Defend the indefensible: Liberace

Watched the HBO special the other day. It got me thinking how weird it is, considering that he was one of the highest paid entertainers in the world, that his memory has effectively vanished off the face of the earth.

Anyone willing to defend this emperor of extravagance?

"Watched the HBO special the other day."

"his memory has effectively vanished off the face of the earth."

I mean, he had similar levels of success to Elvis and Sinatra, but whereas their legacy has endured, PRIOR to this adaptation, he'd been pretty much forgotten, no? I mean, most people 30 and under have heard of Elvis and Sinatra, but you'd have had a hard time finding anyone knowing who Liberace was.

as a performer he seems pretty lovable to me. I can forgive him for a being a creep, if he was indeed one.

I probably only heard of Liberace in the first place because of Bloom County, but I feel like he's not totally forgotten, even if he's not as iconic as Elvis or Sinatra.

btw all this liberace talk has sharply affected how I pronounce "waterface" in my head

most people 30 and under have heard of Elvis and Sinatra

wrong btw

he had similar levels of success to Elvis and Sinatra

by what measure?

Yeah, so many questionable assumptions in that post.

Having said that, while I've been very familiar with his persona/image/reputation, I should admit that I've never actually listened to him. Along with Lawrence Welk and Dolly Parton, he's one of the few American musicians that my parents listened to because they had TV shows in the 70s and 80s.

Huh, going by a cursory scan of Wikipedia, he appeared on TV a lot in the 70s but didn't have a regular show then.

same here, i know what he looks like but i don't think i've ever heard any of his music.
i think that may be where a lot of <30s are with elvis too.....

it's kind of interesting, bizarre even, that his wiki entry doesn't include a discography or a link to one.

on the other hand, he never appeared on the billboard singles chart.

I dunno, was he really known for his recordings?

I mean, six gold records and a single that sold 300K copies is nowhere NEAR Sinatra's or Presley's level of success in terms of record sales.

(xp) apparently not! but it's hard to think of any other musician with six gold records -- i'm trusting wiki on that -- who doesn't merit even a cursory attempt at a discography in wikipedia.

six gold records and a single that sold 300k copies is also nowhere near ferrante & teicher's level of success.

a lot of his fans are dead. or ancient. it happens. people will always buy elvis and sinatra albums. there were lots of very famous entertainers that nobody listens to/watches/talks about anymore. THIS is who people should still be listening to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQHaglomIU0

Well, even in Liberace's lifetime, it doesn't seem (if we are to trust Wikipedia!) that people were buying his albums in exceptional numbers. My impression was always that he was mostly known (and highly paid) for his flamboyant performance practice.

korla pandit otm

some discussion of Liberace-as-musician vs. Liberace as punchline to pop culture jokes on this thread Who is the most-famous least-popular musician of all time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo8kSoHhteA

several xposts:

My comparison would be made not on record sales but on overall revenue made. Take for example this article (one of many I found), which talks about Liberace being the highest paid entertainer in the world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10079170/Behind-the-Candelabra-the-true-story-of-Liberace.html

I don't think it'd be too far out to say that with that kind of revenue-drawing stardom, he was on a par with Elvis/Sinatra, even if it wasn't through the same medium (record sales).

Perhaps I was being too broad when I said that no-one in the world really remembered him any more. It might be the case in America that people still have heard of him, but in the UK, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under 30 who had heard of him aside from the odd Austin Powers reference.

I probably only heard of Liberace in the first place because of Bloom County

This. I also pronounced his name wrong until someone corrected me very recently.

Regular target of parody by Bugs Bunny = defensible.

http://i2.wp.com/insuremekevin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bugs_bunny_modern_art_liberace_heffner.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcqmvGVH9c0

His music was crap, his audience of elderly women is a demographic no one cares about today, and his personal politics was so backwards (though that is pretty understandable, given the times) He is perhaps a tragic figure, but I can't imagine him ever playing a role in the culture today except as a punchline/cautionary tale.

most people 30 and under

let's all genuflect.

