CDs: Vocal Reissues

Having won an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy, Liza Minnelli was, in the mid-'70s, one of the brightest stars in show business when, on short notice, she agreed to take over for an ailing Gwen Verdon in the recently opened Broadway musical Chicago.

Loyal to John Kander and Fred Ebb, the Chicago songwriters who had been so important to her success, Minnelli made her summer 1975 performances in Chicago into big events. Long lines formed for tickets the minute Minnelli's engagement was announced. And to make things more dramatic, Minnelli took no Playbill credit, with her shows instead beginning with a loudspeaker announcement that, "At this performance, the role of Roxie Hart will be played by Liza Minnelli." The announcement was invariably greeted by a roar.

Because she was just a six-week fill-in, no complete recording of Minnelli in Chicago was released. But Minnelli had already recorded for Columbia three songs from the score, "All That Jazz," "Me and My Baby," and "My Own Best Friend," the latter two numbers she also sang in the show. Minnelli introduced into the production the Eddie Cantor-style routine that was originally intended for "Me and My Baby," with chorus boys dressed as babies; Verdon instead performed a solo "strut" dance in the number. And Minnelli performed "My Own Best Friend" solo, with co-star Chita Rivera graciously agreeing to relinquish her half of the song during Minnelli's run.

Minnelli's "All That Jazz" and "My Own Best Friend" were issued as a Columbia single during Minnelli's Chicago engagement. But her "Me and My Baby," recorded with the other two Chicago songs in February, 1975, was never released until now. Those three Chicago tracks are the biggest attraction of the new Columbia/Legacy CD The Best of Liza Minnelli, to be released on September 14.

The fifty-minute disc offers tracks from three live Minnelli sets, Liza With a 'Z' 1972, Liza Live at the Winter Garden 1974, and Liza Live from Radio City 1992. There are also tracks from her albums The Singer and Results, and from the soundtracks of Cabaret and New York, New York. The collection has been nicely geared to theatre fans, including, in addition to the three Chicago songs, "Losing My Mind" in a pop version from her Results album with the Pet Shop Boys, "Cabaret," "Some People," "Old Friend," "A Quiet Thing," "Maybe This Time," and "Stepping Out."

Not surprisingly, there's a noticeable difference in vocal quality between the tracks from the '70s and those from the late '80s and '90s. But she's in good form on everything here, and the oomph and showmanship are unfailing. The CD comes with new liner notes by Fred Ebb, who, with Kander, wrote ten of the fifteen featured numbers.

TAMMY GRIMES/ THE UNMISTAKABLE TAMMY GRIMES Collectables

Of the Broadway stars to emerge in the late '50s and '60s, Tammy Grimes is perhaps more in danger of being forgotten than most of the others. While Barbara Cook and Chita Rivera continue to appear before us, most of Grimes' outstanding work was in the '60s and '70s, with her Dorothy Brock in the original 42nd Street coming at the end of that period. Thereafter, she created a leading role in the off-Broadway musical Mademoiselle Colombe 1987, but her local appearances in recent years have been few.

Grimes was about as distinctive as a performer can be; no one looked, sounded, or behaved as she did. Equally at home in musicals a Tony for The Unsinkable Molly Brown and plays a Tony for Private Lives, Grimes was a genuine original.

You can hear her on the cast albums of The Littlest Revue, Molly Brown, High Spirits, 42nd Street, and the off-Broadway disaster Sunset a revision of Platinum. In 1959, her first solo disc documented her cabaret show at the Upstairs at the Downstairs. In the early '60s, Columbia Records signed Grimes for a pair of solo studio discs, produced by Mike Berniker, who guided Barbra Streisand's Columbia albums in the same period.

Arranged and conducted by Luther Henderson, Grimes' Columbia albums Tammy Grimes and The Unmistakable Tammy Grimes were released in 1962 and 1963 respectively and soon went out of print. They're now back on a single Collectable CD twenty-four songs as a reminder of the sort of sui generis performer that we rarely get these days.

There are a couple of songs from then-current Broadway hits "Gonna Build a Mountain," "I'd Do Anything", but the program is mostly standards "Time After Time," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I'll Be Seeing You," "How Long Has This Been Going On?". Ranging from a throaty whisper to a gravelly belt, Grimes's vocals aren't beautiful; hers was perhaps too strange a voice for solo discs. But the singing is full of personality, with Grimes alternately wistful, kittenish, curt, and tender. She's particularly effective on "You Came a Long Way from St. Louis," "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley," Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets," Duke Ellington's "Just Squeeze Me," and "Lullaby of Broadway," which would figure in her last Broadway musical hit. If Grimes' recitals were unlikely to rival the sales of Streisand's, these were sophisticated discs, and they were worth reissuing.

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