WALTER WILLISON sings "AMSTERDAM" by Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman & Eric Blau

Walter Willison, sings Jacques Brel's classic "Amsterdam" from a 1992 regional revival of the 1968 musical "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," with lyrics skillfully translated from Brel's original French by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman. Jacques Brel, one of the major singer/songwriters of the 20th Century, wrote dark, honest and edgy songs that the common man could relate to, the audiences he played to in the French provinces on tour for the better part of each year during the 1950s and 60s, and "Amsterdam" is one of his most popular, recorded by a vast array of artists over the years, including American expatriate Scott Walker and David Bowie. Eric Blau has written: Not infrequently, someone will say that Brel writes protest songs. This drives him up walls. He doesn't write protest songs, but those who protest may find anthems in the Brel works. And it is also true that Brel cannot help writing songs that protest loudly. But this is the awful cry of a man in pain, not the small beep of a tune directed against an immediate set of inequities. The protest song, in a partisan way, pricks. A Brel song, in a non-partisan way, explodes. Brel offers everyone only one choice: to reclaim his own humanity. When Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris opened Off-Broadway on January 22, 1968, John S. Wilson wrote of Brel's songs in The New York Times: "They are to American popular songs as War and Peace is to Mr. Roberts." Robert Mayer of Newsday enthused, "Brel has captured it all. He is the journalist of the human heart. No, the historian of the human heart." Harvey Perr of the Los Angeles Free Press wrote, "Brel's bitter lyricism contains the seeds of revolution," and Clive Barnes praised Brel's translators in The New York Times, writing "It is the success of Blau and Shuman that they have captured an authentic, vivid, and impassioned poetry int their version of the lyrics." The Belgian born singer-songwriter-actor and director died at the age of 49 on October 9, 1978. His songs have been performed and recorded by an amazingly broad array of pop, rock, jazz and country artist, including the Alex Harvey Band [which titled an album after Next [Au Suivant] in 1973, Rod McKuen [his first US translator], Karen Akers, Joan Baez, Shirley Bassey, David Bowie, Lana Cantrell, Judy Collins, Neil Diamond, Julio Iglesias, Jack Jones, The Kingston Trio, Cyndi Lauper, Brenda Lee, Ute Lemper, Vera Lynn, Ronnie Milsap, Olivia Newton-John, Freda Payne, Frank Sinatra, Dusty Springfield, Bobby Vinton, Scott Walker, Dionne Warwick, Andy Williams, Nancy Wilson, and most recently Barbra Streisand, to name just a few. Jacques Brel, himself, has sold over 25 million records worldwide, including over 12 million albums and singles in France and Belgium. Walter Willison has starred on Broadway in Richard Rodgers, Martin Charnin & Peter Stone's "Two By Two," for which he received a Tony Award nomination and Theatre World Award, "Grand Hotel," "Pippin," "Norman, Is That You?," "Wild and Wonderful," Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Schwartz' "Mass" at The Kennedy Center, "A Christmas Carol" at Madison Square Garden, and in the title role of Wright & Forrest's "Kean," Off-Broadway.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Walter Willison
• Amsterdam
• Tony Award
• Theatre World Award
• Broadway Musicals
• Off-Broadway Musicals
• Jacques Brel
• Eric Blau
• Mort Shuman
• Two By Two
• French
• protest
• gay interest
• protest songs
• sailors
• prostitutes
• sea shanty