Music Legends - Featured Artist Barbra Streisand

April 24, 1942 saw the birth of Barbara Joan Streisand ……..

The highest selling female artist of all time!!! Furthermore she has won awards for every medium she has worked in over the decades

Barbara Streisand is a singer, actress and movie producer whose talent has been celebrated and awarded for almost six decades. This post will obviously focus on her early years as a singer otherwise I would have to change the title to “Legend – Barbara Streisand”

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Streisand eschewed the option to go to college and opted to move to Manhattan and pursue a career in cabaret. Her first big break came when she landed a part in the Broadway show I can get it for you wholesale in 1962. The cast album was her first recording, and she received the New York Drama Critics award and a Tony nomination for her part in the show. She was spotted by, and signed to, Columbia Records releasing her first album in 1963 titled The Barbara Streisand Album

A Taste of Honey from her debut Album. This was the first time I had heard this particular track and her voice at the age of 21 was way short of what it became as she matured. The album went gold, and straight into the top 10 on the US Billboard 200 Album charts, paving the way for Streisand to become one of the top selling artists of the early 60’s.

Streisand has recorded 50 studio albums, received 8 Grammy’s for Female Vocalist of the Year and at the end of the 70’s decade was named the most successful female artist in the U.S, only the Beatles and Elvis Presley having sold more albums

Her follow up albums The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album and My Name is Barbra are all recognised as classic renditions of theatre and cabaret standards.

Someone to watch over me from My name is Barbra

Despite the success of the albums, she decided to return to her first love and accepted a starring role in the Broadway show Funny Girl which she starred in for two years. In 1967 she went to Hollywood to take part in the film version for which she won an Academy Award.

Don’t Rain on my Parade from Funny Girl

Now I want to fast forward to her more popular music style. Her recordings were flagging in the face of rock which was the popular style of music at the time until she teamed up with producer Richard Perry to record Stoney End in 1971.

Stoney End ….. this for me was the ‘low light’ of her music, but was a smash hit for her.

In the 70’s Streisand made a huge impact marrying her singing and acting career, with successful musicals like The Way We Were (her first number one on the charts) and for me her best album ever A Star is Born, the sound track to the movie of the same name.

The Way We Were in the movie she co-starred with Robert Redford. Just sublime!!

Evergreen from A Star is Born …. This album actually convinced me that there is other music besides Rock music and was responsible for me broadening my music appreciation, discovering artists such as Andrew Lloyd Weber, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen

A Women in Love also from A Star is Born and do yourself a favor and crank your sound up loud for this and the next song, I am sure Hive account@kiwideb will be doing so.

Queen Bee

The black, black widow is sittin' in the middle of the web,
It's the fly she seeks.
You may be her lover but you never will recover,
'cause she ain't had a bite for weeks.
You think you're the same, 'cause you got the same name,
But the widow has a mobile home.
Remember what I told you, she got eight arms to hold you,
And she's never gonna let you roam
She'll tuck you into bed, truck on your head,
Then she'll wrap you as a midnight snack.
So if you see a spider, don't you sidle up beside her
Why'd you think the widow's wearin' black?

After the huge success of Evergreen, throughout the 70’s every record she released sold in excess of a million recordings. In the late 70’s she had a smash hit in collaboration with Neil Diamond (I am in two minds if Neil Diamond qualifies as a legend… comments please)

You don’t bring me Flowers