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What are some of your favorite LIVE - not lip-synched or pre-recorded - performances that you can share with us via video? They may be from back in the day, or perhaps more recent (as shows such as TJ Lubinsky's PBS Doo Wop series have extended the careers of many 50s, 60s and early 70s artists).
Here are a few of mine:
Cilla Black - Alfie (live recording session)
I love this video because it takes us back to a time when recording was a live performance, not a bunch of pre-recorded segments and vocal overlays constructed in a studio. The orchestra, backup singers, and musical director Burt Bacharach all work together to turn out this amazing performance. You can feel the intensity of Bacharach as he guides and shapes the session. as well as experience Cilla putting everything she can into her vocals. Bacharach, ever the perfectionist, demanded 29 takes. Cilla said. "It was ever so difficult. The range in it was unbelievably hard. It was hurting me".
Jerry Butler and Betty Everet - Let It Be Me (from one of the first PBS Doo Wop shows)
The backstory to this video contributes to making this such a special performance. Apparently Lubinsky had been trying for a long time to get Everet to be one of the performers on his second Doo Wop program, but she had retired and was having major health issues. Finally, with Jerry Butler supplying some encouragement, she reluctantly agreed to perform. If you watch this touching video carefully, you see how nervous she was, but also how supportive Butler is, holding her hand and seemingly singing directly to her. At the end, she gives him a gentle nudge, as if to say, "We did it!"
Betty Everet died a few months after this performance.