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January 17, 2005
TT: A voice from the past
I don't mind admitting that it shook me to receive an e-mail the other day whose return address was NancyLaMott@aol.com. Even though it didn't really come from beyond the grave, it had something of the same disorienting impact, if only for a moment.Here's what it said:
Midder Music Records is thrilled to announce the release of a brand-new Nancy LaMott CD, "Nancy LaMott: Live at Tavern on the Green," the first new Nancy LaMott release in eight years.
Recorded live at Nancy's last engagement at Tavern on the Green, just seven weeks before her untimely death, this CD is filled with radiant, joyful, gorgeously sung performances, as well as charming, funny, often touching patter.
Featuring some of your favorite Nancy LaMott standards plus many songs you've never heard her sing on CD before, this CD captures, for all time, the magic that was Nancy live.
SPECIAL OFFER!
CD's don't hit the stores until February 1, but you can order them online right now at a special price, by going to nancylamott.com.
Order "Nancy LaMott: Live at Tavern on the Green," or any of Nancy's other six CD's (they're all being re-released) before February 1, and pay only $13.98 plus shipping and handling (a $3.00 discount).
Offer good until February 1 only.
Nancy's back at last! SPREAD THE WORD!
Midder Music sent me an advance copy of Live at Tavern on the Green last week. At first I was reluctant to listen to it--afraid, really. I was in the audience when it was taped, in October of 1995, shortly after Nancy told me that the cancer for which she was being treated had spread to her liver. I knew as I watched her perform that she might not live much longer, though I was doing my best not to think about it any more than I could help. She knew, too, and the songs she chose to sing that night would have given her secret away to anyone who was paying attention: "The People That You Never Get to Love." "Sailin' On." "I Didn't Know What Time It Was." "The Promise (I'll Never Say Goodbye)." Not that you would have guessed it from the open-hearted, uninhibited way she sang them, the same way she sang everything, as if there wouldn't be any more tomorrows. Only this time there really weren't: I had Thanksgiving dinner with Nancy and her fiancé three weeks later, and the next time I saw her was on her deathbed.
Six years went by before I could bear to listen to any of her records again. (How she would have hated that!) Even now I couldn't begin to imagine what it would feel like to hear how her singing voice sounded on the last night I heard it in person. But I finally got up the nerve to put on Live at Tavern on the Green, and like so many of the things we dread most, it turned out to be not nearly so hurtful as I'd feared.
Of course I cried--a lot--but I smiled, too, both at the songs and at her unpretentious between-song patter. She told jokes. She talked about having finally met "the someone" (it was Pete Zapp, the man she married on the night she died). She behaved as though everyone in the Chestnut Room were an intimate friend. That was her way: it was part of her charm, on stage and off. It wasn't that I'd forgotten how sweet and funny she was, but so many years had slipped away that I'd forgotten exactly how it felt to sit across a restaurant table from her after the ballet, chattering happily about nothing in particular, or to pick up the phone and hear her say "Hi, it's LaMottski!" Those memories had faded, as all memories must, yet all at once they became shiny new.
She sang beautifully on that crisp October night--you would have had to know her very, very well to realize that her strength was fading fast, or that she was wearing a wig to hide her baldness--and every song she sang brings back a separate memory. I listened to "Waters of March" and remembered what fits the complicated lyrics used to give her. (I'd seen her drop the ball completely at the Algonquin a few months earlier, not long before she went into the hospital for chemotherapy. Our Girl was there, too, and I'm sure she remembers how I all but fell on the floor laughing as poor Nancy fumbled helplessly, and hopelessly, for the right words.) I listened to "I Got the Sun in the Morning" and remembered the long, blissful day we spent together in a recording studio in Astoria as she laid down the vocal tracks for her final album. I listened to her introduce the encore, James Taylor's "Secret O' Life," with the same line she always used, always to the same infallible effect: "Relax, this is cabaret--there's always an encore!" As that last song spun to a close, I thought, Oh, God, I guess I'll always miss her, each and every day, all the days of my life.
I'm not very objective when it comes to Nancy--I loved her too much for that--but I can tell you that Live at Tavern on the Green is a good and representative example of her live shows. If you were lucky enough to hear her in a club, it'll remind you of what she sounded like, and if you weren't, it'll show you what you missed. And if you've never heard her at all, you'll hear what I had in mind when I wrote these words about her, nine long years ago:
What I heard...was a warm, husky mezzo-soprano voice that seemed twice as big as the woman in whom it was housed; a vivid yet unaffected way with lyrics; and a quality at once sensuous and achingly idealistic. Later, after I had met Nancy, I would write that her singing sounded "as if the girl next door had snuck out at two a.m. to make a little whoopee with her steady boyfriend," a description that delighted her no end.
How glad I am to hear my friend's voice once more.
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To place an advance order for Live at Tavern on the Green, or any of Nancy LaMott's other CDs, go here.
Tell your friends--all of them. Spread the word.
Posted January 17, 2005 12:01 PM
