Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Judy Garland collection on display
What started with a postcard has grown into what has been recognized as one of the largest Judy Garland collections in the world.
Michael Siewert became fascinated with the actress after watching The Wizard of Oz, and when he was 6 years old, he bought a postcard.
That led to buying dolls and plates and other things he could afford.
"As I got older, it just got out of control," he said. "She's just amazing."
He now owns 18 dresses and other articles of clothing Garland wore throughout her career as an actress and a singer.
The dresses and other memorabilia are on display noon to 6 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Nov. 14 during Rosemary Inn's Designer Showcase in North Augusta.
The dresses are displayed on mannequins around the room. At the foot are photographs of Garland wearing the item. A television plays a succession of video clips of Garland performing in each displayed dress.
Memorabilia on display during the showcase includes original sheet music from her television show, books with her photograph on the cover, concert programs and her high school diploma.
Siewert has also displayed some of her hand-signed Christmas cards.
"The Christmas cards are interesting because you can see the transformation of her family," he said. "There's one that says, 'Merry Christmas, Judy Garland.' Then you can see 'Judy Garland, Vincent Minnelli' and then 'Judy, Vincent, Liza Minnelli,' when Liza came along. And then a new husband altogether."
Siewert's collection has allowed him to meet many interesting people. He purchased some pieces, such as the diploma, from Garland's family members or actors who worked with her.
He displays his collection around the country six or seven times a year. He enjoys sharing his collection with other fans and giving people who knew her only as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz the opportunity to learn about the rest of her career.
"This is American musical history," he said.
That led to buying dolls and plates and other things he could afford.
"As I got older, it just got out of control," he said. "She's just amazing."
He now owns 18 dresses and other articles of clothing Garland wore throughout her career as an actress and a singer.
The dresses and other memorabilia are on display noon to 6 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Nov. 14 during Rosemary Inn's Designer Showcase in North Augusta.
The dresses are displayed on mannequins around the room. At the foot are photographs of Garland wearing the item. A television plays a succession of video clips of Garland performing in each displayed dress.
Memorabilia on display during the showcase includes original sheet music from her television show, books with her photograph on the cover, concert programs and her high school diploma.
Siewert has also displayed some of her hand-signed Christmas cards.
"The Christmas cards are interesting because you can see the transformation of her family," he said. "There's one that says, 'Merry Christmas, Judy Garland.' Then you can see 'Judy Garland, Vincent Minnelli' and then 'Judy, Vincent, Liza Minnelli,' when Liza came along. And then a new husband altogether."
Siewert's collection has allowed him to meet many interesting people. He purchased some pieces, such as the diploma, from Garland's family members or actors who worked with her.
He displays his collection around the country six or seven times a year. He enjoys sharing his collection with other fans and giving people who knew her only as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz the opportunity to learn about the rest of her career.
"This is American musical history," he said.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
When a Star Was Born
By WILL FRIEDWALD
Judy Garland's gifts as a singer and an actress were fueled by one central talent: her ability to want—or, more specifically, to make the whole world want and dream along with her. Whether it was pining for the man who got away, the boy next door who ignored her, the guy who hadn't shown up yet at all, or longing for a safe place beyond trouble and dysfunction (even if she had to go over the rainbow to find it), no one else could convey so convincingly and overwhelmingly the idea of desperately needing something to complete oneself, be it another person or a bagful of heart, brains and nerve.
Judy Garland's gifts as a singer and an actress were fueled by one central talent: her ability to want—or, more specifically, to make the whole world want and dream along with her. Whether it was pining for the man who got away, the boy next door who ignored her, the guy who hadn't shown up yet at all, or longing for a safe place beyond trouble and dysfunction (even if she had to go over the rainbow to find it), no one else could convey so convincingly and overwhelmingly the idea of desperately needing something to complete oneself, be it another person or a bagful of heart, brains and nerve.
Garland's first recordings—made in March 1935 and now released commercially for the first time in "Lost Tracks," a new boxed set from England—show that she had this rare gift to project her emotional neediness to an entire audience before she was even a teenager. What's more, the discovery of these tracks, essentially lost for 75 years, represents a similar culmination of the hopes and dreams of several generations of fans and collectors.
