Barbra Streisand: “Release Me” Boxed Set of Hits and Rarities Coming Soon

08/01/12 9:29amRoger Friedman2

Barbra Streisand is going to have a big fall season. It looks like her much rumored boxed set, called “Release Me,” is on the Sony schedule for September 25th. This is supposed to be a collection of hits and rarities designed to mark Barbra’s 50th anniversary with Columbia Records. She was signed in March 1962, and signed a new contract this past spring. I think she may have broken Johnny Mathis’s record with the record label. Barbra’s also had the same manager, the great Marty Ehrlichman, the whole time!

“Release Me” will precede by a couple of weeks Streisand’s performance at the new Barclay Center in Brooklyn. People are already paying scalpers to get into that room. It should be quite a night. Then, come Christmas Day, Streisand returns to the big screen in a comedy with Seth Rogen called “The Guilt Trip.” And she’s preparing to direct her first new film in 15 years– as I reported exclusively this spring–called “Skinny and Cat,” starring Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett.

September 25, 2012 pre-order your copy today! Orders with both pre-order and in stock items will have all in stock items shipped immediately!

Previously Unreleased Material From The Vaults - on Vinyl!

For the first time Barbra Streisand has curated a release of her previously unreleased material. In an unparalleled career, Barbra has accumulated over 100 previously unreleased recordings. She has painstakingly gone through the recordings to come up with this collection - “Release Me.”

Highlights include a striking version of “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today” with Barbra on vocals and Randy Newman on Keyboards from 1971 and “With One More Look,” an unreleased track from A Star Is Born. This is Barbra's first ever compilation of unreleased material in a career that has spanned 50 years.

An eight-time Grammy Award winner who is the only performer to have number one albums in five consecutive decades, her 51 gold albums, 30 platinum and 18 multi-platinum, each of which, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, exceeds all other female singers. Only Elvis Presley has achieved more Gold albums than she. The RIAA also notes that her 71 million albums sales tops the RIAA list of album sales by a female singer. With the recent debut at #1 of her “Love Is The Answer” album, her 9th record to reach that top spot, the time-span between her first and most recent Number One albums, exceeding that of any other performer or act, is now 46 years. Her most recent album, “What Matters Most,” debuting at Number 4, was her 31st to reach the Top Ten in the ratings charts, with which she passed The Beatles to become the third highest achiever in that significant statistic, exceeded only by the Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra.

"When I first began recording in the early 1960’s, we made entire albums in three days... we would try to do four songs in a three-hour session. Usually the last song got short-changed! Back then, we only had 4-tracks to record on... and that was for the orchestra and the vocal, so we didn’t have space to fix things. If I didn’t like a few notes or the arrangement wasn’t exactly right, I wouldn’t release the song. After all, records are forever! Many of the songs on this album only had one or two takes to choose from. That’s because we simply ran out of time, or possibly some musicians had another session to go to, or maybe another artist had booked the studio we were working in. Once I finish making an album, I rarely listen to it. So it was quite interesting to go through the vaults, find these recordings and hear them again with the benefit of hindsight. You could say I’m more forgiving of myself now. In fact, I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I actually like the overall recordings, even with their flaws. Although I could have re-sung certain lines where I thought they could be improved, I decided to leave every vocal the way it was. The thing I’m happiest about is that I have a great affection for all these songs. They appealed to me at the time... and still do. For better or worse, I’m much less of a perfectionist these days. Listening now, I actually think to myself, “The girl wasn’t half bad.” - Barbra Streisand

The Vault:
"Before entering, take a moment to imagine the sum total of your life’s work in one climate-controlled room. As you’re about to see, when it comes to Barbra Streisand’s legendary fifty-years of recorded music, this is exactly what you’ll find inside the vault.

"After you sign-in and security opens the reinforced locked door, the first thing you’ll notice are the floor-to-ceiling shelves with tape boxes from every era of her recording career – People, Color Me Barbra, A Star Is Born, The Bon Soir, Daniel Ellsberg Fundraiser, Judy Garland Show, The Hungry-I, McGovern Concert, Guilty, Yentl... on and on... titles both iconic and unfamiliar... public and private... released and unreleased.

"From the early ’60s you’ll see stacks of acetates (hard lacquer discs used to evaluate music before they’re pressed onto commercial LPs) and endless rows of half-inch 2-track and quarter-inch 4-track tapes spooled onto heavy metal reels... Je m’appelle Barbra, Simply Streisand, A Christmas Album, Funny Girl, Dolly, Philly ’66, Central Park ’67...

