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“She was the tallest. The rest of us will be forgotten, but Judy will never be. These were Frank SinatraThe words of and little would dispute his claim that Judy Garland was one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen. Not only was she a prodigiously accomplished and versatile actress who appeared in 34 Hollywood films and won an Oscar at the age of 17, but she also possessed an extremely expressive singing voice which earned her a multitude of hit records and three Grammy Awards; and to top it off, she could dance with a nimble combination of grace, panache, and precision that kept her going when she danced alongside two of Hollywood’s greats, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.
In terms of talent, therefore, Garland has been abundantly blessed. But behind Hollywood glamor lies a vulnerable and deeply troubled soul. It’s fair to say that she was irreparably damaged by the Hollywood studio system that brought her up. Many early traumas left deep psychological scars affecting Garland’s self-esteem which she carried with her for the rest of her life.
Listen to the best Judy Garland songs on Apple Music and Spotify.
In terms of music, Garland’s early recordings for Decca seemed mostly happy and carefree, masking his struggles, but eventually his private life seeped into his sound; an almost palpable sense of heartbreak and heartache is etched into the recordings she made in the 1950s and 1960s for Capitol Records, adding a deeply autobiographical slant to the songs she was able to inhabit and make her own. The mix of fragility and stoicism she invested in her subsequent performances – especially when she was live on stage – was what drew her to audiences; they felt her pain and vulnerability, but also reveled in the heroic perseverance she displayed as she battled her demons and stayed true to the old theatrical adage “the show must go on”.
His talent shone like a beacon between 1936 and 1963; and it is from this fertile period that we have selected the best songs of Judy Garland which sum up her outstanding genius.
A star is born
Judy Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the youngest of three daughters born to parents who were vaudeville performers and ran a movie theater. Imbued with her parents’ passion for song and dance, young Frances took the stage at the age of two and was quickly part of a family trio with her two older siblings called the Gumm Sisters. In 1934, when Frances was 12, they became the Garland Sisters, and a year later – Frances having adopted the name Judy Garland – they performed in Los Angeles where Judy was recognized as a talent scout and was successfully auditioned for MGM film studio. .
As MGM was deciding how best to adapt Judy Garland’s teenage talents, in 1936 she made her first recordings for Decca Records. Her third single, “(Dear Mr. Gable) You Made Me Love You” was an adaptation of Al Jolson’s 1913 song “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want To Do It)” and was sung for the first time by Garland at an MGM gave for the 36th birthday of movie star Clark Gable. The studio was so pleased with Garland’s performance as a loving movie fan that they made him sing the song in the movie, 1938 Broadway Melody. Even though she was only 15, Garland sang with a maturity and depth of expression beyond her young age. While the song helped Garland’s film career kick off, it also put it on the pop charts. But the song she became synonymous with followed two years later; that’s when she was chosen to play Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz and sang “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” the dreamy and upbeat ballad of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, which topped the US pop charts and also won the young singer an Academy Award.
Judy Garland in the 1940s
Other hit songs from Judy Garland films followed in the 1940s: there was the ballad “I’m Nobody’s Baby” (from the 1940s onwards). Andy Hardy meets the debutante, one of the many films in which Garland starred alongside Mickey Rooney); “For Me & My Gal,” a cheerful duet with Gene Kelly from the 1943 film of the same name; and the exuberant “The Trolley Song”, an American Top 20 hit from a 1944 Christmas-themed movie, Meet me in Saint-Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli, who became Garland’s second husband. The film also produced the very first recording of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, the classic Yuletide song by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine that Garland helped turn into a vivacious pop-jazz.
Garland reached America’s Top 20 in 1945 with the railroad-themed track, “On The Atchison, Topeka & The Santa Fe,” originally heard in the Hollywood musical. The Harvey Girls, where Garland played a mail-order bride. The single version she recorded for Decca framed Garland’s voice with luxurious work of close harmony from the Merry Macs.
