San Jose Civic Auditorium 1963

Streisand / LIVE 

San Jose Civic Auditorium (1963)

San Jose, California

December 4, 1963
When Barbra Streisand performed a series of one-night concerts in December 1963 to promote The Second Barbra Streisand Album, Marty Erlichman worked with West Coast jazz promoter Irving Granz. Granz was the brother of Jazz at the Philharmonic’s Norman Granz.

The music for the four shows (San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) was under the direction of Barbra’s pianist Peter Daniels but utilized the Jerry Gray orchestra. Jerry Gray arranged and played with the bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. Gray and his orchestra was used to accompanying singers – they played for Judy Garland on her short concert tour in 1955.

Variety reported that for these shows Streisand earned a flat $8,000 fee per night against 50%. The deal was that Streisand’s Barbell Enterprises provided and paid the expenses of the Jerry Gray Orchestra.
Ad for Streisand's show at San Jose Civic Auditorium
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason visited Barbra Streisand and her manager Marty Erlichman backstage as they prepared for her one-night-only concert at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. There was “controlled hysteria” as the stage manager Jerry Frank rehearsed Barbra’s lighting cues, instructing the crew to hold the spotlight on Barbra at the end of “Quiet Night.” “She holds the note longer than the Bank of America,” he said. He also directed them, “At ‘Down with Love,’ you go up, hold it a minute, then out!”

Erlichman explained to Gleason that “It takes her a year to work into a song. That song ‘Quite Night’ is the first time she’s done it in public. She’s had it for a year and taped it and listened to it and changed it around. That’s why there’s no arrangement. She has to work it out like that until she’s satisfied. Then there’ll be an arrangement.”

Gleason reported that Peter Daniels rehearsed the orchestra onstage while conductor Jerry Gray went out into the house to hear how the music sounded. 

Writing for the San Jose Mercury News, Marta Morgan reported that Streisand “completely captivated the relatively small but highly enthusiastic audience which braved the cold night air to hear her.”

Morgan rounded out her review by stating: “Between songs, she throws in sly patter—kidding herself and her audience — and she has a snappy, sometimes macabre, sense of fun. Into one of her numbers she injected: ‘You better not shout, you better not cry, you better no pout, I'm telling you why — Santa Claus is dead.’ And her ethnic Ethiopian ‘folk-song’ with its droll yet strange humor, fractured the audience.”

“When she sings “As Time Goes By” or “Quiet Night” the audience feels as though it is eavesdropping on her most private thoughts. Yet she can belt out “Down With Love” and galvanize her listeners into rapt contentment. On the other hand, when she bursts into “When the Sun Comes Out,” the sunshine floods her elfin face and it is as though no one had ever sung the trite ditty before, and she can be extremely funny in “Keepin' Out of Mischief Now” or her impish version of “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”

... San Jose Mercury News review by Marta Morgan, Dec. 5, 1963

End / San Jose Civic Auditorium / BACK TO LIVE

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