Bette Midler Divine Miss M CD

Personnel includes: Bette Midler (vocals); David Spinozza (guitar); Gene Orloff, Emmanuel Green (violin); Selwart Clarke (viola); Kermit Moore (cello); Barry Manilow, Pat Rebillot, Dick Hyman (piano); Ron Carter, Milt Hinton (bass); Ralph MacDonald (drums, percussion); Cissy Houston, Melissa Manchester, Gail Kantor (background vocals).
Producers: Barry Manilow, Art Ertegun, Joel Dorn.
Recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, New York.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Bette Midler's debut album displays how raw her talent was at the beginning of her career, a coarseness that has been lost as she's honed her persona into something brassier. Not that brassy's bad; she's just matured as a performer. But listen to this, then throw in 1990's fine Some People's Lives to see how she shines with both voices. On The Divine Miss M, the atmosphere is so intimate it's like she and the band are right in front of you, so when she turns "Superstar" into a quiet portrait of stunned heartbreak it's almost uncomfortable to bear witness to her breakdown. And when she and her backup singers turn in superior versions of "Chapel of Love" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," it's like having a front row seat to a girl-group concert. By turns bawdy and melancholy (and in an anguished "Delta Dawn," she pulls off both in the same song), this is a superstar at her finest. Every cut's a gem. Few contemporary vocalists can pull off the bleakness of "Hello in There" or the forlornness of "Am I Blue?" with such genuine shades of feeling. Perhaps because she is an accomplished actress as well, Midler's emotions always ring true. Though her talent hasn't wavered in the years since this debut, few of the collections that followed have been as consistent, revealing, or of such high quality. ~ Bryan Buss
Years of acting in comedies and performing Las Vegas revues have clouded public perception of Bette Midler; people tend to forget now just how completely weird she was in 1972, how she skirted on the edges of taboo. Absurdly sexy, defiantly trashy, and unafraid of crossing musical boundaries whenever she felt like it, the Bette Midler of her debut, THE DIVINE MISS M, is someone truly remarkable. That this sense of adventurousness was eventually replaced by more mainstream aspirations is somewhat of a shame, but at least for this album, something truly new was happening.
The record starts with a sultry, sexy re-imagination of Bobby Freeman's "Do You Want to Dance?" as a more carnal invitation than the dance-party original, and moves through similar re-workings of Leon Russell's groupie anthem "Superstar," John Prine's stark "Hello in There" and, most famously, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." The album's emotional center, however, is the bittersweet, Buzzy Linhart-penned "Friends," which opens and closes what was Side Two of the original LP, and became Midler's signature tune.