We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
This may be the strangest debut Lp to hit the Top Ten ever…but man, is it a gas. Girl Group anthems and heart string pulling ballads….new songs from hot writers…. a solid take from the Great American Song Book…and a swing classic from 1941 that became a hit in freaking 1972. The album was “The Divine Miss M”.
Bette Midler honed her act in a gay bath house in New York called the “Continental Baths” in the Ansonia Hotel. She was discovered by Atlantic Records Prez Ahmet Ertegun while playing a hairdressers convention. Her band leader was an unknown piano player named Barry Manilow and her big, brassy persona was right out of a Hollywood musical.
Some call this camp…but I think it’s more than that. Midler truly loved this stuff and did all of this with more than just her tongue in cheek and wink of her blue-shadowed eye.
You won’t hear a better version of Bobby Freeman’s old classic “Do You Wanna Dance” and her version of “Superstar” has more pathos than the Carpenters big smash.
Her girl group tributes include Chapel of Love (alright, this is pretty campy) and a chaotic reading of the ShangriLa’s “Leader Of The Pack”.
She handles sappy “Delta Dawn” as well as can be expected and gives us a gender-reversed “Hello, In There” that John Prine should have been proud of.
“Friends” and “Daytime Hustler” are fun little tracks.
But the two stand outs for me besides the Freeman cover…are her great version of “Am I Blue which includes Milt Hinton on bass and Dick Hyman on piano. And, her spot-on tribute to the Andrews Sisters, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. I didn’t really know about swing music in 1972 but explored more of it after hearing this on the radio. If, for no other reason, I thank Midler for that bit of inspiration.
Here is Bette and her band on the Tonight Show at the time…check out the hippie like Manilow on piano.
If you were listening to Led Zep, The Who or Pink Floyd at the time…this probably wasn’t your cup of champagne…but if you opened your mind a bit you could realize that Midler was pushing the boundaries of popular music just from a different direction.
Put this on and have some fun
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