Miscast 2016

[+ Gar1eth]

I've never heard of this show before. But I wish I had been there.

 

 

Gman

[+ Gar1eth]

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

"Miscast" is a one-night a year charity event where actors play a role in a song they would not be casted in on Broadway.

 

I do not live in New York so I may have gotten something wrong.

[+ Gar1eth]

Not from Miscast but in a similar vein. It doesn't totally work. But it's interesting. The boy playing Valjean is the lead singer in Miscast's Schuyler Sisters.

 

 

Gman

[bostonman]

This idea of "wrong" casting has, I think, become a popular idea even outside of NYC. There's a regional theatre company in Boston who does a benefit evening each year called "Sorry, Wrong Number" which has the same conceit. Fun stuff.

[+ WilliamM]

 

 

 

 

The song was written by Cole Porter for Ethel Merman.. I think Groff mixed a little Merman in with Sutton.

[bostonman]

I think Groff mixed a little Merman in with Sutton.

 

I would disagree. I hear a lot of 2016-style pop styling here that has very little to do with Merman or Porter - or Sutton Foster, for that matter. I like Groff, but I found this rendition rather annoying.

[+ Gar1eth]

I would disagree. I hear a lot of 2016-style pop styling here that has very little to do with Merman or Porter - or Sutton Foster, for that matter. I like Groff, but I found this rendition rather annoying.

 

Interesting-maybe I'd like him with another song. But so far most of the time, I haven't been overly impressed with the, I guess I should call it, 'tonal quality' of his voice. He's better than I am of course. I'm assuming he's a tenor. I find a lot of tenor voices difficult to like. Many of them sound strained to me. I've liked some Irish Tenors like Dennis Day. I'm assuming John Denver was a tenor. I like him. He seemed to have a warmer tone than many do.

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

I would disagree. I hear a lot of 2016-style pop styling here that has very little to do with Merman or Porter - or Sutton Foster, for that matter. I like Groff, but I found this rendition rather annoy

 

Miscast 2012, I believe. I simply mentioned Porter's name because he wrote the words and music. I saw Merman in "Gypsy" twice, and there were a few brief moments, when I believe Groff has listened to the original cast album of "Gypsy" too much.

 

I do agree that Merman was not much of dancer.

[+ Gar1eth]

I would disagree. I hear a lot of 2016-style pop styling here that has very little to do with Merman or Porter - or Sutton Foster, for that matter. I like Groff, but I found this rendition rather annoying.

Miscast 2012, I believe. I simply mentioned Porter's name because he wrote the words and music. I saw Merman in "Gypsy" twice, and there were a few brief moments, when I believe Groff has listened to the original cast album of "Gypsy" too much.

 

I do agree that Merman was not much of dancer.

 

I don't know as much about music as the two of you, or many others on the Forum. But he was obviously using that nasal tone that was popular in the Jazz Age.

 

Does anyone know if there's a reason why they used that nasal intonation-such as microphone/recording limitations, or was it just the style then?

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

 

 

Does anyone know if there's a reason why they used that nasal intonation-such as microphone/recording limitations, or was it just the style then?

 

I do not know the answer, except that on Broadway "Anything Goes," the original version, was performed without microphones. Maybe Bostonman can answer the rest of the question.

 

By 1977, it sounds from this live recording that Merman was using microphones and singing this Cole Porter without the nasal tone.

[+ Gar1eth]

 

 

 

 

I do not know the answer, except that on Broadway "Anything Goes," the original version, was performed without microphones. Maybe Bostonman can answer the rest of the question.

 

By 1977, it sounds from this live recording that Merman was using microphones and singing this Cole Porter without the nasal tone.

 

Ethel still sounds a bit nasal to me there. But she wasn't whom I was referring too. I was talking about entertainers before her at the dawn of the talkie era-singers like Jolson, Vallee, and their compatriots.

 

Part of it may have to do with resonance. My former voice teacher was always talking about putting your voice into your sinuses I think to enlarge the sound. I didn't take for long as lessons just showed I had nothing to develop.

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

My former voice teacher was always talking about putting your voice into your sinuses I think to enlarge the sound. I didn't take for long as lessons just showed I had nothing to develop.

 

Merman claimed to have never taken a voice lesson in her life, not sure if it's true.

 

Very sorry that I did not understand the time period. As always, good exchanging comments with you.

[+ Gar1eth]

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

 

 

 

 

 

Off-Topic, but Merman at her best at the Kennedy Inaugural Gala, while "Gypsy" was still playing on Broadway. Producer David Merrick closed the musical for a night so Merman could sing for the new president. "I saw "Gyspy" in 1960 & 1961. Exactly how Merman sang the song in the show.

[+ Gar1eth]

 

 

 

 

 

Off-Topic, but Merman at her best at the Kennedy Inaugural Gala, while "Gypsy" was still playing on Broadway. Producer David Merrick closed the musical for a night so Merman could sing for the new president. "I saw "Gyspy" in 1960 & 1961. Exactly how Merman sang the song in the show.

I'm sure this performance was really in my honor(to welcome me) and not Kennedy's. I was one week old at the time.

 

Gman

[bostonman]

Does anyone know if there's a reason why they used that nasal intonation-such as microphone/recording limitations, or was it just the style then?

I do not know the answer, except that on Broadway "Anything Goes," the original version, was performed without microphones. Maybe Bostonman can answer the rest of the question.

By 1977, it sounds from this live recording that Merman was using microphones and singing this Cole Porter without the nasal tone.

 

In the 20's, I think the tendency to go nasal was the style, but it was also because the nasal resonance would help the sound "cut" brighter, so it could be heard better. So the style and the sound issue went hand in hand. (Much like "crooning" developed as singers found they could also sing softly into a microphone to create a new effect.)

