Topic "My Buddy" from the General Chit-Chat forum.
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| Author | Topic: "My Buddy" |
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eames218
Registered User
Registered:
9/25/2007
From:
KY | posted: 9/27/2007 at 10:04:20 PM ET
I was wondering if any of you knowledgeable people knew where Bernadette sings this song!
Thanks 
| PTM
Registered User
Registered:
6/26/2003 | posted: 10/17/2007 at 12:53:39 AM ET
Catching up on some old posts. She sang this song on a PBS special in 1987. I think it was called something like The Music Makers: ASCAP Salutes . . I can't remember the rest. It was taped at Wolf Trap summer '87. She also sang the song at an AIDs benefit 1986 or '87. The music critic for the Village Voice reviewed the concert and wrote this [It's kinda long so I've transcribed the most relevant part]:
As the song literature now stands, a 1922 pop evergreen called "My Buddy" doesn't occupy a very exalted place. Even amontg 20th century Tin Pan Alley ballads, it claims nothing like the affection and honor heaped upon Irving Berlin, George Gershwin or Vincent Youmans standards. . . But if some critics have responsibly compared the best of Kern with Schubert, and if such a complex intellect as Milton Babbitt can praise Berlin's "All Alone" for its fastidiously durchkomponiert procedure surely there's a place for a song with music and words as simple but perfectly wrought as those of "My Buddy."
The lyirc begins conventionally with honest setiment "Nights are long since you went away." But the sentiment mounts gradually without forcing unitl the clincher "My buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you." And the music is just as affecting. It moves almost entirely on a linkage of thirds. It may seem perverse to lay even these few techinical data on such an unassuming little song, but if a Berlin tune can stand up to that kind of description, so can this.
Such a song's qualities are all too easily taken for granted, if not ignored unless the number gets a singer who meets it on its own level of perfection and simplicity. In Bernadette Peters, participating in an AIDS research benefit concert, "My Buddy" got that singer. Throughout her career, from Caffe Cino's Dames at Sea onward, she's been an audacious belter but also an endearing change of pace artist, and for "My buddy, the other night she kept the belting to a strategic minimum and wrapped the song in a voice slender, vulnerable, and yet saturated with the emotional truth that the late Lotte Lenya brought and Teresa Stratas still brings to Kurt Weill.
Peters's achievement at the Newman, which also included a reprise of her familiarly intense and wonder-filled "Move On" was all the more remarkable since it was the high point in a concert long succession of treasurably grand or at least kicky performances by other benefit participants. [other performers were Marilyn Horne, Marvin Hamlisch, Isaac Stern, Leonard Bernstein, Eileen Farrell, Hildegard Behrens, Kevin Kline and Michael Tilson Thomas] But it was Bernadette Peters who found the musical focus for this evening's cause.
PTM
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 10/17/2007 at 1:10:27 AM ET
Ooh, cool. Thank you so much for that.
| Scottie
Registered User
Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 10/17/2007 at 7:31:50 AM ET
Thanks, PTM, that was so interesting. I can only imagine how sadly resonant her interpretation of the lyrics of "My Buddy" would have been at that early Aids benefit.
"There’s a lot in the world for us to turn our attention to — helping people, helping animals, and helping animals help people." ... Bernadette Peters, August, 2007
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