Patti LuPone Albums (5)
'Patti LuPone at Les Mouches'
Release Date 11/11/2008
Tracks 20
Label Ghostlight
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
In 1980, during her Tony-winning run as the title character in Evita on Broadway, Patti LuPone also performed a once-a-week, Saturday-night-at-midnight nightclub act at a club called Les Mouches for 27 weeks, starting on March 1. Having rushed downtown and put on a tuxedo, she fronted a piano/guitar/bass/drums quartet in an act that combined traditional pop standards (Cole Porter's "Love for Sale") with songs associated with her ("Meadowlark" from her show The Baker's Wife and, inevitably, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina") and some contemporary pop/rock numbers (Patti Smith's "Because the Night," the Kinks' "[Wish I Could Fly Like] Superman"). Her performances were not recorded professionally, but somebody, probably musical director David Lewis, taped some of the shows off the soundboard, and those cassette tapes moldered in a shoebox in a closet for more than a quarter-century before being retrieved and restored for this album. The result doesn't have the sound quality of a typical live recording, of course, but LuPone's voice is clear and the band, though under-recorded, is audible. The more densely arranged songs suffer the most, so that, for instance, the amusing "Heaven Is a Disco" is muddy and distorted. But listeners should have no trouble overlooking the audio deficiencies and enjoying the show. LuPone is giddy and giggling, often seeming nervous. (Much of the disc seems to have been recorded at the closing performance attended by several VIPs, among them Stephen Sondheim.) But that doesn't keep her from singing well. She is best at her signature songs, particularly "Meadowlark," but she gets points for trying unlikely choices like "Because the Night," even if they don't quite work. (Here, a louder band performance would have helped, but LuPone simply is no rocker.) This is not the definitive LuPone recording, but fans will welcome it as a historical artifact and a fun show. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Patti LuPone Live!'
Release Date 11/11/2008
Tracks 28
Label Ghostlight
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
A full-fledged Broadway musical star in an age when that kind of stardom does not transfer automatically to any other area of entertainment, Patti LuPone, whose stage credits included Evita, Les Miserables, and Anything Goes, was coming out of four non-singing years on the TV drama Life Goes On when she performed the series of live performances excerpted here at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles in January 1993. (At the top of the show, she announced that she was leaving for London to perform in Sunset Boulevard, an experience that would prove both a career debacle and a financial windfall when Andrew Lloyd Webber broke her contract to open the show on Broadway, opting for the bigger name Glenn Close.) Naturally, the anchors of the act were the songs with which she was associated through her stage triumphs: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Anything Goes," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," and "I Dreamed a Dream." But her dramatic skills and clarion voice proved well suited to a wide range of other theater material, especially songs written by Kurt Weill, such as a medley of "My Ship" from Lady in the Dark and "Surabaya Johnny" from Happy End, and the encore, "Lost in the Stars." She also handled well period pop, such as the Billy Strayhorn standard "Lush Life" and the Louis Jordan classic "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," though the choices of contemporary pop, while well sung, were less impressive. This was as much an act as a concert, with written patter that made it suitable for nightclubs, even if it was unnecessary on disc. Nevertheless, the album made an excellent introduction to a major performer who remained a kind of an international secret. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'The Lady with the Torch'
Release Date 4/25/2006
Tracks 14
Label Ghostlight
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Musical theater star Patti LuPone rarely releases solo albums, and when she does, they often serve as the audio equivalents of the nightclub acts she assembles for the periods when she isn't appearing in a musical. The Lady with the Torch is one of those musical souvenirs, based on a concert she developed with Scott Wittman gathering together a series of torch songs drawn from the Great American Songbook of Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, and others. Frank Sinatra perfected this sort of concept album in the 1950s with such LPs as Only the Lonely, and LuPone follows the formula well in a distaff manner, giving voice to female characters who long for idealized love, cry over love lost, vow revenge, or decide to quit the whole sorry mess. Jonathan Tunick provides punchy, supportive orchestrations for a small jazz band, and LuPone sings with her usual fervor. The victimization and self-pity in many of the lyrics don't actually suit her, however; she is at her best getting her own back, notably in "I Wanna Be Around," and she deliberately throws in a few songs that don't exactly fit the mold, such as the sexy "Do It Again" and "So in Love." Still, it's easy to imagine her putting this set across effectively in a concert hall or nightclub. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Matters of the Heart'