I grew up knewing who he was, seeing him on TV, and certainly by age 12 had formed the opinion that he was a joke, but was partly in on it.

totally defend him just for unknowingly making this a reality:

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/HNTqJfqUPfBbRirtAPcpeg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYwMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.abcnewsplus.com/4c986e7e5453c06b460817af8d18a0cf.cf.png

but yeah it makes sense that he would still be a pop presence in the u.s. and not so much elsewhere.

i feel like i have known him my whole life pretty much. i'm 44 though. the 30 and under thing could very well be true. i mean i KNEW who bugs was parodying when i was a little kid. van cliburn, that might be even more of a drop. other than classical buffs, who remembers him? or even knows that he recently died? he was a huge pop culture thing once upon a time. and he made good records that sold a ton. for classical. cold war hero.

van had the first million-selling classical album in the late 50's. he was that huge.

also, could be a movie in the works:

"In 1998, Cliburn was named in a lawsuit by his domestic partner of seventeen years, mortician Thomas Zaremba. In the suit, Zaremba claimed entitlement to a portion of Cliburn's income and assets and went on to charge that he might have been exposed to HIV, claiming emotional distress."

The Master & The Mortician

The American Sputnik! even better title for a movie.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kera/files/styles/card_wide/public/201302/Van%20Ticker%20tape%20parade.jpg

http://welltempered.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/van-cliburn-ticker-tape-parade-in-1958.jpg

bobby fischer of tchaikovsky! but less, you know. of a chess player.

Am over 30 and I had no idea who Liberace was, it was lost on me when watching Bugs Bunny. In fact the first time I was aware Liberace was a person was cos of this movie coming out.

i knew who liberace was growing up but only because i looked up that line in austin powers. van cliburn's was the copy of tchai piano #1 that i had but apparently do not anymore.

van cliburn, that might be even more of a drop. other than classical buffs, who remembers him? or even knows that he recently died?

Van Cliburn was the commencement speaker at my wife's place of employment, the Cleveland Institute of Music, at their 2012 graduation ceremonies; and, of course, he died this winter.

In 2011, CIM's big event was an evening featuring talk and music from Marvin Hamlisch, who conducted the CIM student orchestra for the event. Hamlisch went on to die in the summer of 2012.

This year, they held a major fundraising event featuring Roberta Flack. I fear for her safety.

i am 35 and when i hear "liberace" i instantly think "candelabra" and "hairdo that kind of looks like dracula"

if you look at youtube comments, there are many people who appreciate liberace out there, and not just little old ladies

I am over 30 and feel like I've always been aware of him in the same way I've always been aware of Lawrence Welk (similar audiences, but major difference is that Welk is STILL on TV)

ronald reagan, jr. attempts to explain liberace, 1986

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPcbJiWX3Ws

FWIW, he did a strangely nice piano cover of "The Long and Winding Road", although not much else I've heard by him has particularly caught my ear.

Watching videos of him on youtube is weirdly compelling for some reason. He had a real stage presence, although the reaction of his audience to his, er, gags is a large helping of "ick". It feels very weird to me.

yeah, it's kind of difficult to recreate the taste culture that made him such a big star

i mean imaginatively create, not literally recreate (but i guess both are true)

same w/ emerson lake & palmer

Liberace is known to UK lawyers due to the "mother love" quote he won his libel case over being commonly read out for yuks by delict/tort professors.

liberace was kind of a joke reference point for my classical music loving parents. I think of him as an unfunny and outlandish analogue to Victor Borge -- a bygone breed of "entertainer" that mixed quasi-highbrow music with mass appeal. Actually not necessarily bygone -- we have stuff like Andrea Bocelli and the Three/Four tenors singing broadway and pop hits. TBC though, I like Victor Borge and don't think much of Liberace. Strikes me as the kind of thing people who don't really care much about music listen to when they want to be "classy."

Like it's hard for me to believe there were many Liberace fans who had a large and diverse record collection.

same w/ russ colombo

i think people need to remember that when liberace first hit and hit big, that most people did not have a notion of a "camp" sensibility--that manner of appreciation was very far from mainstream.

but he seemed to "transition" into a kind of camp object w/ grace.

but yeah there are people out there who like the "four chinese girls" or whatever that act is, not very far from the sort of unimaginably tasteless pop/classical hybrid that liberace represented for many years.

xpost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Girls_Band

they add "world music" stylings to the pop-classical mix, though in fairness so did liberace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVMXEnL8liM

I guess his fame makes sense within the context of early television. Like if you have a variety show and you want some guy to play nostalgic old tunes on the piano for 2 minutes you're going to want a showy guy with a giant smile and big movements that are easily visible on peoples tiny black and white TV screens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3H-Fx9qYMk

similar to a paul schaeffer role really. somebody to fill a few minutes of airtime with functional music while coming across as a recognizable TV personality.

and 1961 list could still be the 50's if it weren't for the new wave attack of the shirelles and marvelettes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_1961_(U.S.)

but that's to be expected that close in time to a previous decade.

and by 64 its all over. bobby vinton and dean martin still holding on for dear life. its a radical shift. its impressive! even if you hate the beatles.

links don't work :(

and by 64 its all over. bobby vinton and dean martin still holding on for dear life. its a radical shift. its impressive! even if you hate the beatles.

