She was drawn as well to the style of Johnny Mathis. At 16, she acquired one and began to play jazz albums, prizing work by Billie Holiday in particular. “I never even had a Victrola, as we called them back then,” she said with a laugh. Streisand said she didn’t listen to music at all as a kid. “I loved singing in my hallway in Brooklyn because it had a high ceiling so when I would sing it would echo.” (Streisand’s dad died of an epileptic seizure when she was just one). “I was always the kid on the block who had no father but a good voice,” she said. Her memories of singing snake back to age five. “I never had to analyze my music before,” she said. Streisand’s memory of her early days in Brooklyn, as well as her formative musical inspirations, have been sharpened in the last few years which she has spent writing her memoir. ![]() She spoke genially and with the casual cadences that betray her Brooklyn roots. Despite her stratospheric fame, Streisand was anything but a diva in conversation. When you’re a mega-celebrity, people sometimes overlook, or take for granted, the essential talent that made you that famous to begin with. In a nearly two-hour interview, conducted by phone, the singer talked about the motivations behind her early recordings – something she rarely does, in part because she is seldom asked. “What you hear is exactly what she sang.”īarbra Streisand at the Bon Soir Photograph: Don Hunstein / Columbia Records While the new mixes allow the four instruments that backed Streisand on those nights to finally find their rightful place, “Barbra’s vocals were left untouched,” said the album’s co-producer, Jay Landers. “After I heard Joachim’s mixes I was very, very pleased,” Streisand said.Īs a result, in November, the Barbra Streisand at the Bon Soir album will finally be released, exactly 60 years after the original shows were recorded. Another three decades would pass before innovations in sound mixing would advance to the point where a gifted engineer – in this case, Joachim van der Saag – could achieve the proper balance. But even there the instruments bled into each other. Over the years, shoddy bootlegs have turned up, and in 1991, some of its songs appeared on Streisand’s box set, Just for The Record. Even so, dedicated fans have pined for decades to hear the legendary, shelved recording from the Bon Soir. The result paid off big time, resulting in a top 10, platinum-selling hit that also earned her two Grammys, including the album of the year award. That room wasn’t meant to be a recording studio.”Ĭonsequently, Columbia shelved the album, releasing a studio recording as her debut instead. ![]() ![]() But “when I heard them, I was very disappointed”, she said. Considering the power of the shows they recorded, she expected to be thrilled by the tapes. To capture the buzz Streisand had created in the Village, Columbia executives suggested she make her debut album a live recording from the club that launched her. Two years into her run at the Bon Soir, Columbia Records, the same company that had recently signed Dylan, had enough confidence in the singer to consent to a gutsy stipulation in her contract that she retain total artistic control. In the same time frame that artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan revolutionized the world with startlingly new sounds, Streisand became their chart rival with albums that somehow made decades-old songs sound like a revolution of their own.
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