The first media gatekeeper to take note of the precocious youngster (1922-1969) was Joe Perry, a producer for the newly formed Decca Records label in Los Angeles, who heard The Garland Sisters (previously known as The Gumm Sisters) in vaudeville. Perry was enraptured by the youngest of the trio, and arranged for her to record three tracks (accompanied by her mother on piano): "Moonglow" (which remains lost), "Bill," and a medley of three quick choruses of three contemporary hit songs that were frequently heard on the radio at the time.
For all of Perry's enthusiasm, he failed to convince Decca to "green light" Garland at this early stage. It wasn't until the fall of that year, after she signed with MGM Pictures and began broadcasting regularly (some of those early airchecks are on the new set), that the label made another session with her. In the meantime, Decca's own copies of the March 1935 audition discs were never heard from again—the company sacrificed them (along with the tracks from Garland's second test session in November 1935) to a scrap drive during World War II.
But the singer herself apparently kept a set, which surfaced in 1960 after she moved out of her house in Holmby Hills, Calif. A demolition outfit was cleaning out the vacated premises and, for whatever reason, a worker for that company invited two of his neighbors, Leonard Ferris and his sister Dorothy, to take a look—presumably for the thrill of checking out the former residence of a living legend. It was then that Dorothy Kapano unearthed two of the three discs in a pile of Garland's garbage. Lawrence Schulman, who compiled and annotated the new set, details Ms. Kapano's 50-year effort to determine exactly what these discs were and what should be done with them. Eventually, Mr. Schulman brought the discs to the attention of JSP Records and made them the centerpiece of the "Lost Tracks" package.
The two surviving discs were well worth the effort—for what they tell us about what Garland would become and what she already was. The medley is promising: she sings a children's song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; a popular quasinovelty, "The Object of My Affection" (which she comically overenunciates in the manner of an affected radio tenor); and the 1925 jazz standard "Dinah." The last finds her experimenting with a hodgepodge of "hot" techniques, including growls, blue notes and scat singing, gleaned from such influences as Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. This would never be her forte (even as an adult, her occasional attempts to "swing" would always sound rather forced), but it's still incredible coming from a 12-year-old.
The money number is Garland's amazing performance of "Bill" from "Show Boat." By the very act of singing it, Garland was deliberately evoking the archetypal torch song and the archetypal torch singer, Helen Morgan. The youngster tackles all the verses and choruses—it's a long and tricky song, written for an experienced theatrical singer—with remarkable confidence, and very comfortably shifts gears between the formality of Jerome Kern's quasioperatic style and her own more intimate approach.
After the first chorus, she even directly speaks a few lines of the song, anticipating her famous monologue in the middle of "You Made Me Love You" of 1937. But even the longer spoken section is less remarkable than the ending. As written by P.G. Wodehouse and Oscar Hammerstein, at the coda of "Bill" the character sings "I love him, because he's . . ." and then pauses, becoming so overcome with emotion that she can't think of the words, and just sings "I don't know. . . ." The way it was written for Morgan, the brilliant singer-actress more or less sighs on pitch. Garland, contrastingly, simply says those few words the way a prepubescent girl would. She instantly switches from being a character in a musical to being herself, and it's a miraculous transformation—it's the entire artistic future of Garland, and every diva who came after her, in three tiny words. In Garland's universe, "Bill" would be the very first boy next door who got away.
The rest of the four-CD set—100 tracks total—is well worth owning. The first three discs otherwise consist of radio performances from 1935 to 1953; the last volume is a fascinating assemblage of live concert cuts as well as three prehistoric talkie soundtracks by the Gumm Sisters trio recorded in 1929. The guest stars are also major assets: Garland duets with Crosby, Frank Sinatra and even Al Jolson, and there's also a superb reading of her signature, "Over the Rainbow" accompanied by composer Harold Arlen on piano, a milestone if ever there was one. Even so, nothing astonishes more than that 1935 "Bill," which shows that even at age 12, Judy Garland was already larger than life.
Mr. Friedwald writes about music for the Journal.
The first media gatekeeper to take note of the precocious youngster (1922-1969) was Joe Perry, a producer for the newly formed Decca Records label in Los Angeles, who heard The Garland Sisters (previously known as The Gumm Sisters) in vaudeville. Perry was enraptured by the youngest of the trio, and arranged for her to record three tracks (accompanied by her mother on piano): "Moonglow" (which remains lost), "Bill," and a medley of three quick choruses of three contemporary hit songs that were frequently heard on the radio at the time.
