Dave
Well-Known Member
OK, it was well-worth a drive down to Columbus, Ohio last Friday, to see what especially in this day 'n' age, truly was a once-in-a-lifetime event!
Aside from the shoddy sound system at ALADDIN SHRINE CENTER, which worked intermittently mostly at the beginning of the show, I had a really great time seeing The Lennon Sisters preform...
The show actually started at 2:30 that afternoon, about 10-minutes after I got there and quickly obtained a seat in the large venue...
And everybody was seated at tables, apparently having had a meal before the show, which was probably for the guests who made "reservations", as ticket prices via Ticketmaster ran $45 to I think $60, but me "going stag" got my seat at one table for $35, although I only had $34...
(And maybe that's why I didn't get a Program, although there weren't really enough to go around, but luckily someone at my table gave me hers...)
First up was some unknown male singer in a suit, whose name never got disclosed unless I really was too late getting my seat... But he sang "As Time Goes By" and then "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" before The Sisters took the stage...
Yes, what began as "4 young girls in Hollywood in 1955" developed and grew into a 50+year phenomenon....!
Here, in short, is their song list:
A Song For You (Although they limited themselves to the beginning of it, serving as an "intro" and never even later in the set gave us any "reprise"...)
Somewhere (From WEST SIDE STORY)
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
The girls introduce themselves as Kathy, Janet and Mimi, and although there were many incarnations of The Lennon Sisters as a four-piece and sometimes even a five piece group, particularly on THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW where they got their first break... So they now continue as a threesome...
Mississippi Mud
Ohio State Song? (They seemed to have bragged that Ohio was one of the most popular places they have done touring at and somehow there have always attracted the biggest audience...)
Tell Him (beginning with "I know something about love", written by Bert Berns) (A rock song, I've had by Linda Ronstadt, and Betty Wright (as a duet with blues/jazz crooner Freddie Henry, as "Tell Her", on the Clouds label, much like Bobby Caldwell) and there are decades of so many female singers (such as Dusty Springfield and Vonda Shepard) claim to singing the "original"...)
Wishin' & Hopin' --Yes the Burt Bacharach song, and in my opinion, so definitive... Also so much like Dusty Springfield's version that its only distinction is it being sung by THREE voices to distance it from the original! "Par Excellence...!"
And the Burt Bacharach kick concludes with: Anyone Who Had A Heart
Nobody Knows
Motherless Child
Videos were then shown of The Lennnon Sisters throughout the lives of their career (on which they were forced to add their "own voices" to the singing parts, as the poor sound system in the theater kept going out-of-whack, at which it all-of-a sudden, let out with a bang of explosive static, scaring the poor Lennon Sisters and sending the girls running from the front of the stage)...
After which they break into a "Rosemary Clooney tribute":
Love Has Made A Fool Of You (think that's the title)
Come On Over'a My House (and I believe Herbie Mann had a version destined for his A&M/CTi album, Glory Of Love, which is still unreleased to this day...)
Tenderly
Sisters (?)
Which kept us thoroughly entertained for an hour and after a half-hour intermission, we were treated to another hour of:
Jump, Jive & Wail
Danny Boy
Sugartime (which could also be called "Honeytime", too)
Old Cape Cod
All That Jazz/Side By Side, these two done with their three granddaughters...
The Sisters then introduce the granddaughters, Leah (age 9), Anna (age 7) and Dana (age 5)--though I may have heard her name wrong... And as the youngest and quite performance shy, she helped conduct the orchestra while the other two sang before she became brave enough to join them at the end of their "mini set"...
Best Pals
Leah's Lullabye: "Go To Sleep My Little One"
My Very Best Pals Song (for the rag dolls The Sisters created and brought with them on their tours when they were little girls (bringing along "a pieice of home" with them), now marketed by them as a line of children's goods)
Videos:
One from 1960: "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?", on which as a family of eight children, had a brother, who sang the lead and seemed to have stolen a lot attention in their appearances on THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW...
A LIFE Magazine cover from 1962
A MAYTAG Washer or maybe it was Washer and Dryer ad, on which the entire sisters are lined front-to-back by height, in Herb Alpert/TjB SRO fashion, and--Bummer, the appliance(s) wasn't/weren't shown!!!!!!
Joe, Pat & Bill (actually the three "Lennon Brothers") and baby sister Annie
Back to more songs:
Christmas Medley, although "Jingle Bells" and "a familiar one", which I believe I recognized a lot more as an instrumental on the Herb Alpert/TjB Christmas Album ("Winter Wonderland", perhaps--it does sound like the kick-off track, although no mention of "building a snowman in the meadow, by the name of Parson Brown"...)...
It's The Holiday Season
Encore:
An American Trilogy (written and recorded by Mickey Newbury and its best rendition is by none-other-than Elvis...)
