The Legendary Libby Holman

 

The Legendary Libby Holman

Evergreen Presents

The Legendary Libby Holman

The Ballads & Blues / The Torch Songs

In Collaboration with Gerald Cook

Produced by Bill Borden & Steve Marvin

Special Brochure Enclosed with Program 

Monmouth Records, Inc. MR 6501

1966

From the producers: When Libby Holman heard our Through The Years With Vincent Youmans album her reaction was so enthusiastic we made bold to ask her if she would make a record with us of songs from her wide repertoire which she has made uniquely her own. She consented and the present LP i the exciting result. To have captured forever her vocal artistry at its zenith has been most rewarding. – Bill Borden, Steve Marvin

From the brochure: Libby Holman became a singer almost by accident. Born in Cincinnati, she originally seemed heading for a career in law. There was, however, one hitch. Having graduated from the University of Cincinnati at the age of eighteen, she was not permitted to enter law school until she was twenty-one. Since she also had theatrical ambitions, her father, a lawyer, agreed to let her have three years in which to try her luck on the stage. If, during that period, she couldn't make it, she would be happy to enter law school.

Libby's first stage part was in final road company of the interminably touring play, The Fool, by Channing Pollock. Her first Broadway part was that of a maid in a short-lived mystery, The Sapphire Ring. About that time – early 1925 – she became friendly with a group of young actors who were attending classes conducted by the Theatre Guild. They were planning to put on a revue, and they suggested that she try out for a part. "That was The Garrick Gaietiesm," Miss Holman recently recalled. "I went to see a young man named Dick Rodgers, who had written the music for the show. 'What key do you sing in?,' he asked. I didn't know what key I sang in. I told him, "Just play low... no, lower... lower.' He wasn't too excited about my voice, but they hired me because they said I had good legs. I was in a trio with two other girls and I also had as old, 'Black And White,' which was about miscegenation. Pretty daring in those days, but I loved doing it. My idol was always Ethel Waters. I didn't try to copy her, but I always hoed to have something of her quality. Soon after the opening, they dropped the number from the show, and I went back to the chorus. I said, 'Nuts to this, I'm going home.' But I did need the $35 a week, so I stuck it out."

During the run of The Garrick Gaieties, Libby attended classes at Columbia's School of Journalism. It was then that she met a young man, Britten Harden, who had recently started a magazine called Time with another man named Henry Luce. Because of the high production costs in New York, the partners were planning to move their offices to Cleveland early the following year. Libby so impressed Hayden that he offered her a job as a researcher. This seemed ideal, particularly since she was returning home to Cincinnati for Christmas. What could be better than going on from there to Cleveland, and a job in an exciting new venture?

Chance and coincidence ended the not-quite-budding career in journalism. "While I was in Cincinnati," Libby related, "a friend asked me to go backstage with her at one of the local theatres where a touring company of The Greenwich Village Follies was playing. She had written a song, and thought that I could be of help. We met the stage manager, Stanley Rayburn, after the show, and, surprisingly enough, he listened to the song. Then he turned to me, and asked 'Weren't you in The Garrick Gaieties?" When I admitted that I was, he said, 'I remember you in that trio number. You were the most professional one in it. We need a replacement in this show and I'd like to have you join it.' Without too much thought, I said yes. Not only did I go right back into the theatre, but bought the Gaieties song, I also had my 'Black and White' number again. I packed my bags that night, and I was off again. I wonder whatever happened to Time magazine."

At that point in her career, Libby was using the name, Elspeth Holman, which she fancied had the proper theatrical quality. Rayburn didn't like it and suggested "Betty Holman." "If I'm going to change my name at all," she told him, "I'm going to change it to Libby. That's what everybody has called me since elementary school." Rayburn approved, and from then on she was known professionally as Libby Holman.

From the touring Greenwich Village Follies, Libby went into New York production, then playing its final months on Broadway. She also toured in it on the road.

It was during the tour that she met a young singer named Leonard Tillman; even then, he was a discoverer of talented new faces. Sillman brought her to the attention of producer Richard Herndon, who cast her in a revue called Merry-Go-Round. Libby's most important song in it was "Hogan's Alley" by Howard Dietz and Jay Gorney, and for the first time she was noticed by the critics. Across the street from her theatre was another musical, Rang-Tang, which had an all-Negro cast. When the leading lady became ill, the producer asked Herndon to release Libby so that she might take over the part in his show. "I would have jumped at the chance," Libby recalls, "but my producer didn't tell me about it until after our show closed."

Libby Holman was beginning to attract attention. Florenz Ziegfeld went to see her during an engagement at the Roxy Theatre, and signed her to a contract to appear in a projected second New York company of Show Boat, which was to play concurrently with the original company. This would have been the first time such a scheme was ever tired, but Ziegfeld eventually abandoned the idea. Libby, of course, was set for the part of the mulatto, Julie LaVere, the role created by Helen Morgan.

When that fell through, Libby auditioned for a role in Rainbow, an ambitious new musical by Vincent Yuma's, Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, and Laurence Stallings. After being turned down because her voice was too low, she went on the road again in a one-hour tab show playing movie theatres. It was called Texas Guinan's Padlocks, and Libby played Texas. She hated it. During the tour, she found out that the part she had auditioned for in Rainbow was still open. This time she was accepted, and she joined the company just before its Baltimore tryout. Despite a fine score and a ruggedly honest book, the play did not catch on and lasted only one month on Broadway.