For all of Perry's enthusiasm, he failed to convince Decca to "green light" Garland at this early stage. It wasn't until the fall of that year, after she signed with MGM Pictures and began broadcasting regularly (some of those early airchecks are on the new set), that the label made another session with her. In the meantime, Decca's own copies of the March 1935 audition discs were never heard from again—the company sacrificed them (along with the tracks from Garland's second test session in November 1935) to a scrap drive during World War II.
But the singer herself apparently kept a set, which surfaced in 1960 after she moved out of her house in Holmby Hills, Calif. A demolition outfit was cleaning out the vacated premises and, for whatever reason, a worker for that company invited two of his neighbors, Leonard Ferris and his sister Dorothy, to take a look—presumably for the thrill of checking out the former residence of a living legend. It was then that Dorothy Kapano unearthed two of the three discs in a pile of Garland's garbage. Lawrence Schulman, who compiled and annotated the new set, details Ms. Kapano's 50-year effort to determine exactly what these discs were and what should be done with them. Eventually, Mr. Schulman brought the discs to the attention of JSP Records and made them the centerpiece of the "Lost Tracks" package.
The two surviving discs were well worth the effort—for what they tell us about what Garland would become and what she already was. The medley is promising: she sings a children's song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; a popular quasinovelty, "The Object of My Affection" (which she comically overenunciates in the manner of an affected radio tenor); and the 1925 jazz standard "Dinah." The last finds her experimenting with a hodgepodge of "hot" techniques, including growls, blue notes and scat singing, gleaned from such influences as Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. This would never be her forte (even as an adult, her occasional attempts to "swing" would always sound rather forced), but it's still incredible coming from a 12-year-old.
The money number is Garland's amazing performance of "Bill" from "Show Boat." By the very act of singing it, Garland was deliberately evoking the archetypal torch song and the archetypal torch singer, Helen Morgan. The youngster tackles all the verses and choruses—it's a long and tricky song, written for an experienced theatrical singer—with remarkable confidence, and very comfortably shifts gears between the formality of Jerome Kern's quasioperatic style and her own more intimate approach.
After the first chorus, she even directly speaks a few lines of the song, anticipating her famous monologue in the middle of "You Made Me Love You" of 1937. But even the longer spoken section is less remarkable than the ending. As written by P.G. Wodehouse and Oscar Hammerstein, at the coda of "Bill" the character sings "I love him, because he's . . ." and then pauses, becoming so overcome with emotion that she can't think of the words, and just sings "I don't know. . . ." The way it was written for Morgan, the brilliant singer-actress more or less sighs on pitch. Garland, contrastingly, simply says those few words the way a prepubescent girl would. She instantly switches from being a character in a musical to being herself, and it's a miraculous transformation—it's the entire artistic future of Garland, and every diva who came after her, in three tiny words. In Garland's universe, "Bill" would be the very first boy next door who got away.
The rest of the four-CD set—100 tracks total—is well worth owning. The first three discs otherwise consist of radio performances from 1935 to 1953; the last volume is a fascinating assemblage of live concert cuts as well as three prehistoric talkie soundtracks by the Gumm Sisters trio recorded in 1929. The guest stars are also major assets: Garland duets with Crosby, Frank Sinatra and even Al Jolson, and there's also a superb reading of her signature, "Over the Rainbow" accompanied by composer Harold Arlen on piano, a milestone if ever there was one. Even so, nothing astonishes more than that 1935 "Bill," which shows that even at age 12, Judy Garland was already larger than life.
Mr. Friedwald writes about music for the Journal.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Organizers of annual Judy Garland Festival debate 2011 location
Thu, 07/08/2010 - 9:00pm Thu, 07/08/2010 - 9:00pm
-->Submitted by Tracee Tolentino
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Community
Iron Range & Itasca Co.
FOX 21 News
GRAND RAPIDS- Organizers of the annual Judy Garland Festival find themselves wondering if there really is "no place like home."
As part of an experiment this year, the 3 day festival moved to Minneapolis. The museum board hoped the move would generate more publicity for Grand Rapids but attendance numbers didn't see much of an increase.
“I find it hard to explain other than there are so many different entertainment opportunities in the twin cities and we didn't get enough local sponsors,” says John Kelsch, Executive Director of the Judy Garland Museum.
