She wanted Pablo Casals, Yehudi Menuhin and James Galway. She got kitchen utensils, a sitar-flavoured Gershwin tune and a monologue about a television special. Barbra Streisand, the singer whose name already meant Broadway and Hollywood glamour, released her fourteenth studio album on November 2, 1973, and it was unlike anything she had ever put on vinyl.
From TV special to world music
The record was called Barbra Streisand... and Other Musical Instruments, and it grew out of a television special that same year. Streisand had a simple wish: perform with musicians she considered the best in the world. The network CBS had a different idea and suggested she sing music from various countries instead. The compromise produced an album built on world music with African, Japanese and Spanish influences.
From the list of possible collaborators, Streisand chose Ray Charles. The recording sessions took place in London, and Martin Erlichman, Streisand's manager, produced the album, and arrangers Ken Welch and Mitzi Welch shaped melodies and rhythms using unusual objects, including kitchen utensils. Most of the songs were cover versions, and Streisand also re-recorded several tracks from her early albums, giving them distorted rhythms and melodies.
Ragas, sambas and a monologue
The album opens with 'Piano Practicing', an adaptation of a classical piece by Paradies. Then comes a raga version of 'I Got Rhythm' by George and Ira Gershwin, followed by a samba medley of 'Johnny One Note' and 'One Note Samba'. A new version of her own hit 'People' carries Turkish and Armenian musical influences, and a spoken track called 'Monologue' includes dialogue lifted straight from the TV special. The album also includes Franz Schubert's 'Auf dem Wasser zu singen' and closes with 'The Sweetest Sounds', backed by an angelic choir. 'I Never Has Seen Snow' was written by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote.
Critics did not know what to make of it. A Billboard reviewer praised Streisand's voice and called 'Glad to Be Unhappy' one of the best ballads of her career. William Ruhlmann of AllMusic was less kind, calling the album 'more gimmicky than inventive' and a 'forgettable misfire'. The mixed reception matched the numbers: the album debuted at 146 on the Billboard 200, eventually climbing only to 64 and spending sixteen weeks on the chart. Jim Farber of Entertainment Weekly was even harsher, giving the album a 'D' grade.
William Ruhlmann of AllMusic was less kind, calling the album 'more gimmicky than inventive' and a 'forgettable misfire'.
That made Barbra Streisand... and Other Musical Instruments her lowest-selling studio album on Columbia Records. Promotional materials had called it 'the most special Barbra on record', but the public heard something closer to a curiosity. The album was one of only four Streisand studio records never to receive an RIAA certification, sitting at 80 in Canada's RPM chart. The album was reissued on CD on October 24, 1989, and the full television special appeared on DVD on August 29, 2006, through Rhino Entertainment. That DVD included songs left off the original record, such as 'Crying Time', which Streisand had recorded as a duet with Ray Charles. The duet with Ray Charles was left off the original album, but a reworked version later appeared on Streisand's 1974 album ButterFly. The original record runs 34 minutes.
Streisand had set out to sing with classical masters, then accepted a global-music detour, and the result was a record that split her audience. It was ambitious, playful and fragmented, an experiment in sounds most pop fans did not ask for. The title said it all: Barbra Streisand... and Other Musical Instruments,