Geraldine Fitzgerald - Streetsongs (Original Cast Album) [Live] (2020)

About This Album
by Bill Rudman
It’s true: In some ways you can’t help but love your first child best. In 1983, when Ken Bloom and I released the Original Cast Album of Geraldine Fitzgerald in Streetsongs on Ben Bagley’s Painted Smiles Records, little did we know the LP would inspire the birth of our own Harbinger Records label, which today boasts a catalogue of more than 70 titles.

But Streetsongs was special. Listening to the album again after so many years reminds us how much we miss Geraldine (1913– 2005), our dear friend who delighted in serving us tea, crackers and goat cheese on a silver tray whenever we turned up at her home on the Upper East Side.

Serendipitous is the word for the album itself. In 1979 Susan Bloch and I were the publicists for the long run of Streetsongs Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre. Two years later I proposed to Geraldine that we take the show to my old stamping ground, Cleveland’s Great Lakes Shakespeare [now Theater] Festival, and it played there for a week to sold-out houses. At my insistence, Stan Kozak, the sound designer, taped three performances merely as a gift for the star.

Lo and behold, the tapes turned out to be sensational. Geraldine, then nearly 70, had never done the piece— essentially a small-scale cabaret—in a theater that large (1,000 seats). But she had confided in me during the New York run that her dream was to see if she and her Streetsongs could ever create as much excitement for an audience as Lena Horne—a real singer—did in The Lady and Her Music . Cleveland may not have been Broadway, and Geraldine may not have been Horne, but the city gave the actress her chance at wish fulfillment, and astonishingly, she pulled it off.

Saddled with a meager budget, Ken and I took the tapes to a Manhattan recording studio. In just one day— thanks to a terrific mastering engineer named Ron Johnson—we chose and edited the best performance of each song and emerged with a cassette for Geraldine that sent her over the moon. Would she take a risk and release an LP? You bet she would.

I remember at the end of the studio session sitting on Ken’s stoop and basking in this unlikely achievement. We looked at each other and agreed, “We’re now record producers.” Still are, thanks to Geraldine Fitzgerald and her luminous art. ~information from the booklet.

Tracklist:
01. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Opening Theme / Underneath the Arches / "Forget Me Not" Lane (Live) (5:43)
02. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Danny Boy (Live) (6:12)
03. Geraldine Fitzgerald - The Poor People of Paris (Live) (3:35)
04. Geraldine Fitzgerald - She's Leaving Home / Swanee (From "Sinbad") [Live] (6:17)
05. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Kerry Dance (Live) (5:22)
06. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Phil the Fluter's Ball (Live) (3:14)
07. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Four Green Fields (Live) (4:16)
08. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Lily of Laguna (Live) (2:25)
09. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Carrickfergus (Live) (2:05)
10. Geraldine Fitzgerald - The Famous Pig Song / Saturday Night at the Rose & Crown (From "The Girl Who Came to Supper") [Live] (3:19)
11. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Underneath the Street Songs: Who's This Geezer, Hitler? / Smile (From "Modern Times") / Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag / When You're Smiling / (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover / Fitzy's Rag [Live] (15:02)
12. Geraldine Fitzgerald - Excerpts from Bill Rudman’s 1983 Radio Interview (Live) (10:58)