Live And More

About

Live and More was the seventh vinyl long-playing (LP) album recorded by Donna Summer, and it was her second double album. The live concert featured on the first three sides of this double LP album was recorded in the Universal Amphitheater, Los Angele, California in 1978. This album was published in 1978 by the Casablanca Records company, which was starting to have increasing control over Summer's recording and publishing career. However, Casablanca Records would later go out of busine. During the concert, Summer performs a large number of her disco songs - both her hit single, and a selection of songs from her previous album, Once Upon a Time. However, in this album, Donna also experimented with other musical styles such as jazz, in "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" and the George Gershwin song, "The Man I Love". She also performed a version of the ballad "The Way We Were", originally recorded by Barbra Streisand for the film of the same name, and a self-written ballad called "Mimi's Song", dedicated to her young daughter, Mimi. She was present at this concert for Summer to sing the song to her, and she is heard on the recording saying goodnight to the audience. The concert ends with one of Summer's best-known disco tracks in the United States - "Last Dance". Though the studio recording of this song was not included in any Donna Summer album, it had been used in the soundtrack of the movie Thank God It's Friday, in which Summer had also acted. The composer Paul Jabara won an Academy Award for Best Song from a motion picture, and Summer herself won her first Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance with this song. A personal favorite of Summer', it was one of the first disco songs to also feature slow part, both at the beginning and during the middle. This would become a format that Donna would use several more times during the disco era. Although the single version of "Last Dance" removed some of the slow part, the full version was sung in this concert. The fourth and final side of this double LP album contained a new studio recording entitled the "MacArthur Park Suite", which is a medley of four songs including the main song "MacArthur Park", originally recorded as a ballad by the Irish actor Richard Harri. Summer's disco version was edited and published as a single, and it became one of her largest hits - her first Number one song on the American Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and a Top five song in the United Kingdom. This song also earned Donna Summer a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Another song in the medley, "Heaven Knows" was an American Top five song, and it featured vocals by Joe Esposito of the Brooklyn Dreams musical group. That group included the musician Bruce Sudano, whom Donna would later marry. .

via Last.fm

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