May Good Fortune
And the real highlight of course, was the band director being vocalist for The Ray Conniff Singers, The Alan Copeland Singers, The Partridge Family (doing the family with brother Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin and Jackie Ward) The California Dreamers (backing Gabor Szabo on Wind, Sky & Diamonds (which I had) and Tom Scott on Honeysuckle Breeze which I never even knew about) and of course his own Love Generation in the '60's, which coincided with the ad for Ford Motor Co. as "The Going Thing", John Bahler... (Talk about "Two For The Price Of One", to quote Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, there!)
Yes, I lost my place in line--first by not knowing where the line formed, second for thinking I could catch him on the stage, running into the theater and seeing the stage crew dismanling everything and one member upon my request to "meet John Bahler" telling me he'd be up front with The Sisters signing autographs... Not believing him at first, I think I ran to the stage door in the back of the venue, the experience being more like here in Michigan, than in Knoxville, Tennessee... So I waited in line again, just to see him appear right there in the lobby! "Hey, you're John Bahler!", I cried out, and only a couple other people mingled with him, one nice enough to take a couple pictures...
Well, yes, admittedly John was the reason I came, having heard he was Janet's husband and yes, was also band director for them,having retired from singing and residing in the Branson, MO-area running his own photography studio and co-operating the LAWRENCE WELK CHAMPAGNE THEATER...
So there were much stories to tell about what I owned, including my '45' of him singing "Love Looks So Good On You" and "Donna Lee" and which ever of his former stint as a singer I could coax out, which were Ray Conniff and The Partridge Family...
His brother Tom is still in L.A. and is actually writing a novel based on a play (Yeh, I really plum forgot the name of it!) which he hopes will become a Musical (which as a Musical had been done before, but a failure, so he wants to try it again, after making it a book)
And of course, the death of Michael Jackson really took up most of the conversation... John and Michael were very close and Michael would often call John from the road and a few other stories to which I mentioned that "he must'a been like a father to him",to which in turn, Mr. Bahler admitted that "he was a father to him"... So I never got to ask how many kids John actually had (aside from the two he had with Janet, and the granddaughters being his and having a grandson that he is seen posing with Online) but at least managed to show him the couple pic's of my wife Alissa and I, which I carry with me on my keychain and in my wallet...
And with my camera phone got someone to take a couple shots of both of us (yeh, replacing my "Bad Ass Picture" I have on my phone and to my mom's disgust, begging me to take it off, on my Facebook and MySpace)...!
Glad I made it there easily and aside from getting lost and misdirected and ending up in downtown Detroit (yeh, Dave, make sure you print MapQuest directions for the trip back!) I got back home, safe!
Dave
Aside from the shoddy sound system at ALADDIN SHRINE CENTER, which worked intermittently mostly at the beginning of the show, I had a really great time seeing The Lennon Sisters preform...
The show actually started at 2:30 that afternoon, about 10-minutes after I got there and quickly obtained a seat in the large venue...
And everybody was seated at tables, apparently having had a meal before the show, which was probably for the guests who made "reservations", as ticket prices via Ticketmaster ran $45 to I think $60, but me "going stag" got my seat at one table for $35, although I only had $34...
(And maybe that's why I didn't get a Program, although there weren't really enough to go around, but luckily someone at my table gave me hers...)
First up was some unknown male singer in a suit, whose name never got disclosed unless I really was too late getting my seat... But he sang "As Time Goes By" and then "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" before The Sisters took the stage...
Yes, what began as "4 young girls in Hollywood in 1955" developed and grew into a 50+year phenomenon....!
Here, in short, is their song list:
A Song For You (Although they limited themselves to the beginning of it, serving as an "intro" and never even later in the set gave us any "reprise"...)
Somewhere (From WEST SIDE STORY)
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
The girls introduce themselves as Kathy, Janet and Mimi, and although there were many incarnations of The Lennon Sisters as a four-piece and sometimes even a five piece group, particularly on THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW where they got their first break... So they now continue as a threesome...
Mississippi Mud
Ohio State Song? (They seemed to have bragged that Ohio was one of the most popular places they have done touring at and somehow there have always attracted the biggest audience...)
Tell Him (beginning with "I know something about love", written by Bert Berns) (A rock song, I've had by Linda Ronstadt, and Betty Wright (as a duet with blues/jazz crooner Freddie Henry, as "Tell Her", on the Clouds label, much like Bobby Caldwell) and there are decades of so many female singers (such as Dusty Springfield and Vonda Shepard) claim to singing the "original"...)
Wishin' & Hopin' --Yes the Burt Bacharach song, and in my opinion, so definitive... Also so much like Dusty Springfield's version that its only distinction is it being sung by THREE voices to distance it from the original! "Par Excellence...!"
And the Burt Bacharach kick concludes with: Anyone Who Had A Heart
Nobody Knows
Motherless Child
Videos were then shown of The Lennnon Sisters throughout the lives of their career (on which they were forced to add their "own voices" to the singing parts, as the poor sound system in the theater kept going out-of-whack, at which it all-of-a sudden, let out with a bang of explosive static, scaring the poor Lennon Sisters and sending the girls running from the front of the stage)...