Another discouraging experience as Ned Weyburn's Gambols, a more deserving disaster. Then – within three months – Libby's luck changed completely. Howard Dietz, remembering her from Merry-Go-Round, helped her win the female lead in a bright, original revue called The Little Show, in which Clifton Webb and Fred Allen were also featured. Libby's big hits, "Moanin' Low" by Dietz and Ralph Rainger and "Can't We Be Friends?" by Kay Swift and her husband, Paul James (a pseudonym for banker James Warburg), established her reputation as Broadway's most celebrated musical torch bearer. This eminence was reinforced two seasons later when she was reunited with Messer's. Webb and Allen in an equally successful venture, Three's A Crowd. This produced two more memorable songs – "Body And Soul" by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman and Robert Sour, and "Something To Remember You By" by Dietz and Arthur Schwartz.

But Libby Holman was still not satisfied. The only acting she had been able to do on Broadway had been in a few revue sketches. She began to study acting seriously, and even spent a season at Jasper Deeter's Hedgerow Theatre in Pennsylvania. Broadway still beckoned. Vinton Freedley wanted her to come back in a new musical called Anything Goes, but she didn't think the part was suitable. It later went to Ethel Merman.

Libby did accept another offer. This was from Dietz and Schwartz to appear in their first book musical, Revenge With Music, an adaptation of the Spanish classic, El Sombrero de Tres Picos. The score was lovely, Libby received personal acclaim, but the musical was only moderately successful.

Apart from her program, Blues, Ballads and Sin Songs, which she offered in 1954, Libby Holman's last Broadway appearance was in the short-lived Cole Porter musical, You Never Know, in which she was again teamed with Clifton Webb. She did, however, appear in an experimental off-Broadway production, Mexican Mural, in 1941, and has acted in many plays in summer theatres. In 1958 Libby gave a highly-acclaimed performance in Paul Bowles' musical resetting of Garcia-Lorac's Yerma, at both the University of Denver and Ithaca College.

Libby Holman's dedication to more earthy song material began in the early Forites. "I just became sick and tired of Tin Pan Alley," she recently said. "I wanted to spread out – to sing folk material from all over the world. Then I realized I didn't know enough languages, and I decided to stick to American songs. I met Leadbelly and Josh White. A whole new world opened up. You can go just so far being a torch singer. I studied and studied and worked and worked. I don't like to call these songs 'folk songs.' That term always seemed to precious. As far as I'm concerned, they are the real thing, the real America.

Libby Holman and Josh White began their joint recital tour in Boston in 1941. After playing a week, they opened at La Vie Parisienne in New York. Although singed for two weeks, they remained for eight months. Since 1947, Libby has been working with Gerald Cook. "Gerald is more than an accompanist," she states emphatically, "He writes musical settings, a sort of dialogue between piano and voice. He pulls me out and almost lets me go, then he pulls me back in again. there are elements of tension in what we do, and there are many example in which we work in partnership. We're always changing. We try to make everything contemporaneous. I do all the songs as of now. I never copy the way the they were done before – not even by myself. What I'm singing is always a very present thing. It's here, it's' now, it's' what's happening at this moment. That's what makes the songs so vital. When I sing, I never spare my vocal cords. My singing is like Flamenco. Sometimes it's purposely hideous. I try to convey anguish, anger, tragedy, passion. When you're expressing emotions like these, you cannot have a pure tone. I still love the old songs – the Broadway songs. But I do them differently now. I can't go back. I never want to be put in a pigeon-hole marked 'torch singer.'".

Gerald Cook - Composer-pianist Gerald Cook was born in Chicago. As a child he was awarded first prize in a National Guild of Piano Teacher's competition and, while at the University of Illinois, won a scholarship to the Long School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger.

Mr. Cook pursued his musical education at Columbia University, the Manhattan School of Music and Hunter College – supporting himself as a concert accompanist and night club pianist, and emerged with a B.A. andM.A. degree in music. Recently, he studied Theory and Composition with Rudolph Schramm and Ludilla Uhlela of New York.

As a composer his output include a "Cycle of Spirituals" for voice and piano, a String Quartet and a Solo Cantata for Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Orchestra. His scenario music for theatre includes a score for Horton Foote's "Goodbye To Richmond." Timothy Kelly's off-Broadway production of "The Darker Flower," and two ballets choreographed by Ray Harrison; "Kicks" and "Espail" – the latter being produced by the Juilliard Dance Ensemble, March 1964, as well as incidental theatre music and many night club, television and recording arrangements.

His credits as arranger and musical director include many television assignments – for Stan Kenton, Patti Page, the Hallmark-NBC production of "The Green Pastures" among then, and recordings for Columbia, Capitol, and Decca Records. He created the orchestrations for Paul Bowles' score for Garcia Lorca's play "Yerma." His musical arrangements and accompaniment for Libby Holman' programs of songs over the past decade have gained him the acclaim of critics throughout England, France Italy, Switzerland and in the United States.

Body And Soul (from Three's A Crowd)

Love For Sale (from The New Yorkers)

I Want A Man (from Rainbow)

Can't We Be Friends? (from The Little Show)

A Ship Without A Sail (from Heads Up!)

Moanin' Low (from The Little Show)

Something To Remember You By (from Three's A Crowd)

Good Morning, Blues

In The Evenin'

Red River

Fare Thee Well

Evil Hearted Me

Easy Rider

House Of The Rising Sun