Tag Archives: singers

Nat King Cole and Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer

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Nat King Cole those lazy-hazy-crazy-days of summer coverI was looking for a song about summer and not finding much background information about any of the ones I thought of. I enjoyed Nat King  Cole’s recording “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer” from the time it first appeared. The web told me next to nothing.

Then I noticed that this year is Nat King Cole’s hundredth anniversary. He’s certainly worth commemorating. YouTube’s collection of videos, many recently posted, shows his abiding popularity.

I generally prefer to write about a song’s composer and lyricist than about the singer who made it famous. But hardly anyone remembers them. Continue reading →

Divas: divine or devilish? Operatic sopranos offstage

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Faustina Bordoni. divas operatic sopranos

Faustina Bordoni / Count Ludovico Mazzanti, between 1738 and 1740

Operatic sopranos who sing the lead parts have long been known as prima donnas, Italian for first lady. In the 19th century English-speaking world, they became known as divas, for their divine voices.

Their behavior hasn’t always been divine, though. Both prima donna and diva have come to mean a self-centered, unreasonable woman.

All the following anecdotes are about divas in the first sense of the term, and some were diva’s in the second. Continue reading →

P.T. Barnum and Jenny Lind: the huckster markets culture

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Jenny Lind

Daguerrotype of Jenny Lind taken September 14, 1850, shortly after her arrival in New York

P.T. Barnum and Jenny Lind have always seemed an odd combination, but their collaboration helped make operatic music popular throughout the US.

To be sure, opera companies had been touring the country successfully for twenty-five years, but they did not have the advantage of either Lind’s star power or Barnum’s promotional genius. American culture has forgotten most of them, but we still remember Jenny Lind.

Barnum made his first reputation as a huckster. As a budding promoter of lowbrow entertainment, he introduced an elderly slave woman to the public, claiming she was 161 years old and had been a nurse for George Washington. Later he trained a 4-year-old boy to sing and dance and exhibited him as Tom Thumb. His “feejee mermaid” was nothing more than the top of a juvenile monkey’s body sewn onto the bottom of a fish.

Such shenanigans made Barnum rich. But he also wanted to claim that entertainment could be a morally uplifting and instructive force in American life. For that, he needed to promote something morally uplifting and instructive. Continue reading →

Hello Dolly! Celebrating 50 Years

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Hello Dolly!

Trailer screen shot from the movie (1969) with Barbra Streisand

Hello Dolly! opened January 16, 1964 and closed after 2844 performances on December 27, 1970. No previous Broadway musical had such a long run. Carol Channing as Dolly Gallagher Levi led the cast. It also ran for 794 performances at London’s West End.

The Broadway show won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and for Channing, Best Actress in a Musical. Not till 35 years later did another musical surpass Hello Dolly! Continue reading →

The Garcìa family and a century of great singing

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Spanish tenor Manuel Garcìa was the patriarch of four generations of singers. He and his children greatly influenced opera and singing in four countries for more than a century. In fact, his son lived for more than a century! Continue reading →