Release Me (2012)

For the first time Barbra Streisand curated a release of her previously unreleased material. In her long career, Barbra had accumulated over 100 previously unreleased recordings. She and Jay Landers painstakingly reviewed those recordings to come up with this collection — Release Me.

Landers told All About Barbra magazine, “For at least two months, every other day, I went to this vault to unearth the gems which Barbra had either recalled from her various lists, or to find something that I'd heard about but never actually heard.”

The vault Jay Landers speaks of is located at Iron Mountain in Germantown, New York. Landers wrote in his liner notes for the album that upon entering “the first thing you’ll notice are the floor-to-ceiling shelves with tape boxes from every era of her recording career – People, Color Me Barbra, A Star Is Born, The Bon Soir, Daniel Ellsberg Fundraiser, Judy Garland Show, The Hungry-I, McGovern Concert, Guilty, Yentl…on and on…”

Jay likened the gathering of Streisand's unreleased material to Indiana Jones searching for the lost ark. “On more than a few occastions, I'd find myself standing on the uppermost rung of a ladder with a heavy tape box in one hand and my cell phone in the other, talking with Barbra aficionado Matt Howe.  Matt would try to help me identify certain mislabelled titles ... or remind me if there were multiple unreleased versions of the same title ... then he'd help me figure out which one I was barely holding onto at the moment!”

(Note: I can tell you, taking one of Jay's calls was exhilarating! “You're in THE VAULT now?!” One particular call I remember was about “Didn't We.” Jay was searching for the song, and I reminded him it was recorded for an abandoned album called The Singer, so probably around 1970.  — Matt Howe)

After Jay Landers collected the material, he and Barbra sat together in Grandma's House (on her Malibu property) and reviewed it one night until late. “To my delight,” Landers wrote, “the epiphany occured when she realized there was actually something rather perfect about the so-called imperfections of these tracks.”

Landers also confessed, “I actually felt that in several instances these ‘castaway’ songs were better than some of the cuts which had made their way onto the final albums!”

The Larry Gatlin song, “Try To Win A Friend,” was recorded April 1977 for the Superman album (1978) but put aside for over thirty years until Barbra included it on Release Me (2012).

(Photo: Larry Gatlin said hello to Barbra Streisand back stage during her 2012 concert tour.)

“Many years ago,” Larry Gatlin said, “Roger Miller took me over to a ladies’ house. When we got over there she was sitting in her living room playing a guitar and trying to learn how to play one of my songs that she wanted to record. She recorded the song.  She was so sweet that night, I taught her the song.”

For Release Me, Barbra and Jay Landers sent the master recording to Nashville producer Fred Mollin who added John Hobbs on pedal steel guitar, Paul Franklin on piano, and Jaime Babbitt providing background vocals.

Composer Brian Byrne told The Irish Times how he came to work with Barbra Streisand on “If It's Meant To Be”—the newest song on this collection of unreleased material.

“I was 26, living in the Meath Gaeltacht,” he explained, “and met a guy living nearby – Tom Petty’s road manager – who offered to help me when I told him I was an aspiring film composer. He put me in touch with a man in the music business in LA who said ‘I can help you if you move here’. So I sold my car and went. Within the first couple of months, this man introduced me to Marilyn and Alan Bergman, who are U.S. songwriting royalty – they were like my grandparents, took me under their wing. That’s how a melody I wrote, with lyrics by the Bergmans – If It’s Meant to Be – ended up on Barbra Streisand’s recent album, Release Me. I recorded it live with her, conducted the orchestra. This was happening in the same three weeks as I was working on [the film soundtrack to] Albert Nobbs and the song ‘Lay Your Head Down’, and doing arrangements for Katy Perry. Glenn Close and Streisand have really opened doors for me.”

Streisand said that she only had ten minutes of studio time to record Byrne's song. “I had to change some of the orchestration at the moment ... it was panic time. But I liked it. It was left off of What Matters Most because we had enough. And I thought it would be interesting for people to hear something that was left off in 2011 since everything else [on Release Me] is so much older. ‘If It's Meant to Be’ sounds like it comes from a stage play. I can feel the theatricality in it. It would be very good in a musical on stage.”

“We recorded the orchestra and we sent the orchestra home,” Brian Byrne told RTÉ TEN. “And as an option I worked with her for three hours on the piano.”

Below:  Columbia Records produced a Lyric Video of the song “I Think It's Going To Rain Today” to promote the album. More info on the video’s production — click here.