 

Remember that Rudy Vallee also sang into a megaphone to enhance his ability to be heard. (Cole Porter even made a dirty joke out of that in his song "Find Me A Primitive Man" where he penned "I've no desire to be alone / With Rudy Vallee's megaphone.")

 

I don't know for sure whether Merman was singing with or without mics in that 1977 concert, though of course obviously there were mics involved if she was recorded. (I'm half-joking, but I have known people who seem to forget that you can't make a recording without the benefit of microphones.)

 

The one danger of the "Broadway singers didn't use microphones back then" argument is that we're really talking about two different kinds of mic techniques. Broadway shows in the 1950's or perhaps even earlier WERE using mics - but it was general miking most often done at the downstage edge (floor mics, etc). The kind of individual body mics we have now started being used in the 60's (in a much more primitive technology, of course), but I think they didn't really start appearing ubiquitously until the 80's. (Some shows that were more rock-oriented, such as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, also used hand-held mics - and though we don't see that often anymore, the use of hand-helds became a part of the staging concept for Spring Awakening only 10 years ago.) So generally, when we talk about singers in earlier generations not using mics, we may not be acknowledging or aware that there was still some assistance from general amplification in that "golden age" era.

 

And of course another example of things going hand in hand is that, in older days, orchestrators arranged the songs specifically to give the singers room, generally keeping the brass and other louder sounds for fillers between phrases, or big climaxes. As body mics became more and more prevalent, there wasn't so much of a need to orchestrate so gently (the sound board op could goose the singer's mic over the orchestra, etc) - which in turn, now makes it harder to sing many contemporary scores "unplugged," as they are being written with the assumption that everything will be amplified. So again, musical styles (and singing styles) have changed hand in hand with technology.

[+ WilliamM]

I don't know for sure whether Merman was singing with or without mics in that 1977 concert, though of course obviously there were mics involved if she was recorded. (I'm half-joking, but I have known people who seem to forget that you can't make a recording without the benefit of microphone

 

There were a limited number of records of the Merman-Martin 1977 charity concert called "Together on Broadway." Ethel and Mary were using mics. They started off stage singing, "Send in the Clowns" and finished the song on stage. For some reason the mics failed off-stage. The record producers had to get help from someone in the audience who was recording the concert (a "bootleg").

 

I converted my copy of the concert from tape to CDs.

[body2body]

I heard a discussion on the radio of how singing techniques have changed, and much of what they said confirms what Bostonman has said. They also said that higher pitch carried better in an un amplified environment. That's why Vallee and Fred Astaire always seemed to sing at the top of their vocal range. They talked about how revolutionary Bing Crosby was. His lower voice, and crooning style with the placement of the voice less focused in the front of the head, sounded better in recordings, and particularly on the radios of the 1930s.

 

Astaire always said he couldn't sing, but both Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern spoke of Astaire as one of the finest interpreters of their songs.

[+ sync]

I guess I'm odd man out on this one. I was blown away by Jonathan Groff's presentation in the above video. To be able to do that quick-step dancing, with singing, for that long and not show fatigue is amazing to me.

[+ Gar1eth]

I guess I'm odd man out on this one. I was blown away by Jonathan Groff's presentation in the above video. To be able to do that quick-step dancing, with singing, for that long and not show fatigue is amazing to me.

 

 

Oh I'm impressed by his dancing. But the few songs I've heard him sing, I'm not overly impressed. To me he doesn't have the warmest tenor tone. Maybe I'd feel differently if I heard some other songs by him.

 

Gman

[+ sync]

Oh I'm impressed by his dancing. But the few songs I've heard him sing, I'm not overly impressed. To me he doesn't have the warmest tenor tone. Maybe I'd feel differently if I heard some other songs by him.

 

I agree with you about the tone of his voice. I'm stuck in the past when it comes to the tenor voice. I have not been overwhelmed by a tenor voice since the late Jan Peerce.

[+ Gar1eth]

I guess I'm odd man out on this one. I was blown away by Jonathan Groff's presentation in the above video. To be able to do that quick-step dancing, with singing, for that long and not show fatigue is amazing to me.

 

Oh I'm impressed by his dancing. But the few songs I've heard him sing, I'm not overly impressed. To me he doesn't have the warmest tenor tone. Maybe I'd feel differently if I heard some other songs by him.

 

Gman

 

I agree with you about the tone of his voice. I'm stuck in the past when it comes to the tenor voice. I have not been overwhelmed by a tenor voice since the late Jan Peerce.

 

Aaron Tveit seems to have a bit 'warmer' tone. But again part of it might be the songs I've heard Jonathan choose.

 

 

Gman

 

PS Aaron is also extremely handsome-not that Jonathan isn't cute too. Aaron is apparently one of the straight tenors.

[MrMiniver]

I agree with you about the tone of his voice. I'm stuck in the past when it comes to the tenor voice. I have not been overwhelmed by a tenor voice since the late Jan Peerce.

 

Peerce? He always seems to be channeling Georgie Jessel by way of Al Jolson with a little screechy cantor thrown in. Absolutely one of the ugliest voices ever heard on an opera stage next to Kurt Baum.

[+ WilliamM]

 

George Jessel with Judy Garland in 1963. Jessel was the person who suggested Frances Gumm change her name to Judy Garland.

 

 

 

George Jessel? Is that the best you can do, MrMiniver?

 

By the time, I saw George Jessel perform on a USO tour in Vietnam in 1968, he was many things other than a singer, a comic, emcee and an outspoken political advocate for the Vietnam War. Earlier in the 1960s, Jessel was a major civil right supporter.

 

He did sing a few songs associated with Al Jolson and got very angry when few young people knew about Jolson or his songs by 1968