"As the years progress, there are 8-track tapes, 12-track, 16-track, 24-track – all contained in thick cardboard boxes with the recording engineer’s handwritten scrawl indicating their contents. The manufacturer logos - Ampex, RCA, 3M, Sony, AGFA, JVC, Scotch, Maxell, Panasonic – a parade of brands in quest of perfect sound... Classical Barbra, Lazy Afternoon, Superman, The Broadway Album, One Voice, Barbra w/Sinatra, Barbra w/Neil Daimond, Barbra w/Celine Dion, Barbra w/Josh Groban, Barbra w/Ray Charles, Barbra w/Donna Summer...

"There are safety reels (copies of original master tapes) and slave reels (sub-mixes created before the final mixes). Inside every box (hopefully) are ledgers indicating on which track(s) each section of the orchestra and Barbra’s vocals reside. On the floor you’ll notice large storage containers of cassettes, DATs (digital audio tape), micro-cassettes, VHS and Betamax tapes. Then there are more rows of shelves holding the digital era 48-track tapes and carrying cases with Pro-Tools files, which hold an infinite number of tracks... Back To Broadway, The Prince of Tides, The Movie Album, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Higher Ground, Clinton Benefit, A Love Like Ours, Madison Square Garden 2000, Love Is The Answer, Obama Benefit, What Matters Most, Women’s Heart Fund 2012...

"Even under ideal conditions, some of these tapes begun to oxidize. In order to play them back without damage, they have to be 'baked' and then transferred into a digital format for preservation.

"Once your mind takes in the sheer volume of the vault’s contents, another thought emerges... namely, how incredible it is that all these tapes and boxes reflect the evolution of a single artist. It is nothing less than the repository of a series of dreams that grow from youthful exuberance to adult resolve... and the thousands of hours of work it took to get there.

"All of Barbra’s glorious music... her ideas... the collaborative efforts of the fortunate songwriters, arrangers, mixers and producers who came into her orbit... the experiments... the occasional missteps and the many triumphs - all driven by the unstoppable force of one woman’s vision.

"Finally, it should be noted that there are still several empty shelves waiting to be filled with her future dreams. - Please come inside." - Jay Landers, Hollywood, CA, 2012

Features:
• Vinyl LP

Selections:
1. Being Good Isn't Good Enough (from Hallelujah, Baby!)
2. Didn't We
3. Willow Weep For Me
4. Try To Win A Friend
5. I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today
6. With One More Look At You (from A Star Is Born)
7. Lost In Wonderland
8. How Are Things In Glocca Morra?/ Heather On the Hill (from Finian’s Rainbow/Brigadoon)
9. Mother And Child
10. If It’s Meant To Be
11. Home (from The Wiz)

Sorry to see it's no more than 13 tracks, but "With One More Look At You" makes this an instant purchase for me.

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If It’s Meant to Be: Barbra Streisand Announces “Release Me” Collection of Long-Lost Songs

Everybody knows “The Way We Were.” But how about “The Way We Might-Have-Been?”

The what-ifs are many in Barbra Streisand’s career. The legendary vocalist, about to celebrate her fiftieth year with Columbia Records in 2013, has amassed a vault filled with unreleased outtakes from her decades of recording. These date as far back as 1962 when the young singer recorded an as-yet-unissued rendition of Harold Arlen and “Yip” Harburg’s “Right as the Rain” for possible release on 45. (In fact, you can date unissued Streisand recordings even further back, if you count non-commercial private recordings, demos for RCA Victor and the demo tape that landed her a contract at Columbia!) Streisand has even recorded unreleased albums, let alone songs. Fans and collectors have patiently waited for some of these lost treasures to escape from the archives. Some emerged on 1991′s multi-disc box set Just for the Record, but the Streisand vault has largely remained under lock and key. That all changes on September 25 when the vinyl LP of Release Me arrives in stores from Columbia Records (who else?), with a CD following two weeks later on October 9. Finally, the open secret of this album is out!

