Get Happy: Michael Feinstein Celebrates The Judy Garland Centennial

Virtually all the major singers of the 20th Century first attracted attention because they were doing something new. Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole—all became stars (and eventually, legends) by giving something that we had never heard before. That is, with the exception of Judy Garland; she might be the one canonical singer of the traditional songbook who was sold to us not as a groundbreaker or a pathfinder, but, as we would say in this century, a throwback to an earlier era, the reincarnation of big-voiced, larger-than-life then-living legends like Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker (who even plays Garland’s mother in Broadway Melody of 1938). Garland is possibly the only star of her magnitude who was packaged as a nostalgia act from the beginning, retro even before she was au courant.

If Michael Feinstein’s excellent Centennial Tribute to Judy Garland, which is being divided into two acts over two different nights (the second installment runs from Wednesday December 22 to Sunday December 26) teaches us one thing, it’s that despite all the packaging, Judy Garland was much more of an innovator than we were led to believe. Mr. Feinstein is both an ace entertainer and a superlative scholar, and he has, as always, a terrific trio backing him up. And yet as good as Mr. Tedd Firth, bassist Phil Palombi and drummer Mark McLean are, Mr. Feinstein is often even more effective when he accompanies himself at the piano, as he did on the encore—as he admits, not a surprise given the season—“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

Mr. Feinstein’s choice of his opening and closing numbers—both by Harold Arlen—did a great deal to advance that Garland was a greater musician than she’s given credit for being. He started with “Get Happy,” a 20-year-old standard that Garland transformed into a personal anthem in her final MGM movie, Summer Stock (1950). Perhaps it’s only when hearing someone else sing this arrangement that we realize how radical it is. I’ve made the point elsewhere that even though Garland’s imitators tend to portray her as an iron-lunged belter a la Ethel Merman, she was also capable of remarkably subtle and intimate singing as well. And even though, one booking at the Newport Jazz Festival aside, she was never categorized as a jazz artist, she was also a remarkably rhythmic singer, whose command of the beat helped her get to the emotional core of a song.

“Get Happy,” arranged for Garland by Saul Chaplin, is a rhythmic marvel, particularly the second chorus, which is set in alternating patterns of staccato and legato. Mr. Feinstein, echoing Garland, sings the first eight bars in short bursts, answered by dramatic interjections from the brass section. (As expertly approximately by Mr. Firth and his trio, who do a marvelous job filling in for the MGM orchestra.) The second eight bars are smoother, and then the bridge starts out as kind of a blues-style stop-time cadenza with minimal accompaniment (“we’re headin’ cross the river”—and there’s a delightful squeal on the high note on “river”) before relaxing into the interjected words in the line, “it’s quiet and peaceful on the other side.” The last eight bars are more agitated (in Summer Stock, three of the male dancers accompanying Garland are now pounding their fists on the floor), with Garland phrasing the words around a highly agitated tom-tom pattern, before reaching a mini-climax.  And there’s an even more exciting third chorus still to come.

Garland’s classic version of “Come Rain or Come Shine,” which opened “Judy” (1956) her first of two masterpiece albums with arranger-conductor Nelson Riddle, is also a classic. Again, it’s a whirlpool of rhythm and emotion, but it’s hard to imagine even how a full-out jazz singer, even Fitzgerald or Holiday, could have sung it better. For Riddle’s part, this is the moment when he showed the world how one could employ Afro-Cuban rhythm patterns and instruments even when not going for a distinctly Latin beat—in fact, bongos, here played by Mr. McLean, run throughout, while the other instruments rise and fall. The piece reaches an upbeat crescendo as the piece shifts gears rhythmically in another very dramatic second chorus, which hits a peak at the end of the bridge when Garland (and now Mr. Feinstein), repeats the words, “let me, let me, let me,” as if suddenly being swept away by an emotional maelstrom.

Much of the rest of the show is laid out in a series of medleys, one representing Garland’s young childhood and vaudeville years, another containing the best songs from her series of musicals co-starring with Mickey Rooney, and another covering the best of her 1940s MGM oeuvre. Mr. Feinstein also delivers a thrilling, standalone performance of “Zing! Went The Strings of My Heart.” As with any Feinstein production, there are avis rara: he sings the full text to “If I Only Had a Brain” (with “A Heart” and “The Nerve” sutured in) including Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s brilliant verses, which are virtually never sung. He also presented us with a discovery in the form of an unreleased recording of Garland circa 1941 singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” that he discovered in a house formerly owned by her mother, an a capella performance that Mr. Feinstein himself accompanies on the piano.

Mr. Feinstein is not only accompanied by Mr. Firth’s trio, but by a multimedia presentation on the room’s two screens, with a multitude of rare images and clips collated by Garland sage John Fricke. Of course, the one detriment for a contemporary performer to use such iconic arrangements is that there are those in the audience who can’t resist the temptation to sing along. There was one such individual near me last night, and all night long I found it annoying—until I realized that it was me. I’m looking forward to the second part; even during this omicron-y little Christmas, more than 50 years after she’s gone, Judy Garland is still making skies seem blue again.