Marilyn Michaels Releases New Album LET THERE BE NIGHT

Singer Comedienne, Marilyn Michaels has released a new Album---Let There Be Night, 70th Anniversary CD.

The cuts range from the Great American Songbook to Classical Mozart, re-imagined in a jazz vein, and topped off by the last cut-the Sergio Mendez hit So Many Stars, featuring 32 of Michaels' iconic voice impressions including, but not limited to: Joan Rivers, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Patti Lupone, and the characters from The Wizard of Oz.

Michaels was chosen by Jule Styne to head up the National Company of Funny Girl concurrent to Streisand's New York run, and following that became known to audiences nationally by her frequent appearances on television variety and talk shows. Her stint in Catskills On Broadway garnered her an Outer Critic Circle Award as well as a Drama League Award.

Let There Be Night marks her seventh solo album. The arrangements are by Mark Berman and Barry Levitt, with liner notes by noted biographer, James Gavin.

Available through Amazon.com, CDBaby Global and marilynmichaels.com

 

REVIEW BE JAMES GAVIN

Everyone knows Marilyn Michaels as a woman of a thousand voices. Her impressions of the quirkiest ladies in showbiz, from Peggy Lee to Dr. Ruth, have kept us laughing since the '60s. Along the way, we've had the occasional chance to experience Marilyn as Marilyn, a singing actress who pinpoints the heart and the humor in anything she touches. Reviewing her at New York's Les Mouches in 1981, Rex Reed wrote: "She may just be one of the most moving singers since Judy Garland.”

Friends know her as an inveterate night owl, hence the nocturnal theme of this, her seventh solo album. To hear Marilyn sing today is a bigger treat than ever; her pipes are undiminished, her acting and comedic flair enhanced by life. And she remains fearless. Her song choices range from Bob Seger's "Betty Lou's Gettin' Out Tonight,” done in Grease-style, to the Italian Baroque aria “Nina,” a man's lament for his ill and sleeping love.

In “Blues in the Night” she's Blanche DuBois, murmuring hazily of past hurts. Her spoken preface to “Help Me Make It Through the Night” might make you laugh out loud; then she clicks right into the song's earthy sensuality. Combining the Jo Stafford hit “Make Love to Me" with “Teach Me Tonight,” she becomes a tongue-in-cheek Lolita, kittenish and dewy-eyed. “You and the Night and the Music" has a choral tag of overdubbed Marilyns. In a masterfully acted "Last Night When We Were Young," she aches with disbelief as she mourns her lost dream-come-true. The last track is a box of chocolates: the Brasil '66 classic "So Many Stars” as sung by thirty-two of Marilyn's fabulous alter-egos. The arrangement concepts are nearly all hers; two gifted keyboardists and conductors, Mark Berman and Barry Levitt, expertly carry out her every whim. No matter how many personas she takes on, the end result is pure Marilyn, and there's nobody like her.

                        -James Gavin (biographer of Lena Horne, Chet Baker, and Peggy Lee)

 

 

 

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