One of the most rewarding projects on this blog — for me, anyway — has been the Deep Dive. I love digging through an artist’s discography, album by album, to understand the historical context and explore all the connective tissue.
So far I’ve given the Deep Dive treatment to Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Madonna, Bob Marley, Lana Del Rey, The Rolling Stones, and Jim Croce.
The Deep Dives have a limitation, however. Many of the artists I’d like to cover have catalogs well larger than the 20-ish albums I look for to make the project manageable. Some have nearly 50 studio releases. And while I’d like to give those people some love, I don’t see myself turning the blog over to one person or group’s music for 2-3 months.
So, in the spirit of tackling some big names without taking a full fiscal quarter to do it, allow me to introduce… Shallow Dives! Rather than taking an album-by-album look at an artist’s catalog, I will spend two weeks looking at ten significant albums from his or her career.
My first Shallow Dive honoree will be Ms. Barbra Streisand. Streisand is a showbiz legend, an EGOT winner with impressive credits as a singer, actress, producer, and director. She is one of the top-selling music artists of all-time, with a dozen #1 albums — including one in each of the last six decades, a feat only she has achieved.
Streisand has recorded 36 studio albums, along with another 26 live and soundtrack albums, making her a perfect candidate for the Shallow Dive treatment.
I’ll start at the beginning.
Streisand’s first album, titled The Barbra Streisand Album, came out in 1963 when she was just 21 years old. She had already made a name for herself singing at nightclubs, as well as on TV shows and the theatrical stage.
She signed a record contract that gave her total control over her material, taking less money in exchange, and decided her debut album would include the obscure Broadway standards she loved. The label pushed for popular hits but she held firm.
The result is a lovely collection of simply arranged tunes that really showcase Streisand’s range and theatricality. These feel like live stage performances, acted as much as sung, and they’re wonderful.
The album was very well-received and was nominated for five Grammy awards, winning two (including Album of the Year). This is one of only seven debut albums to win the top award. Streisand would be nominated for Album of the Year five more times but never win it again.
I’ll write about some of those albums over the next two weeks.
Go long bad times
We are rid of you at last
Howdy gay times
Cloudy gray times
You are now a thing of the past
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again
Altogether shout it now
There’s no one
Who can doubt it now
So let’s tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again
Your cares and troubles are gone
There’ll be no more from now on
From now on
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy times
Happy nights
Happy days
Are here again!
Meet Me In Montauk 
Well, I know a certain sister of yours and wife of mine who will be thrilled with this shallow dive!
And this mother of your sister and wife of Dana’s is equally thrilled 👏👏👏👏❤️
And what a perfect song to start off your dive (which I won’t consider shallow; you’re submerging yourself in a way I wouldn’t have expected, so thank you!)
Here come the tears again… our beloved cat Serena died this morning. When we adopted her nearly 17 years ago, she had been given the temporary name “Babs” by her foster parent who loved Barbra Streisand. While Daniel was the one who fell in love with her, infected goopy eye and all, and insisted she be the cat we take home that September day, the fact that she’d been cared for by someone who loved Barbra Streisand as much as I do definitely helped me agree (though we all agreed on a name change!)
I’m not sure you’ll get around to sharing her more hopeful version of this song that I first heard her do in 1986 when they broadcast this rare live concert she gave at her home in Malibu (with quite the guest list!), so I’ll post it here … with a bonus America the Beautiful.
I will be here every day for the next two weeks, that’s for sure. And thank you for the inadvertent tribute to my sweet kitty. xo
Serendipitous timing of posts on this blog has happened often enough that I’m halfway tempted to believe there are outside forces at work. Whether it’s that or mere coincidence, I’m happy to have offered an inadvertent tribute to sweet little Serena.
I was curious to see which of her 50+ albums stayed with me the most since my most ardent days of fandom back in the mid to late 80’s.
I wanted to narrow it down to 10, but there are 15 that stuck the most then and stick with me all these years later (though I haven’t listened to some of them in, literally, decades).
It was our parents’ The Way We Were on reel to reel that first hooked me; they also owned Stoney End. Those two gems (released in ’74 and ’71 respectively) were my entryway into what Streisand could do. I was only 8 years old when The Way We Were was released, so I’m guessing it was in subsequent years that I started caring, and it was in my early teens that I started collecting seriously.
At one point, I owned all of her albums to that point, though I’ve long since lost track of that once impressive collection.
Without any further ado, my “Babs” collection:
The Third Album (1964)
A Christmas Album (1967)
Simply Streisand (1967)
Stoney End (1971)
The Way We Were (1974)
Butterfly (1974 – my intro to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” – how funny is that?)
A Star is Born (1976)
Superman (1977 – the first one I remember buying)
Songbird (1978)
Wet (1979)
Guilty (1980)
Yentl (1983)
Emotion (1984)
The Broadway Album (1985)
‘Til I Loved You (1988)
(and thank you to those mystical outside forces for giving me this lovely distraction today)
Thank you Amy for sharing the video This is my favorite version. RIP sweet Serena ❤️