The board isn't opposed to giving the twin cities another shot next year and will vote on a decision.
-->Submitted by Tracee Tolentino
-->
Community
Iron Range & Itasca Co.
FOX 21 News
GRAND RAPIDS- Organizers of the annual Judy Garland Festival find themselves wondering if there really is "no place like home."
As part of an experiment this year, the 3 day festival moved to Minneapolis. The museum board hoped the move would generate more publicity for Grand Rapids but attendance numbers didn't see much of an increase.
“I find it hard to explain other than there are so many different entertainment opportunities in the twin cities and we didn't get enough local sponsors,” says John Kelsch, Executive Director of the Judy Garland Museum.
The board isn't opposed to giving the twin cities another shot next year and will vote on a decision.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Four-Disc Set "Judy Garland – The Lost Tracks" Will Get U.K. Release
By Adam Hetrick23 Jun 2010 Released By JSP Records 8/2
June 22 marked the 41st anniversary of the death of Judy Garland, the late entertainer who captivated fans on stage and screen. U.K. record label JSP commemorated the date by announcing a four-disc collection of never-before-released recordings from Garland's early career.
The collection of songs — some of which feature a 12-year-old Garland's 1935 Decca studio tests — spans the years 1929-1959. "Judy Garland – The Lost Tracks" boasts 100 songs, 55 of which have never been previously released.
JSP will first release the collection in the U.K. Aug. 2, with a planned U.S. release in the future, according to representatives. All of the songs in "The Lost Tracks" have been remastered.
Notable inclusions are some of the earliest surviving recordings of the Gumm Sisters performing together, as well as a young Garland singing "Bill" and "On the Good Ship Lollipop/The Object of My Affection/Dinah" with her mother accompanying on the piano. The latter tracks were rejected by Decca in 1935 and thought to be lost until discovered in a trash heap outside Garland's vacated home in 1960.
The collection of songs — some of which feature a 12-year-old Garland's 1935 Decca studio tests — spans the years 1929-1959. "Judy Garland – The Lost Tracks" boasts 100 songs, 55 of which have never been previously released.
JSP will first release the collection in the U.K. Aug. 2, with a planned U.S. release in the future, according to representatives. All of the songs in "The Lost Tracks" have been remastered.
Notable inclusions are some of the earliest surviving recordings of the Gumm Sisters performing together, as well as a young Garland singing "Bill" and "On the Good Ship Lollipop/The Object of My Affection/Dinah" with her mother accompanying on the piano. The latter tracks were rejected by Decca in 1935 and thought to be lost until discovered in a trash heap outside Garland's vacated home in 1960.
Judy Garland, the Stonewall and Mr. wOw ~ Our Mr. wOw looks back at June 28, 1969.
06/26/2010 12:00 am
Monday, June 28, is the 41st anniversary of the famous Stonewall riot, an event that changed history – gay people battled their way out of the closet – with bricks and uprooted parking meters and a defiance so shocking it scared the men of the NYPD. And despite many challenges, they have never gone back in.Now, unlike many gay men of my age who lived near and/or hung around Greenwich Village in 1969, Mr. wOw will not claim to have been a participant in the riot, an observer or even having been at the Stonewall earlier that night. He wasn’t in the Village that night. He had, however, been downtown the night before, and attempted to get into The Stonewall. The Stonewall was my very first bar – so exciting with its two jukeboxes and the little dance floor in the back that looked like a chessboard, lit from below. But the bouncer who usually allowed 16-year-old Mr. wOw onto the premises was away. No amount of eye-batting or promises of more could dissuade this dragon at the wooden door to allow me in. "How old are you?" I swore I was 19. "You look 15. Go away!" I wanted to argue that I’d been let in when I was 15, but better to wait for the friendly bouncer another night.So Mr. wOw wandered off, found a few similarly displaced acquaintances and spent the hot summer night camped (and camping it up) on various stoops, loitering outside other bars and making general teenaged nuisances of ourselves.At