"Liza With A 'Z'" is a multi-media production that has been showered with superlatives. It won numerous awards, including those for Choreography and Direction. However, a further award for the music composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb is probably the main reason for the show being released on a record, i.e. just for the ears. But the plan bore fruit, and the LP rocketed onto the Billboard 200. It was to be Liza Minnelli’s best chart hit ever – and it could even be called the soundtrack of her life.
Great favourites such as "Ring Them Bells" and "Bye Bye Blackbird" are set alongside sharp rhythm and blues numbers ("Son Of A Preacher Man", "I Gotcha"). Taking centre stage is a 10-minute medley from the film adaptation of the musical "Cabaret" that was shown in the cinemas also in 1972 and which brought Minnelli her international breakthrough.
All that remains of this costly and glamorous television event, which was only broadcast a few times on US television after the premiere, is the original music on record. Here it is once again in all its glory and with a new freshness.
Recording: 1972 at Lyceum Theater, New York, by Phil Ramone & Arthur Kendy
Production: Andrew Kazdin
About Speakers Corner
At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.
During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s – or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.
A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.
We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky“), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.
We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.
To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects – excluding the exception above – and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.
1. Yes
2. God Bless the Child
3. Say Liza (Liza With a “Z”)
4. It Was a Good Time
5. I Gotcha
6. Ring Them Bells
7. Son of a Preacher Man
8. Bye Bye Blackbird
9. You’ve Let Yourself Go
10. My Mammy
11. Medley of Tunes from “Cabaret”
12. Bows (Liza)