― scott seward, Monday, June 10, 2013 4:43 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree, but that's why i pushed the date up to 1964 for when elvis may have seemed like a genuine has-been

Here you go, am: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_1961_%28U.S.%29

best 1964 list is ireland. dickie rock and jim reeves OWN ireland in 1964.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_singles_of_1964_(Ireland)

oops sorry. didn't mean to give bum links.

its not like elvis isn't impressive. anyone who can make 400 movies in a decade like he did in the 60's is impressive. he created a deathless monolith out of two years of over the top cultural zeitgeist freakout. but culturally he was closer to dean martin if you ask me. he definitely wasn't motown and he didn't have a cool beat group. he didn't even play live in the 60's. like, at all.

How was Elvis regarded by country music people after the mid-60s?

i agree he wasn't very hip but i don't agree that he wasn't still huge

xpost

he was huge like dean was huge. they were both visible pop culture presences. they made movies, they sold lots of records, etc. but if you ask someone to name 50 things that remind them of the 60's elvis and dean might not make the cut. they were somewhat out of time.

meanwhile i'm listening to a great album from 1960 right now. its a very 50's record.

http://www.parisjazzcorner.com/en/pochs_g/093870.jpg

i actually got a george liberace record in at the store. speaking of liberace.

I'm thinking of all the boomer-era stuff that MTV and VH1 pushed onto Gen X viewers in the 80s and 90s, like showing the short-lived Beatles animated series on Saturday mornings, and pushing The Doors, and re-running the entire Monkees series … to my recollection they never did anything similar with Elvis, did they?

love that atlantic logo

xpost

and by 64 its all over.

see "do you remember" by the beach boys in 1964.

i started a whole thread on this, it was a good one IIRC

revisionist doo-wop

if you ask someone to name 50 things that remind them of the 60's elvis and dean might not make the cut

elvis wouldn't make the cut if you asked someone to name 500 things that remind them of the '60s. he very much existed in the '60s, of course, but there wasn't a shred of '60s about him. to wit, the president he chose to visit in the white house wasn't kennedy. it was nixon.

cuz OTM.

Elvis was definitely hugely influenced by Dean and maybe this is why he tends to be on the "oldies" side of the divide; although he was the missing link between the Sinatras/Martins and the Beatles when it came to mainstream musical entertainment.

if you ask someone to name 50 things that remind them of the 60's elvis and dean might not make the cut

elvis wouldn't make the cut if you asked someone to name 500 things that remind them of the '60s. he very much existed in the '60s, of course, but there wasn't a shred of '60s about him. to wit, the president he chose to visit in the white house wasn't kennedy. it was nixon.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, June 10, 2013 7:39 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that speaks more to our notions of The Sixties© than it does about, you know, people who were around then and going to elvis movies

i mean, reagan doesn't fit into The Sixties© very easily either but you know there he was

silent majority and all that

or even silent minority

was he a big name beyond California though?

although I suppose being governor of California means you're automatically a big name in US politics.

amateurist, i largely agree with you. obviously it makes a difference where you were, who you were, how far you lived from a coast, etc., but i think the bigger point is that there was a gigantic divide between the beatles and their fans and elvis and his fans. it was really two different worlds. and one of those worlds had a way bigger media impact than the other.

another thing about elvis in the '60s: his movies did ok, some did a lot better than ok, but his run of success even with those ended fairly early in the '60s. all of the beatles' movies, for whatever that was worth, out-grossed any elvis movies that were out at the same time. as did james bond. and a million westerns. and lots of other movie musicals. and all of those things, including julie andrews, for example, were more The Sixties© than elvis. by the time the beatles hit, elvis was waning even as a movie idol.

it's also telling that between the kennedy association and his '60s comeback, elvis had exactly one top ten pop hit. which suggests that, even to his fans between the coasts, he wasn't exactly a '60s version of justin bieber or even taylor swift.

and yes i realize that elvis' star looms slightly larger than bieber's or swift's star vis-a-vis the universe. i'm a fan.

elvis bieber is strangely fun to say

(xp to myself) "the kennedy association" is apparently my subconscious' way of suggesting that oswald didn't act alone.

its funny that elvis will really always be associated with the 50s and 70s. the skinny/fat divide. the 60s music/movies is all a blur to most people. so many movies!

urgh people I am only arguing that elvis continued to be massively popular in the EARLY 1960s, like through 64. scott said he was a "nostalgia" act by 1960, which is simply not true. i am agreeing with y'all and most other things.