six o’clock AM on the morning of June 28, Mr. wOw and his pals were standing on Sixth Avenue right off Christopher Street. We were about to go our separate ways, when Mr. wOw said, "Wait, girls, today’s the last day Judy’s laid out, we should go up and see her!" (Back then, if you weren’t overtly masculine, you talked like that. Later, I dropped my "Oh, Mary’s" and "Miss Things." A guy I met around that time said, "I thought you were really cute, until you started talking! Why do think that’s necessary?") Now, the funny part was I wasn’t even much of a Judy Garland fan. No fanatic, at any rate. I knew who she was, what she supposedly represented to gay audiences, I was aware of her many dramas, suicide attempts, tales of her ruined voice, the "scandal" of her new much younger husband, Mickey Deans. I loved her MGM musicals, especially "Presenting Lily Mars." And of course I’d seen "A Star Is Born." I didn’t think then, and don’t think now, it was her finest hour. But, yes, of course she deserved the Oscar over Grace Kelly. But I’d never seen her perform live, and had never listened to any of her later recordings. (My one memory of her ill-fated TV series was visiting relatives on Sunday – there was Judy on the tube, in stark black and white, and looking rather fascinating to me. "Eh, she’s drunk," said one of my uncles, switching to "Bonanza.") So, I knew nothing of the thrall she held over audiences, gay and straight.Still, we all decided that going to see Judy Garland laid out at Frank Campbell’s would be a "fun" thing to do. (I know – but now you tell me about how sensitive you were at 16.) So, we boarded an uptown bus and pretty soon there we were in front of Frank Campbell’s – five motley, long-haired, fey boys in jeans and tee-shirts. There was still a line of mourners traipsing past Judy’s open casket. (The funeral would begin in a few hours.) While we stood there, I thought I’d impress my friends with my vast knowledge – "Rudolph Valentino was laid out here." Nobody was impressed. They didn’t know from the Sheik of Araby.
Blu-ray 'A Star Is Born' heads classic DVD releases
June 25, 2010By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
Leading the pack is Warner Home Video's Blu-ray release of the 1954 Judy Garland classic "A Star Is Born." Garland made a triumphant comeback in this lavish musical- drama based the 1937 film about a star on the rise who marries a star on the decline ( James Mason). Garland and Mason have never been better under George Cukor's direction, and the Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen score, which includes the standard "The Man That Got Away," is joyous to the ears.
Warners recently did a major digital restoration of the film, which the late film historian Ron Haver reconstructed in 1983. The studio unveiled this gorgeous print at the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles this year, and it looks just as good on Blu-ray. The set's second disc is filled with extras, though a few, including the original telecast of the 1954 premiere, were previously available on DVD. Others include additional takes of "The Man That Got Away," an alternate take of Mason's suicide scene and several new audio takes from the rehearsal and recording session.
Warners recently did a major digital restoration of the film, which the late film historian Ron Haver reconstructed in 1983. The studio unveiled this gorgeous print at the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles this year, and it looks just as good on Blu-ray. The set's second disc is filled with extras, though a few, including the original telecast of the 1954 premiere, were previously available on DVD. Others include additional takes of "The Man That Got Away," an alternate take of Mason's suicide scene and several new audio takes from the rehearsal and recording session.
The Judy Garland House in Grand Rapids
Herald-Review file photo Just one of many attractions in town that entice fans to visit Judy Garland's birthplace.
The JUDY Rose from Denise...
THE JUDY ROSE
I promised you a pic of the Judy Rose. I'm not the greatest gardener, but I do my best. I think I may have told you that, at least in our area(Long Island) the rose begins budding the week of Judy's birth and begins blossoming the week she died. No kidding! A fan named Pat Losiewicz lobby for the rose and has them planted throughout the country. Amazing, right!!!
Thanks, Denise.