Release Date 9/21/1999
Tracks 20
Label LayZLay
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Patti LuPone has been sparing in her solo recordings, and in a sense this can actually be considered her studio debut, since her first album was a live collection that consisted largely of songs with which she was associated from her stage appearances, and her second was an Irving Berlin tribute by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra on which she was virtually a guest artist. Matters of the Heart, it's clear, is intended to serve as the basis for a new nightclub and concert act for LuPone, but it works equally well as a recording. Working with producer Scott Wittman and arranger/musical director Dick Gallagher, she has put together a well-chosen and carefully sequenced set of 20 songs following a life and its emotional experiences from youth to maturity. She began the process of picking material with the intention of avoiding show music and looking for new songs and pop tunes; she ended up with a mixture of the three. Theater composers such as Frank Wildhorn, Bob Merrill, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, Stephen Sondheim, Rupert Holmes, and Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are represented, but so are pop songwriters such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jimmy Webb, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Randy Newman, and Judy Collins. Standards such as "The Boy Next Door," "A Wonderful Guy," and "Hello, Young Lovers" share space with songs well known to theater fans, such as Sondheim's "Not a Day Goes By" and "I Never Do Anything Twice," and songs familiar to singer-songwriter fans, such as Newman's "Real Emotional Girl" and Collins' "My Father." Using chamber music arrangements for piano and string quartet and placing the songs in the context of the album's story, LuPone reimagines them in a way that makes them new. But the real delights among the song selections come with the obscure titles, not all of which are by obscure songwriters. For example, the Lennon and McCartney composition "It's for You," written for Cilla Black, who took it into the U.K. Top Ten in 1964, but only a negligible chart entry in the U.S., will be new to most listeners. The truly new material, including three excellent songs by John Bucchino and two by Dillie Keane, hold their own, and "I Regret Everything," a reversal of Edith Piaf's anthem "Je Ne Regrette Rien," which LuPone sings in an exaggerated French accent, is a comic tour de force. All of the material is enhanced by the sequencing, which builds a life story from young, exuberant love to philosophical reflections and complications, sophistication and jadedness, and finally mature thoughts about children and the passage of time. The only thing better than listening to the album itself would be hearing LuPone perform it live, which is probably the idea. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Heatwave: Patti LuPone Sings Irving Berlin'
Release Date 1/1/1995
Tracks 13
Label Philips
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Although Patti LuPone appears on the cover of this album, it is and should be at least co-billed to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted by John Mauceri, since about half of the running time is taken up with the orchestra's instrumental treatments of Irving Berlin material in four medleys: "Berlin Goes To Hollywood," "Call Me Madam Dances," "Monte Carlo Ballet" (which is the extended "Let's Face The Music And Dance" sequence from the film Follow The Fleet), and "Patriotic Overture." LuPone is practically a guest artist, seemingly employed primarily to channel the spirit of Ethel Merman, whose vocal style she is able to evoke, while avoiding Merman's stentorian tendencies, on such Merman-identified songs as "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Hostess With The Mostes'," "I Got Lost In His Arms," and "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly." LuPone is a delight whenever she opens her mouth to sing, but she is largely straight-jacketed by the arrangements, many of them original but played without much verve by the ever-correct, but often stodgy Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Only on the relatively obscure "Lonely Heart," sandwiched in the middle of a medley, does she get a moment to show the kind of emotional force of which she's capable. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
