Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim
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Happy Birthday, Steve!
Michael Feinstein interviews Jule Styne about Gypsy, and all Styne wants to talk about is how amazing Sondheim is.
How do y’all feel about the Spotify integration here? Do enough of you use Spotify to make it worthwhile for me to share songs this way?
This is Ethel Merman’s demo of “Some People” from Gypsy, which includes some interesting bits that didn’t make it into the final version of the song…
A while back I made a Spotify playlist of Sondheim tracks. It was intended to be listened to on shuffle, since I didn’t put any thought into order. It’s just the place I threw good (or, occasionally, TERRIBLE) performances of Sondheim songs so I could find them again later.
Well, the utter lack of organization on that list got to me, so now I created a new, curated “highlights” playlist. It’s in nearly-chronological order, from Saturday Night to Road Show. (Spotify doesn’t appear to have Sondheim on Sondheim, so it’s left bereft of Sondheim’s most recent composition.)
Anyway, I’m still refining it a bit. (The Gypsy section in particular currently relies more on “WTF?” tracks than it probably should, and I had a hard time deciding on versions of songs for the Sweeney Todd and Passion sections.) But take a gander, take a listen, and if you have suggestions for additions or substitutions, let me know.
Here’s a Spotify playlist of the real Gypsy and the real June.
I am new enough to Spotify that I’m not entirely sure how the music-sharing functions work, but I’m excited to try them out. I’ve got a few playlists that I think are public, and I know you can send songs/albums to individuals. So connect with me (my user id is itsdlevy) and let me know if you can see the public playlists.
If you’d like me to send you cool stuff to your Spotify inbox, leave a note in my ask here (and specify, I don’t know, Sondheim or non-Sondheim?)….
When I got onto Spotify, of course my first goal was to uncover Sondheim tracks I hadn’t heard before. This one, by jazz clarinetist Don Byron, is a different take on “The Ladies Who Lunch” that totally works.