After which they break into a "Rosemary Clooney tribute":
Love Has Made A Fool Of You (think that's the title)
Come On Over'a My House (and I believe Herbie Mann had a version destined for his A&M/CTi album, Glory Of Love, which is still unreleased to this day...)
Tenderly
Sisters (?)
Which kept us thoroughly entertained for an hour and after a half-hour intermission, we were treated to another hour of:
Jump, Jive & Wail
Danny Boy
Sugartime (which could also be called "Honeytime", too)
Old Cape Cod
All That Jazz/Side By Side, these two done with their three granddaughters...
The Sisters then introduce the granddaughters, Leah (age 9), Anna (age 7) and Dana (age 5)--though I may have heard her name wrong... And as the youngest and quite performance shy, she helped conduct the orchestra while the other two sang before she became brave enough to join them at the end of their "mini set"...
Best Pals
Leah's Lullabye: "Go To Sleep My Little One"
My Very Best Pals Song (for the rag dolls The Sisters created and brought with them on their tours when they were little girls (bringing along "a pieice of home" with them), now marketed by them as a line of children's goods)
Videos:
One from 1960: "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?", on which as a family of eight children, had a brother, who sang the lead and seemed to have stolen a lot attention in their appearances on THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW...
A LIFE Magazine cover from 1962
A MAYTAG Washer or maybe it was Washer and Dryer ad, on which the entire sisters are lined front-to-back by height, in Herb Alpert/TjB SRO fashion, and--Bummer, the appliance(s) wasn't/weren't shown!!!!!!
Joe, Pat & Bill (actually the three "Lennon Brothers") and baby sister Annie
Back to more songs:
Christmas Medley, although "Jingle Bells" and "a familiar one", which I believe I recognized a lot more as an instrumental on the Herb Alpert/TjB Christmas Album ("Winter Wonderland", perhaps--it does sound like the kick-off track, although no mention of "building a snowman in the meadow, by the name of Parson Brown"...)...
It's The Holiday Season
Encore:
An American Trilogy (written and recorded by Mickey Newbury and its best rendition is by none-other-than Elvis...)
May Good Fortune
And the real highlight of course, was the band director being vocalist for The Ray Conniff Singers, The Alan Copeland Singers, The Partridge Family (doing the family with brother Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin and Jackie Ward) The California Dreamers (backing Gabor Szabo on Wind, Sky & Diamonds (which I had) and Tom Scott on Honeysuckle Breeze which I never even knew about) and of course his own Love Generation in the '60's, which coincided with the ad for Ford Motor Co. as "The Going Thing", John Bahler... (Talk about "Two For The Price Of One", to quote Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, there!)
Yes, I lost my place in line--first by not knowing where the line formed, second for thinking I could catch him on the stage, running into the theater and seeing the stage crew dismanling everything and one member upon my request to "meet John Bahler" telling me he'd be up front with The Sisters signing autographs... Not believing him at first, I think I ran to the stage door in the back of the venue, the experience being more like here in Michigan, than in Knoxville, Tennessee... So I waited in line again, just to see him appear right there in the lobby! "Hey, you're John Bahler!", I cried out, and only a couple other people mingled with him, one nice enough to take a couple pictures...
Well, yes, admittedly John was the reason I came, having heard he was Janet's husband and yes, was also band director for them,having retired from singing and residing in the Branson, MO-area running his own photography studio and co-operating the LAWRENCE WELK CHAMPAGNE THEATER...
So there were much stories to tell about what I owned, including my '45' of him singing "Love Looks So Good On You" and "Donna Lee" and which ever of his former stint as a singer I could coax out, which were Ray Conniff and The Partridge Family...
His brother Tom is still in L.A. and is actually writing a novel based on a play (Yeh, I really plum forgot the name of it!) which he hopes will become a Musical (which as a Musical had been done before, but a failure, so he wants to try it again, after making it a book)
And of course, the death of Michael Jackson really took up most of the conversation... John and Michael were very close and Michael would often call John from the road and a few other stories to which I mentioned that "he must'a been like a father to him",to which in turn, Mr. Bahler admitted that "he was a father to him"... So I never got to ask how many kids John actually had (aside from the two he had with Janet, and the granddaughters being his and having a grandson that he is seen posing with Online) but at least managed to show him the couple pic's of my wife Alissa and I, which I carry with me on my keychain and in my wallet...
And with my camera phone got someone to take a couple shots of both of us (yeh, replacing my "Bad Ass Picture" I have on my phone and to my mom's disgust, begging me to take it off, on my Facebook and MySpace)...!
Glad I made it there easily and aside from getting lost and misdirected and ending up in downtown Detroit (yeh, Dave, make sure you print MapQuest directions for the trip back!) I got back home, safe!
Dave
