Michael Feinstein celebrates the artistry of Jimmy Webb
Romantic singer brings songs of legendary writer back into limelight
by Michelle Nikolai

Michael Feinstein first remembers hearing songwriter Jimmy Webb's melodic gem "Up, Up and Away" as a kid. The song was a breakthrough hit in 1967 for The 5th Dimension, whose members at the time included Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.

Although he didn't know who Webb was, the song made a distinct impression on him: "That song permeated my life for a while, as it did everybody's at the time it was hit," Feinstein remembers. "It made me feel the way it made everyone feel - such a wonderful emotion of abandon, of freedom, of release really."

Webb's songs have been recorded plenty of times over the last four decades - his classic "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" is the third most performed song of the last 50 years, and he is the only artist ever to receive Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestrations. Yet, he's not quite a household name these days as he was in the late 1960s and '70s, when songs like "Wichita Lineman," "Didn't We," and "Galveston" were Top 10 hits. Feinstein, who's known as a skillful interpreter of songs from The Great American Songbook, recently released an entire album of Webb's masterpieces, dubbed Only One Life, on the Concord label, and the two are touring over a dozen dates playing Baldwin grand pianos.

"He is an extraordinarily talented songwriter - he has great invention in his songs, he has wit, heart, he is a poet and harmonically he's very sophisticated, yet writes songs that appeal very much to a broad public," says Feinstein. "I have recorded a number of his songs, which he arranged and conducted, on different albums that I've created in the past, but this is the first full CD of his work."

Webb's song "Time Enough for Love" leads off Feinstein's 1993 album Forever. They first met back in 1989; they were introduced by mutual friend Rosemary Clooney, to whom they dedicate this album. They found their musical interests to be very much in tune, so to speak, and the project started to take shape four or five years ago, Webb says in the liner notes to the album.

The actual project took three years from the point of conception. Feinstein, a four-time Grammy nominee himself, originally planned to have piano accompaniment and a few instruments but decided to add full orchestration to a number of the songs. "That's the only major difference, and it's a wonderful difference, to have all the beautiful piano tracks and then have these lush string sections on some of the numbers," says Feinstein.

Webb completely reinvented the bouncy "Up, Up and Away" as a sensuous love song, and Feinstein's vocals are intimate and quietly sexy against a Brazilian bossa nova rhythm and elegant guitars reminiscent of Jobim's "Girl from Ipanema." The transformation is startling.

"He initially did not want to do 'Up, Up and Away' on the album because he felt that the song was a little lightweight as far as his lyrics went. He thought it was a cute, boppy song but that my singing it - because I so carefully invest every lyric I sing with attention - would cast an unpleasant scrutiny on the lyric," Feinstein explains. "So he came up with the idea of reconfiguring it, really, which I think works beautifully. And when he came up with the idea, or the point of view, to make it romantic and sexy, it suddenly changed the meaning of the lyrics in a way that worked very well, I think."

Another interesting twist is the opening song, "After All the Loves of My Life," the slow, thoughtful section from Webb's classic seven-minute plus song "MacArthur Park." Feinstein sings just that part, as Frank Sinatra did when he covered it, and then the song flows seamlessly into the title track "Only One Life."

They not only reimagined the arrangements. Feinstein chose to record six songs that have never been released before including the aforementioned "Only One Life." Webb created "Belmont Avenue" for a musical version of Chazz Palmintari's one-character play A Bronx Tale that is currently in production. One of Feinstein's talents is discovering songs that are buried in an artist's body of work - he's a well-known archivist who is a member of the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board. "I always try to find songs that I think are good that public will enjoy. If somebody doesn't introduce them, how are they ever going to be heard?" he interjects.

He champions well-crafted songs, and to this end he meticulously pored over Webb's extensive cache of work including seven or eight original musicals. It was an involved process but a true labor of love, with the end result celebrating romantic love in all its complexity. When he and Webb began the three-year process, they literally had stacks of songs.

"I put some things on tape to hear what they would sound like, and then I'd leave it alone for a while and go back to it to hear it with fresh ears, and so it was really a winnowing process that took a great deal of time," Feinstein explains. "We just did it step by step until we felt we were ready to start recording, and we did sessions as our schedules allowed instead of putting pressure on ourselves. So the whole process was one of evolution, and it was not something that was in any way stressful."

Feinstein says they may collaborate again in the future, but he's got a number of other projects in the works. He just completed a pilot for a musical variety show tentatively titled "Michael Feinstein and Friends," and completed an album with George Shearing that encompasses the songs of Harry Warren. He's also collaborating with Johnny Mandel, who co-wrote "The Shadow of Your Smile," on an album of his songs. As if that's not enough, he recently taped a television special with Olympic ice skater Scott Hamilton that will air January 11. He supplied the music for Hamilton and the other skaters in the show, "Scott Hamilton and Friends."

He also intends to eventually do an album of his original work, but for now he's dedicated to bringing the works of other writers to the attention of his fans. "My audiences are always very wide-ranging in age, and so I always presume that there are some people there who might be new to the songs that I do," he enthuses. "It's always an exciting prospect."