This Elvis discussion reminds me of the bit in "The Outsiders" novel where Ponyboy talks about the differences between his friends and Cherry Valance. Something along the lines of "She liked the Beatles, and thought Elvis was old. We didn't care for the Beatles, but Elvis was still hot stuff."

Elvis had 21 songs in the Top 40 during his so-called down period of 1964-1968. They just weren't very resonant ones.

Sinatra had some of his biggest hits ever in 1966-1969. If Elvis was nostalgia, Sinatra was like the ghost of pre-nostalgia.

"The Sixties©" is the problematic concept. I think it's being too arbitrary not to consider Nixon, Reagan, and Elvis "of the '60s"...along with SSgt Barry Sadler, George Wallace, Debbie Reynolds, and so on.

or james garner!

sinatra never went in and out of style like elvis did because sinatra WAS style. but also because sinatra probably managed his career a little better than elvis did.

for what it's worth though, sinatra's three most notable hits from that 66-69 period were "something stupid," which was a duet with his very-much-of-the-'60s daughter nancy; "my way," which wasn't that big a pop hit in its time (topping out at #27), and would you have any idea it was a 1969 single if you didn't look it up?; and "strangers in the night," about which i have no glib theory except that sinatra at age 50 was more of a man than elvis (monstrously popular but dead) or any of the beatles at age 50. i don't know why i'm arguing this. in my life i've loved them all.

The Sixties© is a very problematic concept indeed, as are most such concepts. so maybe it's the media's fault, but if you asked the average man or woman on any street in any city in the united states today to name 50 things about The Sixties©, and then tallied the results like an ILM artists poll, i'm still reasonably sure elvis would not show up anywhere in the results thread. but nixon most definitely would. sgt. barry sadler i imagine would get exactly as many votes as scott mckenzie. barry goldwater would get more votes than either of them. and dick van dyke would get more votes than all of them and james garner combined. no offense to james garner.

"my way," which wasn't that big a pop hit in its time (topping out at #27)

Check how long it was in the chart for, though. In 1969, onwards..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgH286eOni4

Lee Marvin was very much of the '60s

same with george peppard!

i just named james garner b/c he's this straight-laced studio star who was huge in the mid-late 1960s despite not fitting into our notion of The Sixties. add rock hudson to that?

well actually i guess rock was kind of out of favor by mid 1960s

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/p480x480/600408_10152306128007137_1940365064_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/p480x480/996163_10152306127592137_761934251_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x480/375603_10152306127042137_1266841990_n.jpg

Haha, that looks a bit like recent Westerberg from the Replacements thread!

Sinatra TOTALLY went in and out of style. His initial appeal was to teenagers. But later when TV took over he didn't do well and was thought to be out of date. This is in the late forties/early fifties when he was approaching his 40s. He got dumped by Columbia/MCA and his career stalled for a few years until signing to Capitol in 1953.

I'm not familiar with the "pop classical" genre except through lounge / exotica albums I have. Is this really so terrible? The fifties and sixties saw the proliferation of HORRID easy listening albums - surely pop interpretations of REAL classics are preferable?

My grandparents adopted Wisconsin as their home and visited Vegas every year. My grandmother was a HUGE fan, otherwise she liked country music. You kind of have to "get" Wisconsin to appreciate Liberace. Wisconsin has loads of this Vegas stuff... they truly enjoy flamboyance, they're not backward.

Anyway I'm wondering if there is much to this genre from the VINYL era. I adore Ferrante and Teicher.

i don't think you need to "get" wisconsin, whatever that means, to appreciate liberace. unless you are using wisconsin as a stand-in for working-class america or something.

mantovani and boston pops also really relevant here.

(--from wisconsin)

Sinatra got dumped by Columbia/MCA and his career stalled for a few years until Don Corleone took care of shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5meyAvvjhyU

Nice work, Li. He'd probably have been good at that job irl. Customers would not want to skimp on the glitz in his presence.

The detour above about Elvis and Sinatra and the pop audience was really interesting to me, but I won't pursue it out of deference to Liberace.