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Music CD - Betty Carter: Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films
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Music CD: Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films
Artist: Betty Carter
List Price: $13.98
Our Price: $10.42
Your Save: $ 3.56 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: A&M
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Hi Diddle Dee Dee (An Actor's Life For Me)/Little April Shower... - Ken Nordine, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Natalie
2. Baby Mine - Bonnie Raitt & Was (Not Was)
3. Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song) - Tom Waits
4. Stay Awake/Little Wooden Head/Blue Shadows... - Suzanne Vega, Bill Firsell, Wayne Horvitz
5. Castle In Spain/I Wonder - Buster Poindexter & The Banchees Of Blue , YMA Sum
6. Mickey Mouse March - Aaron Neville
7. Feed The Birds/Whistle While You Work/I'm Wishing... - Garth Hudson, NRBQ, Betty Carter, The Replacements
8. Someday My Prince Will Come - Sinead O'Connor
9. Pink Elephants On Parade/Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah - Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Harry Nilsson
10. Second Star To The Right - James Taylor
11. Desolation Theme/When You Wish Upon A Star - Ken Nordine, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Ringo St
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0075021391826
Label: A&M
Manufacturer: A&M
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: A&M
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Studio: A&M
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the greats
Comment: This is an exceptional compilation. Not something I say lightly, I love compilations, but they have to have something special or else there is no reason to stray from the first recordings. I particularly love the renditions here of "Baby Mine" from Dumbo, and Tom Waits' "Hi Ho" is simply awesome.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not for children
Comment: This was produced by Hal Willner at A&M in 1989 when Willner was 31. Willner has also produced albums for Marianne Faithfull, Lou Reed, Bill Frisell, William S. Burroughs, Gavin Friday, Lucinda Williams and Allen Ginsberg, among others. So it should be no surprise that this album is an eclectic mix and highly theatrical in concept. Several reviewers have criticized the use of medleys, but a great many Disney songs have only one verse and a chorus, which makes it difficult to make a full length cut, hence the medleys. It's an album that has aged very well and bears many repeat listenings. Tom Waits, Harry Nilsson,Suzanne Vega, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Betty Carter,Sinead O'Connor, James Taylor, Yma Sumac, and narration by Ken Nordine. It sounds as though it should be a real mess, but Willner has put it together so it not only makes sense but is more than the sum of its parts.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not hte best cd to buy
Comment: I have bought several Disney cd's like this one and this is my least favorite. Some of the arrangements I feel could scare a young child, like Hey Diddley Dee. The one that I do enjoy is the title song...It is very much the mother's lullaby being sung acapello.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disney a wee bit on acid.
Comment: What an eclectic grouping of artists that came together to make this work. The absolute best Disney tribute CD that adults will probably enjoy more than the children. Sinead deliberatly sings an entire song off key until the last note and it's perfect. There are wonderfull songs that you would expect, but with Tom Waits in the mix you must expect some "oddness". Overall a great CD. 5 Stars easy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Alternating dark , melancholy and wistful, good but for grown-ups only
Comment: I found that listening to this work end to end is going to put you in some peculiar moods. The overall feeling is definitely downbeat, even the up-tempo songs have a decidedly ironic and dark bent. My favorite song in this album has to be the exceptionally soulful rendering of "Baby Mine" by Bonnie Raitt; it turns the sentimental mother-child ballad into something more on the romantic side. I have often slow-danced this one with the wife, and you can really feel a hot intensity under the surface of this number. James Taylor's "Second Star To The Right" is exceptionally wistful in his trademark style. Sun Ra's cover of "Pink Elephants" remains true to the original while retaining the peculiar spacy Sun-Ra vibe. One of the more "accessible" Sun-Ra performances I've ever heard.
Tom Waits and Ken Nordine are commanding presences as well. The Tom Waits version of "Hi-Ho" made my wife's imagination conjure nightmare images of murderous doings in Gacy's basement; it creeps her out so badly, she refuses to hear one note of it. I prefer to imagine the dwarves in manic, Fred C. Dobbs-like pursuit of their underground treasure, working too fast in a mine full of hazards and fearsome environments... with a workplace like that, it's no wonder they'd really appreciate a Snow White coming into their lives. Perfect music if you are on your way to a job you hate...
I agree the Sinead O'Connor piece (Someday My Prince Will Come) and Suzanne Vega "Stay Awake" tracks are here mostly for their postmodern ironic effect, and I find them hard to listen to with patience. In Sinead's case, the shock value of her performance of this particular song choice gets dulled over time as people forget who she is and why her singing this is supposed to be funny.
The Nordine pieces, which bookend the album, really demand good headphones for best appreciation, and reward repeated listening. Cruising thru quotes of ee cummings, with puzzling snatches of what seems to be an audio montage of soundtrack clips from old Disney park attractions, and other spooky imagery, he conjures up a tour thru a darkened, haunted vault of musty film cans and ragged posters, the perfect place for an adult to look back on childhood perceptions and potentials and compare his youthful fantasies with the cold realities and incomplete goals and disappointments of old age. Pretty heavy stuff. Yet it manages to finish, if not upbeat, still, with a sense that we still have time left to wring meaning from our pasts, and to put ourselves on a path to personal redemption.
The whole album leaves me with this kind of feeling, as if I have passed unscathed thru something more dark and dangerous than I really understood, and survived to come out into sunlight on the other side. Like the old "dark ride" rollercoaster attractions of Disney's park, you will want to experience the ordeal of getting scared and surviving it again and again.
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