Barbra Streisand ‘Live at the Bon Soir’ Album Review Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. × Search search POPULAR SEARCHES SUGGESTED LINKS Join AARP for just $9 per year when you sign up for a 5-year term. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Leaving AARP.org Website You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP. A different privacy policy and terms of service will apply. Close
Streisand s 1962 Debut Album Is Released at Last — and It s Gorgeous
The long-lost Live at the Bon Soir is a masterpiece and a revelation
Barbra Streisand performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in New York on Dec. 12, 1962. CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. So the tapes were shelved, and she instead debuted with a studio recording that made history. Yet a legend built up around the lost Bon Soir recording — it became a Streisand fan’s answer to the lost Ark of the Covenant. Now that ’62 treasure has finally been given new life, thanks to advances in sound technology. Her newest, oldest album, Live at the Bon Soir, shows a side of the singer found nowhere else in her vast catalog. The album cover for "Live at the Bon Soir." Columbia Records The album captures Streisand at her most raw, pure and fresh, with a you-are-there excitement. Four instruments (guitar, drum, piano and bass) lend only the subtlest support. No more was needed, given the scope of her voice and the variety of its colors. In any song, Streisand could shade a note with the greatest delicacy or belt it with a herculean strength. What a treat to hear what she could do shorn of the more elaborate (and brilliant) arrangements found on her early studio recordings. The Bon Soir versions allow us to more fully concentrate on both her instrument and her savvy choices for deploying it. The particular way she chose to sing in this seminal phase of her career — 1962 through 1968 — differs significantly from the way she most often sang afterward. She was wilder in this era, racing fitfully from the bottom of her range to the top, and from the quietest whispers to the greatest crescendos. This is Streisand at her most radical, unusual — and, in a sense, Streisandian. Entertainment Access curated AARP entertainment articles, essays, videos, films and more See more Entertainment offers > Many songs from the Bon Soir set ended up on her studio debut, including a very sensual take on “A Taste of Honey,” a ballad the Beatles also released, one month later. It’s incredible to think that Streisand could fully compete on the charts with new rock stars like the Fab Four while performing such vintage material, and in such an eccentric way. Asked recently if she believes the live Bon Soir album would have been as commercially successful as her studio debut had it come out first, Streisand replied, “Probably not.” Certainly, it would have deserved to be. Either way, listening to Live at the Bon Soir restores a seminal part of the Streisand story, one that’s still unfolding six decades later. Hear it: Jim Farber is a contributing writer who was the New York Daily News music critic for 25 years. He writes for AARP, The New York Times and The Guardian, and twice won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award for America’s best music writing. MORE FROM AARP AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe AARP VALUE & MEMBER BENEFITS See more Restaurants offers > See more Travel Planning offers > See more Flowers & Gifts offers > See more Groceries offers > SAVE MONEY WITH THESE LIMITED-TIME OFFERS