Song of the Day 10/9: Alan Kalter, “Send in the Clowns” [Updated]
OK, I can take a hint. Until I play some Sondheim I won’t be forgiven for polluting the blog with Andrew Lloyd Webber. So, in the spirit of El Som’s “stealth Sondheim,” here’s his best-known tune performed by someone you wouldn’t expect — Alan Kalter, the announcer on David Letterman’s late-night show for 20 years, who died this week at age 78.
Kalter wasn’t just the show’s announcer — producers tapped him for comic bits, frequently involving angry rants. But one night, apropos of nothing, he sang a truncated version of “Send in the Clowns” — quite credibly, I think — and then, overcome with emotion, ran off the stage. I can only think that it was Kalter’s comic reputation as a risk-taker — “I don’t recall the guy ever saying no to anything,” Letterman said, “and I guess that tells us something about his judgment” — that has the audience laughing after every line of one of Sondheim’s most touching and wistful songs.
UPDATE:
Worldwide Pants pulled the video, but the audio is available at this Soundboard link:
https://www.soundboard.com/sb/sound/204853
This reminds me: Judy Collins can kiss my not-insubstantial white butt. Why?
Read this–I’ll wait:
https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-send-in-the-clowns-with-judy-collins/
First of all, it’s Collins who mustn’t read. The song was not written for Elaine Paige, but for Glynis Johns and her, as Sondheim put it, ‘three-note range’. It’s right there in his great memoir and more, ‘Finishing The Hat’.
“Sondheim, he said, knew who he was writing that song for.
“Glynis Johns was many, many things,” he added, “but operatic singer was not something you’d put on that list. She had a unique instrument, and a unique color and character to her voice, and he needed to write a song that that actor could really land.”
Second, it ‘saved’ the show? Hello-o-o. The show opened in 1973, Collins recorded it in 1975. By that time, dozens of artists had already recorded it. Maybe, just maybe, it extended the run of the show, but the show was a hit before her recording, and it hardly needed saving.
Here’s a really cool article on the song, and especially about why there’s nobody like Sondheim:
https://everythingsondheim.org/the-ups-and-downs-of-send-in-the-clowns/
I like this description of what sets him apart:
“In his early college years he saw the original production of A Little Night Music, then Sweeney Todd and Merrily we Roll Along. Petosa, who grew up a piano-playing kid in a musical family, said he “found it exciting how music and a narrative could combine in a kind of unique storytelling mode. Sondheim became an exemplar of how to take that form and do something really powerful with it.”
“Sometimes too powerful.
“When his work was fresh and new it would often be ahead of the audience’s ability to take it in,” said Petosa, who recalls watching a preview of Sweeney Todd at the Uris Theatre where “easily 50% of the audience bailed” at intermission in clear discomfort.
By the time the musical opened to very positive notices, Petosa said, no one in the packed house left before the curtain call—and now Sweeney Todd is a beloved touchstone of musical theater. “People come to Sondheim and develop an appreciation for him over time,” he observed. “I think sometimes the first taste can be acidic, in a form that had grown up giving people a sense of comfort.”
Sondheim has never said he hates the song. He’s ambivalent about its success. Ambivalence being one of his overriding themes. Contrary to Collins’ suggestion, the LAST thing Sondheim would want to do would be to hang around with the Rat Pack crowd.
BTW, the term ‘send in the clowns’? It references what happens when, say, a trapeze artist falls during a routine. Quick: Send in the clowns. The character singing the song is an actress, and she’s well aware of what happens when something gets screwed up during a performance.
Wiki, (yes, Wiki) has an excellent article on the song, including a lot of commentary from Sondheim:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_In_the_Clowns
OK, I’ll stop now.
Once the song became a standard we all got used to it as a concert piece, but stripped of its context and sung in a more-or-less regular meter it’s just another sad song.
Here’s Dame Judi Dench recreating her star turn in the West End production for the BBC in 1995. Who’s cutting those onions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04E8Y8nDfRQ
Sondheim mentioned that, especially in British productions, it was essential that the performer clearly enunciated the ‘f’ in farce.
Otherwise, it came out as ‘Don’t you love arse’.