Thanks, Denise.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The New Yorker reviews the A STAR IS BORN DVD
THE FURYby Richard BrodyJULY 5, 2010George Cukor's "A Star Is Born," from 1954—one of the greatest inside-Hollywood movies, featuring a career-crowning performance by Judy Garland—was mutilated by Warner Bros. and released with nearly half an hour slashed from the director's cut. Much was restored in a heroic 1983 reconstruction by Ronald Haver, and the scintillating new DVD of that version from Warner Home Video restores the film's extravagant Technicolor palette and reveals the passionate visual aspects of Cukor's masterly dramatic sense.The production design, with its riot of colors, and the daringly lurid photography achieve a profundity to match the action, as in the first scene, with its contrast of Hollywood's public pomp and its private pain. The brilliant sparkle of spotlights and city lights—and a whirl of inflamed reds and morbid blues—welcome to the Shrine Auditorium an erstwhile icon in a downward spiral, Norman Maine (James Mason), who shows up drunk at a lavish public benefit, where he is rescued from humiliation by the clever improvisations of a scuffling band singer, Esther Blodgett (Garland).Tracking Esther down at an after-hours club and marvelling at her artistry, he resolves to propel her into pictures. The number she performs at the club, "The Man That Got Away," is one of the most astonishing, emotionally draining musical productions in Hollywood history, both for Garland's electric, spontaneous performance and for Cukor's realization of it. The song itself, by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, is the apotheosis of the torch song, and Garland kicks its drama up to frenzied intensity early on, as much with the searing pathos of her voice as with convulsive, angular gestures that look like an Expressionist painting come to life. (Her fury prefigures the psychodramatic forces unleashed by Gena Rowlands in the films of her husband, John Cassavetes.) Cukor, who had first worked wonders with Garland in the early days of "The Wizard of Oz" (among other things, he removed her makeup, a gesture repeated here by Maine), captures her performance in a single, exquisitely choreographed shot, with the camera dollying back to reveal the band, in shadow, with spotlights gleaming off the bells of brass instruments and the chrome keys of woodwinds.Cukor often catches Esther (soon a star, called Vicki Lester) in the magic moment—the transformation of person to persona in the passage from the corridors to the soundstage—and shows that, as with Garland herself, there's hardly a difference: she lives with the same wondrous and fearsome emotion that she delivers on camera.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Maine Man Releases Rare Judy Garland Recordings
CLICK LICK TO HEAR INTERVIEW & RARE JUDY.
Maine Man Releases Rare Judy Garland Recordings
Maine Man Releases Rare Judy Garland Recordings
Maine Man Releases Rare Judy Garland Recordings
06/24/2010 Reported By: Keith Shortall
Two years ago, we introduced you to Lawrence Schulman, a music historian, collector and critic from Mount Desert Island who had put together an sizable anthology of Judy Garland recordings. This summer Schulman will help release a new collection of Garland's work, including several rare recordings made when she was just 12 years old -- which, until now, have never been broadcast.
For those of you who are under the age of 50, this song, "On the Good Ship Lollypop", became the trademark song, not for Judy Garland, but for another child star by the name of Shirley Temple, who sang it in the 1934 film "Bright Eyes." This particular version, at this moment being broadcast for the first time ever, was recorded as a demo for Decca records on March 29th, 1935. It features a 12-year-old Judy Garland, accompanied on piano by her mother, Ethel Gumm.
"These recordings were rejected by Decca at the time and were probably given back to the family," says Mount Desert Island-based music historian Lawrence Schulman. Schulman says what's also remarkable is that these demo recordings were actually pulled from the trash outside Garland's Los Angeles home in 1960 by a woman named Dorothy Kapano.
"She had gone to London that year and her house in Los Angeles had been sold, and the renovaters were taking stuff out and Dorothy Kapano -- unbelievably -- happened to be going by and found these old recordings on the street and picked them up and kept them and didn't know, really, what they were until about 2003. She had died in the meantime, her daughter had inherited them. The daughter, whose name was Cynthia, didn't really know what these recordings were, what these two records she had were, until about 2003."
Schulman says another solo recording from that 1935 session -- "Bill" -- also being broadcast here for the first time ever, demonstrates the remarkable maturity of Garland's voice, even at the age of 12. He says it's hard to believe that Decca turned them down.
"I've been collecting Garland recordings for several decades and I had never heard these before, and when I put them in my CD player, I didn't have time to get back to the couch to listen to them because I found them so moving, so incredible for a 12-year-old that it's incomprehensible for me to think that Decca at the time rejected them," Schulman says. "But on the other hand, here you have a 12-year-old girl, completely unknown, and they felt that there really was no place for her at Decca records. In any case she was signed on to Decca two years later in '37, although her first recording at Decca dates from 1936. But it's astounding in view of the quality of these recordings that Decca rejected them, no I can't -- it's impossible."
Keith Shortall: "Even at the age of 12, at that point, she was no stranger to performing."
Lawrence Schulman: "She was born in '22, but she was on stage at the age of two-and-a-half, so by 1935 when she did the Decca test, she had been on stage, actually, for a good decade, so she had a lot of experience and actually that experience you can feel in the Decca tests already."