Judy Garland’s Latest Musicals
In 1950, 28-year-old Judy Garland recorded another of her iconic songs in the form of the effervescent big band tune “Get Happy”, which exuded a pronounced revivalist flavor; it was the catchy finale of the film Summer stock, with Gene Kelly, about a theater company going down to a farm. Garland was not the first artist to record Harold Arlen-Ted Koehler’s evergreen aria, but she made it her own and subsequently became a staple in her concerts.
Summer stock marked a turning point in Garland’s career; after 27 films with MGM, she separated from the Hollywood studio. From there, she worked to develop her singing career, recording a series of singles for Columbia in the early 1950s. In 1954, however, she agreed to appear alongside British actor James Mason in the musical Warner Bros. A star is born, a remake of a previous film about a rising starlet helped by a declining idol. The film was a triumphant return for Garland who shone as he sang the episodic medley, “Born In A Trunk” – a living tale of his life as a performer – and “The Man That Got Away”, a torch song that embraced emotional desolation with a decidedly jazz flavor. Garland’s performance highlighted her maturity as a singer; she delivered the song as if she had lived its history and her contralto voice, with her lush velvet tone and wide, throbbing vibrato, possessed a deeper, darker luster.
Garland’s last film appearance, in the 1963 musical drama I can keep singing, found her in a role she could relate to; as a lonely singer struggling with personal issues. The film’s title song – written by Harld Arlen and Yip Harburg, who were the originators of “Over The Rainbow” – starts off slow before transforming into a rousing celebration of the song. With his mix of humor and pathos, it allows Garland to show the full range of his vocal abilities.
The years of the Capitol
Although her film career slowed down in the 1950s, Judy Garland’s music continued at a steady pace, first at Columbia, then with more success at Capitol where she recorded seven studio albums between 1955 and 1962. His debut for the company, arranged by Jack Cathcart, coincided with his first TV special and was aptly titled Miss Show Business. He found Garland pulling all the cylinders on the jaw-dropping numbers “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody” and “After You’ve Gone,” two staple numbers from the singer’s stage shows.
Garland brought in Frank Sinatra’s arranger Nelson Riddle for his second album Capitol in 1956 Judy; he framed Garland’s majestic voice with sophisticated, jazz-infused charts, especially on the Latin overture, a dynamic and fast-paced read of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Come Rain Or Come Shine”.
Riddle waved his orchestral magic wand again on the 1958 album, judy in love, which included big band swing versions of “Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart” – a revamp of the singer’s 1943 hit – and “I Concentrate On You,” where Garland’s voice soars majestically on a canvas of animated latino style background punctuated by howling horns.
Thanks to her vaudeville roots, Garland could easily serve up glitzy Hollywood razzmatazz, but it was on heartbreaking ballads – where she took a more subtle and nuanced approach – that she showed her soul. Dedicated to ballads of loss, grief and loneliness, his 1957 LP Alone included a beautiful bittersweet rendition of Irving Berlin’s “How About Me”.
Judy Garland’s electric live performances
Despite making many accomplished studio recordings, Judy Garland’s live albums provide a striking portrait of her electrifying theatrical presentation. His first live album, 1959’s Judy Garland at the Grove, was a strong representation of her show on stage – her version of “When You Smile” is particularly touching – but it was overshadowed by her most famous concert recording: the iconic Judy at Carnegie Hall, a 1962 double LP devoted to tunes from the Great American Songbook, which marked her second triumphant return and won the singer two Grammy Awards: for album of the year and best female solo vocal performance. Punctuating his sublime vocal performances with humorous anecdotes, Garland is in a bewitching form; the musical highlights range from “That’s Entertainment” with its thrilling energy and moving spiciness to the sweet ballad “Do It Again”, where Garland reveals his sensual side with a perfectly calibrated voice.
Although Judy Garland left the world at a relatively young age, the many memorable films and recordings she left behind have made her place in history and endowed her with immortality. These songs by Judy Garland not only reveal how much she put all her heart and soul into her performances, but also how she never tried to be anything other than her authentic self. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of someone else’s second-rate version,” Garland said. She stuck to this motto until the end.
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