Laurence Tibbett - On the Road to Mandalay

The iconic version, have you ever heard more gusto?

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Laurence
• Tibbett
• On
• the
• Road
• to
• Mandalay

[vonmeppen]

"lawrence"

[MusashiTzu]

thanks for the correction! My bad:)

[PantaChorei]

Probably the best bass-baritone ever to have lived. He was also a very good actor. Too bad the booze got to him...

[MusashiTzu]

Oh, I didnt know that, I have never read a biography. Thats really tragic!

[sverigregrabb]

NO ONE, past or present, could do this as well! Also--even though he didn't need to in that era--his adoption of a more-or-less cockney accent was totally in character. Isn't it incredible that 70 years later, his voice can still thrill us so?

[oakroom48]

Thank you so much for this (: Definitely the iconic version!!

[MegaGrandsire]

The singing is wonderful, but ruined by the pronunciation he adopts: "Manderlie" is bad enough, but the flying fishes "plying" is even worse!

[ChristopherSyn1]

Well, he was an outstanding opera singer, probably the best in America in this range. See "Wanting You" with Grace Moore.

[johnster1964]

It's well worth listening to the Peter Dawson version. Unfortunately Tibbetts doesn't pronounce Mandalay (-lay as in "lay" down to sleep nit "lie") - that rather spoils it for me along with his "mockney" accent (think Dick Van Dyke cor blimey mary Poppins)

[bobhirsch1]

Did I hear Lawrence Tibbett sing "Mandalay" in a movie about 1939-40. Nobody does it better and 70 years have passed and I seem to remember it. Many thanks.

hirs8320

[michaelwright999]

GREAT MUSIC, SUCH FEELING Ohhh.

[librarybob1958]

@MusashiTzu "Dear Rogue" by Hertzel Weinstat is probably the definitive biography of Tibbett, and it's pretty warts and all. The last decade of his life, he was basically a boozy wreck, and died in 1960, at the age of 63, of a drunken fall in his New York home.

Still, at his best, there were few who could touch him.

[EarthaKit2]

I've always loved this song. It absolutely thrilled me when I came here as a child.

The first time heard it was in a tv movie, wehre Don Ameche sang it.

He had a fine baritone. Ameche also sang in other movies: "Ramona" and "The Three Musketeers."

[Agorante]

This version is so much livelier than the Leonard Warren whitebread version. Warren gives us smooth vocalism but Tibbett tells the story in the poem.

"Heathen idol made of mud, what they call the Great God Budd" - that's Buddah he's referring to. None of your simpering sympathy for native cultures here. Just good old British Imperialism with all it's self confidence and swagger.

Ah, the bad old days!