KS: "And a couple of the other recordings that you shared with me have been broadcast at least once before, for example on the "Bob Hope Pepsodent Hour."
LS: "Yes, most of the recordings on "Judy Garland -- Lost Tracks" are radio recordings, and all of those radio recordings were once broadcast, but what's different between this new set and the one I did two years ago is that this new set has an astounding number of never-previously-issued recordings. There are a 100 tracks in all, but 55 have never been released, so its rather historic."
KS: "Thank you very much."
LS: "Thank you."
Lawrence Schulman of Mount Desert Island has compiled and annotated a new four-CD box set called "Judy Garland -- Lost Tracks", an entirely remastered collection of rare and never-released tracks, including 100 performances on radio, stage and film betwen 1929 and 1959. The collection on JSP Records, will be released in the United Kindgom on August 2nd.
06/24/2010 Reported By: Keith Shortall
Two years ago, we introduced you to Lawrence Schulman, a music historian, collector and critic from Mount Desert Island who had put together an sizable anthology of Judy Garland recordings. This summer Schulman will help release a new collection of Garland's work, including several rare recordings made when she was just 12 years old -- which, until now, have never been broadcast.
For those of you who are under the age of 50, this song, "On the Good Ship Lollypop", became the trademark song, not for Judy Garland, but for another child star by the name of Shirley Temple, who sang it in the 1934 film "Bright Eyes." This particular version, at this moment being broadcast for the first time ever, was recorded as a demo for Decca records on March 29th, 1935. It features a 12-year-old Judy Garland, accompanied on piano by her mother, Ethel Gumm.
"These recordings were rejected by Decca at the time and were probably given back to the family," says Mount Desert Island-based music historian Lawrence Schulman. Schulman says what's also remarkable is that these demo recordings were actually pulled from the trash outside Garland's Los Angeles home in 1960 by a woman named Dorothy Kapano.
"She had gone to London that year and her house in Los Angeles had been sold, and the renovaters were taking stuff out and Dorothy Kapano -- unbelievably -- happened to be going by and found these old recordings on the street and picked them up and kept them and didn't know, really, what they were until about 2003. She had died in the meantime, her daughter had inherited them. The daughter, whose name was Cynthia, didn't really know what these recordings were, what these two records she had were, until about 2003."
Schulman says another solo recording from that 1935 session -- "Bill" -- also being broadcast here for the first time ever, demonstrates the remarkable maturity of Garland's voice, even at the age of 12. He says it's hard to believe that Decca turned them down.
"I've been collecting Garland recordings for several decades and I had never heard these before, and when I put them in my CD player, I didn't have time to get back to the couch to listen to them because I found them so moving, so incredible for a 12-year-old that it's incomprehensible for me to think that Decca at the time rejected them," Schulman says. "But on the other hand, here you have a 12-year-old girl, completely unknown, and they felt that there really was no place for her at Decca records. In any case she was signed on to Decca two years later in '37, although her first recording at Decca dates from 1936. But it's astounding in view of the quality of these recordings that Decca rejected them, no I can't -- it's impossible."
Keith Shortall: "Even at the age of 12, at that point, she was no stranger to performing."
Lawrence Schulman: "She was born in '22, but she was on stage at the age of two-and-a-half, so by 1935 when she did the Decca test, she had been on stage, actually, for a good decade, so she had a lot of experience and actually that experience you can feel in the Decca tests already."
KS: "And a couple of the other recordings that you shared with me have been broadcast at least once before, for example on the "Bob Hope Pepsodent Hour."
LS: "Yes, most of the recordings on "Judy Garland -- Lost Tracks" are radio recordings, and all of those radio recordings were once broadcast, but what's different between this new set and the one I did two years ago is that this new set has an astounding number of never-previously-issued recordings. There are a 100 tracks in all, but 55 have never been released, so its rather historic."
KS: "Thank you very much."
LS: "Thank you."
Lawrence Schulman of Mount Desert Island has compiled and annotated a new four-CD box set called "Judy Garland -- Lost Tracks", an entirely remastered collection of rare and never-released tracks, including 100 performances on radio, stage and film betwen 1929 and 1959. The collection on JSP Records, will be released in the United Kindgom on August 2nd.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
GREAT ROMANCES ~ interesting but questionable look at Judy & Vincente...
pt 1pt 2pt3 (VIDEO IN 3 PARTS)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
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