I was originally going to feature several different music videos today, but then I watched this program and realized Barbra is enough for one blog post.
When Barbra Streisand hit the national airwaves in 1965, she was an overnight sensation. Her one woman television special on CBS entitled My Name Is Barbra enchanted the TV critics as well as the home audience and turned a Broadway star into a cultural phenomenon.
Most, but not all, of the show is now available in a playlist on YouTube, which I’ve embedded below.
A couple brief notes.
I always hated the song “People”, even back in 1965 when she had a hit with it, and I voiced my displeasure it at the time. The tune is fine, but words—yech! The idea that a person who is dependent on someone else is among the luckiest people in the world just for that reason is abhorrent to me. And I was pleased to hear in an interview a few years ago that Streisand herself always felt the same way. But the song was in her successful Broadway show, so she was stuck with it.
The TV special spawned two LPs. The second one featured the medley that includes “Second Hand Rose”. When Barbra reprises that song, she adds a little patter that back in the 1960s I wasn’t able to understand. When she sings “Oh, everyone knows that I’m just second hand Rose from Second Avenue”, she adds “You can’t be the aggreems”—or that’s what it sounded like to me back then.
What she’s actually saying is “You can’t beat the egg creams.” As I had never heard of egg creams in Richland, PA, in those days, I had no idea what she was talking about. Now I do. Though I still have never tasted an egg cream. Either on Second Avenue or anywhere else.
By the way, notice the blooper in the image below. Look in the mirror and you’ll see a crew man in a suit and bow tie.
Mirror, mirror, who’s that fellow in the mirror? Hard to film in a place with all those mirrors.
Anyway here is the entire playlist of the TV special of My Name Is Barbra. It’s still worth watching even with a few songs missing.
But just to give you a little taste, or in case you don’t have time for the whole thing, here is the finale where she sings one of her signature songs. To tell the truth, it brought a little tear to my eyes. Maybe it will to yours as well.