despite the
> title of the record, the ol' Sinatra was not back. His tone had coarsened,
> his breath
> was failing him, and he was trying to figure how to work with a limited set
> of tools.
> For "Ol' Blue Eyes," Sinatra did "Send in the Clowns" in a gentle croon,
> his voice
> floating lightly over a bloated arrangement by Gordon Jenkins for string
> orchestra.
> After living with the song on the road for a few years, Sinatra recognized
> that both
> the Jenkins arrangement and his singerly approach to the song were wrong
> for the
> material -- and for the singer at that point in his life. He dropped the
> arrangement
> and began doing "Send in the Clowns" intimately, quietly, accompanied only
> by his
> longtime pianist Bill Miller. In 1977, essentially to satisfy himself, he
> re-recorded
> "Send in the Clowns" with Miller and released the track as the B side of a
> 45-RPM
> single. The record begins, extraordinarily, with Sinatra telling the
> listener a little
> story about what "Send in the Clowns" means -- to him, more than what it
> means narratively
> in "A Little Night Music."
> In time, Sinatra found a way to do the song even more intimately, quietly,
> and artfully,
> talk-singing it in his last years as a voice-and-guitar duet with Tony
> Mottola. He
> barely sang the song at all, but acted it beautifully like the virtuoso
> non-singer
> he learned to become.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tedb5CMPnJ8
>
> http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-famous-door/85779/elizabeth-taylor-send-in-the-clowns-frank-sinatra
>
>
> --Bob Ringwald
> www.ringwald.com
> Fulton Street Jazz Band
> 530/ 642-9551 Office
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> If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea
> does that mean that one enjoys it?
>
>


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