Release Me premieres eleven tracks recorded between 1967 and, possibly, 2011. These encompass the various sides of Streisand’s diverse career, from Broadway (including a medley from the abandoned, Rupert Holmes-produced original iteration of Back to Broadway) to pop (Jimmy Webb’s “Didn’t We” from the incomplete album project The Singer, Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” with the composer on piano, cut from Stoney End) to Hollywood (Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher’s “With One More Look at You” from A Star is Born, arranged by Nick DeCaro for another aborted single). Along the way, there’s a bossa nova excursion (“Lost in Wonderland,” a 1968 English-language version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Antigua,” with lyrics by Marshall Barer of Once Upon a Mattress fame) and one song from the Streisand “holy grail” concept album Life Cycle of a Woman: “Mother and Child” (1973), penned by Alan and Marilyn Bergman with composer Michel Legrand.

The earliest track on Release Me is the standard “Willow Weep for Me,” intended for 1967′s Simply Streisand, arranged by Ray Ellis and conducted by film and theatre composer David Shire (Closer Than Ever, Norma Rae). The most recent appears to be “If It’s Meant to Be,” with music by Brian Byrne and lyrics by the Bergmans. In liner notes to her 2011 tribute album What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman , Streisand mentions recording more songs than were ultimately included; Byrne himself confirmed that one of his songs was being recorded by Streisand. Five songs plus an extended King and I medley reportedly hit the cutting room floor from the chart-topping, quadruple-platinum The Broadway Album (1985), and two have been resuscitated for Release Me: Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s “Being Good (Isn’t Good Enough)” from the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Hallejulah, Baby! (1967) and “Home” from Charlie Smalls’ score to 1975′s The Wiz. Another of the rarities is Larry Gatlin’s “Try to Win a Friend,” cut from 1977′s Superman album.

After the jump: more details, pre-order links and a track listing with source information for each song!

In the press release, Streisand noted, “The thing I’m happiest about is that I still have great affection for all these songs. They appealed to me at the time…and still do. Listening now, I actually think to myself, ‘The girl wasn’t half bad.’” Streisand’s co-producer on Release Me, Jay Landers, muses stream-of-consciousness-style in his liner notes, “All of Barbra’s glorious music…her ideas…the collaborative efforts of the fortunate songwriters, arrangers, mixers and producers who have come into her orbit…the experiments…the occasional missteps and the many triumphs – all driven by the unstoppable force of one woman’s vision.”

With the exception of two songs where the original masters couldn’t be located, all the tracks on Release Me were transferred from original, first-generation master tapes. Make no mistake, these eleven songs add up to a veritable Streisand bonanza, even if they’re just the tip of the iceberg where additional unreleased material is concerned. The album is packaged with a dramatic cover that should be even more striking at full LP size. Streisand has recently mentioned that the album will be dedicated to her beloved friend and longtime associate Marvin Hamlisch, who died earlier this month. None of Hamlisch’s songs are on the new collection, although his composition “It Doesn’t Get Better Than This” (cut from 1996′s film and soundtrack The Mirror Has Two Faces) could have been a contender and remains unreleased.

Release Me arrives from Columbia Records on September 25 on vinyl (as almost all of these songs were originally intended to be heard, after all) and a CD follows on October 9. You can pre-order both versions below!

Barbra Streisand, Release Me (Columbia Records, 2012 – CD / Vinyl)

1. Being Good Isn’t Good Enough (from Hallelujah, Baby!) (Styne/Comden/Green)
2. Didn’t We (Jimmy Webb)
3. Willow Weep For Me (Ann Ronell)
4. Try To Win A Friend (Larry Gatlin)
5. I Think It’s Going To Rain Today (Randy Newman) (with Randy Newman, piano)
6. With One More Look At You (from A Star Is Born) (Williams/Ascher)
7. Lost In Wonderland (Jobim/Barer)
8. How Are Things In Glocca Morra? / The Heather On The Hill (from Finian’s Rainbow / Brigadoon) (Lane/Harburg/Lerner/Loewe)
9. Mother And Child (Legrand/Bergman/Bergman)
10. If It’s Meant To Be (Byrne/Bergman/Bergman)
11. Home (from The Wiz) (Charlie Smalls)

All tracks previously unreleased.

Tracks 1 & 11 cut from The Broadway Album (1985)
Track 2 from The Singer (unreleased, 1970)
Track 3 cut from Simply Streisand (1967)
Track 4 cut from Superman (1977)
Track 5 cut from Stoney End (1970)
Track 6 intended for single release, 1977
Track 7 intended for single release, 1968
Track 8 from Back to Broadway sessions, 1988
Track 9 from Life Cycle of a Woman (unreleased, 1973)
Track 10 likely cut from What Matters Most (2011)