Karen Oberlin performs Over the Rainbow: The Songs of Arlen and Harburg at the Crazy Coqs, London
Karen Oberlin performs Over the Rainbow: The Songs of Arlen and Harburg at the Crazy Coqs, London.
The husky, smoky, smooth, sophisticated, classical voice of glamorous New Yorker Karen Oberlin is one of the glories of the world of cabaret and on her second visit to the Crazy Coqs she took us through the distinguished catalogue of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.
It hardly seems a year since she was in London, giving us the Doris Day story, but what a year it has been. Only last month she was honoured with the Donald F Smith award at the New York Cabaret Convention for her passionate commitment to the Great American Songbook, an award she received from her great friend and Crazy Coqs mastermind Ruth Leon.
Looking a million dollars in a full-length black dress, Oberlin particularly shone in silky treatments of ‘Last Night When We Were Young’, the 1935 standard much loved by Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra and which, she told us, was Arlen’s favourite, and the soulful ‘Happiness is a Thing Called Joe’, first sung by Ethel Waters in the first full Afro-American film musical Cabin in the Sky in 1943.
Yip (short for Yipsel) made a fortune from his electrical business and lost it in the Great Depression before becoming a full-time lyricist, so his ‘Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?’ came from the heart. It was “a song that defined the moment, the song of the common man”, Oberlin told us. Expertly accompanied by the excellent Nathan Martin, she went on to move a respectful audience with a heartfelt version of the 1930 anthem to the shattered dreams of that era.
Arlen and Harburg’s most famous collaboration, of course, was The Wizard of Oz, hence the title of her show. Equally at home on Broadway or Hollywood, their ‘Over The Rainbow’ was voted the No. 1 song of the 20th century and typical of the songs of hopes and dreams for which the collaborators were renowned. The Oberlin version even included a verse that ended up on the movie’s cutting-room floor.
In what was a serious evening chiefly for connoisseurs of the genre, there was only the occasional light-hearted number like ‘Lydia, The Tattooed Lady’, written for Groucho Marx in the 1939 comedy At the Circus, but Oberlin’s efforts at some British topicality in alternative last verses didn’t really work and, unusually for an American, her linking material lacked the sparkle of her singing.
Ultimately it is the warmth of that honeyed voice and her musical intelligence which set Oberlin above the crowd. She is an educator as much as an entertainer and will always be a most welcome visitor.
Jeremy Chapman
www.brasseriezedel.com/crazy-coqs
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Steve Ross – Ridin’ High – Crazy Coqs
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