- Manhattan Center
-
| The following
is a first hand account from Tony Landini of Judy Garland in performance
at The Manhattan Center, New York, New York, on April 26, 1962. Originally,
the concept was titled 'Judy Takes Broadway' and was to be a followup album
to the phenomenal 'Judy at Carnegie Hall' album which had just won an unprecedented
five Grammy awards.
The material from this show
was originally released on the album titled 'For Collectors Only' and later
from Capitol Records on CD as 'Judy Garland Live!'. The CD was not released
as an 'original' recording until 25 years after the tape date which is
a good indication of how much the world longs for her tremendous talent!
Thank you Tony for graciously
offering to share your story! |
|
It was decided that Judy
was to do a live recording of songs from the American Musical Theater.
Judy never recorded these songs before with one or two exceptions.
Contrary to what is written on the album cover that there were throngs
of celebrities and fans, there were only about 100 people there.
Some celebrities, and some fans. You have to realize that this was not
a publicized event nor was it a ticketed event. It was by invitation only.
I happened to know the right people at the right time.
The session was to start
at midnight. My friend and I got there about 11.30pm. We sat in the
fourth row. There was a lot of activity going on. Musicians were
tuning up, sound people were setting up etc..
Just about midnight without
any announcement or any overture, Judy just walked out on the stage. Those
of us that were there, broke out into thunderous applause. She looked
beautiful. She was dressed in a simple dress, down to the knee, black
high heeled shoes, showing those beautiful legs. The dress was sleeveless
and opened down front. With a great big smile she thanked everyone
for coming. She explained that she was making this recording of show
tunes, and that she would much rather work in front of a live audience,
which brought us all to our feet. She said we may be here all night
so feel free to leave whenever you like.
She started with one of the
songs, she was in such great voice. During some of the songs they
would stop and do a second take, but many of them she did in one take.
Then she got to "Some People" from Gypsy; this is great. She started
to go through the song to the part "When I think of all the places I got
to go" it got faster and faster. She stopped and laughed so loud
and said "Are we running a horse race?" Then they started all
over again and she belted that song out. We all just broke out into
applause. "Never Will I Marry:" that was so good. I remember
just slumping down in my seat with my knees up on the seat in front of
me, you know how you do, and I was in heaven. The recording session was
just fantastic.
My friend and I left about
4:30 am. They were just going over some technicalities. Many
people had already gone. I actually walked up to the foot of the stage
and said goodnight to Judy. The marvelous person that she was, she
bent over and shook my hand and said "Thank you for coming."
-Tony Landini-
|
