Album Reviews

Before there was Lady Ga-Ga, there was Bette.

The torcher built a following within the gay community playing the  bathhouses, which seems like an odd place to go hear music, or take a bath for that matter—not that Ga Ga’s music was shaped by Midler. David Bowie and Elton John were more likely her listening fare.

Midler had believers everywhere though, including Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records even though at the time (1972) the label was more fixated on rock and roll.

Before there was Lady Ga-Ga, there was Bette.

The torcher built a following within the gay community playing the  bathhouses, which seems like an odd place to go hear music, or take a bath for that matter—not that Ga Ga’s music was shaped by Midler. David Bowie and Elton John were more likely her listening fare.

Midler had believers everywhere though, including Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records even though at the time (1972) the label was more fixated on rock and roll.

I first encountered Midler back in 1972 at an industry showcase at the Copley Square Hotel grand ballroom in Boston promoting this album.

She performed then in the same campy style as she does now—like so many of the great originals, she “arrived” whole, which is not to diminish the artistic development that must have taken place playing the steam room stages.

After the short set, at which future musical superstar Barry Manilow surely must have been playing the piano and leading the band, she sauntered into the audience to kibbitz with the local “movers and shakers” invited to the showcase.

At one point she came over to me and got right in my face, and running her hand across my cheek cooed “what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?”

I replied “Watching a nice Jewish girl from Hawaii perform,” instead of “Waiting to be picked up by a nice Jewish girl from Hawaii” and here you are!”

Who knows what that might have led to? (Me: probably nothing).

Which leads me to this debut album. Clearly the folks at Atlantic believed Midler would be big and they were correct. The A & R work, the arranging talent—everything about this release demonstrates the great care and skill that went into packaging it.

The set list combines nostalgic diva camp (“Am I Blue,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”), teenage camp (“Chapel of Love,” “Leader of the Pack”), a slow, sexy, campy version of “Do You Want to Dance” that might have been of use back at the baths and of course the “buddy” song break-out hit “Friends” that opens and closes side two.

Stellar contemporary songwriters were also smartly included, so sprinkled in with the campy oldies were John Prine’s wistful “Hello in There” and Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett’s equally wistful “Superstar,” both taken at a slow pace to give Midler maximum emotive room. Also included was “Delta Dawn,” about a lonely, loser, obsessive that would play well with the target audience’s sentiments and "Daytime Hustler," the only overtly disco-y, uptempo tune on the record.

Midler sang the song live as part of her act before recording it, but Tanya Tucker’s version was recorded and released before Midler’s version could be released.

At the height of the rock and roll era, there’s nothing rock and roll about this record. Smartly, Mr. Ertegun and the others figured there’s another large audience out there hungry for more traditional, almost retro musical fare and they were correct.

Between the gay audience, an older demographic left behind in the wake of rock’s ascendance and fat chicks who didn’t date, there were plenty of takers! But guys into Led Zep and such? No way they were touching this!

Top studio guys were on the sessions including bassists Ron Carter and Milt Hinton (who were more than session men but not above taking the cash) and pianist Dick Hyman, among others. The sometimes sumptuous backing tracks featuring string and horn sections were equally top shelf, with contributions from Arif Mardin who would score with Norah Jones decades later, Thom Bell and the then obscure Barry Manilow.

When the album first came out, I got a promo copy and played it once and never again. I preferred Bobby Freeman’s version of “Do You Want to Dance?” along with the originals of all of the other covers. Midler’s talent and the quality of the record overall was not to be denied (listen to her take on "Am I Blue") and it predictably went on to be a big hit and an auspicious debut, but I thought it was tepid and calculated. In an era of "youth music" though, this was positively "adult" and that appeal brought it great success.

So taking it out again to compare it to this reissue was a revisit separated by almost forty years. A lot has changed during that time, but not my feelings about this album. I can respect it but it’s not something I’ll listen to again, though it was a fun listen because so much time has passed and with greater understanding comes greater appreciation of the song choices made and the ways in which they were arranged and produced.  This was a well-targeted production that hit all the right places: it was campy, it was nostalgic, it was tender, it was sappy and seductive but at the same time showed Midler as vulnerable and accessible to the core audience.

Sonically, the album was originally very well recorded, with Midler’s voice upfront and center stage with a minimum of reverb added on most tracks and probably a bit more than necessary on others. There were no Aphex Aural Exciters in studios yet so honesty prevailed. The stereo spread is wide, and the reverb added to the back tracks produces a pleasingly large and spacious backdrop.

If you note a slight overall hardness, be assured it’s on the original too. When Mobile Fidelity issues a record on the Silver Series it usually means the original tape wasn’t available and a copy was used (understand that many of the reissues you’ve bought from some other labels are also from tape copies and there’s nothing wrong with that since the originals you know and love were more likely than not cut from production masters and not original masters).

Forty years have been relatively kind to the tape or tape copy. In fact, while the original has more top end extension, transient snap and reverberant spaciousness, time and probably to some extent, the choices made by Mo-Fi in the cutting have reduced some of the original’s glare and replaced it with a velvety texture without diminishing the clarity.

A Mo-Fi spokesperson told me this one has “sold better than expected” so far. A vinyl shortage in the early 70s had pressing plants scrambling and as one veteran told me recently “We were so desperate, we’d melt down anything and add it to the pellets to increase yield: BIC pens, whatever”), so the original I have was somewhat noisy. You can bet the RTI pressing is dead quiet.