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Songs for the New Depression is the third studio album by American female singer Bette Midler, released in early 1976 on the Atlantic Records label. The album which saw her making her debut as a composer (“Mr. Rockefeller” and the French language “Samedi et Vendredi”), as well as co-producer and sound engineer features contributions from musicians as diverse as soul singer Luther Vandross, Todd Rundgren and Brazilian jazz accordionist Sivuca. Songs for the New Depression includes Midler’s version of Tom Waits’ “Shiver Me Timbers”, a duet with Bob Dylan, “Buckets of Rain”, and opens with her discofied take on Frank Sinatra’s standard “Strangers in the Night” which became a #7 hit on the US dance charts. Two of the tracks, “Old Cape Cod” and “Marahuana”, were originally recorded during the sessions for 1972 debut album The Divine Miss M but remixed three years later by producers Lew Hahn and Arif Mardin for Songs for the New Depression. The album peaked at #27 on the Billboard album chart.
“Mr. Rockefeller” was sampled by rapper Kanye West on the song, “Last Call”, from his debut album, The College Dropout.
The album was digitally remastered and reissued on CD by Atlantic Records/Warner Music in 1995 but with no bonus tracks.
Track listing
Side A
“Strangers in the Night” (Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton, Eddie Snyder) – 3:22
“I Don’t Want the Night to End” (Phoebe Snow) – 3:53
“Mr. Rockefeller” (Jerry Blatt, Bette Midler) – 4:05
“Old Cape Cod” (Claire Rothrock, Allan Jeffrey, Milton Yakus) – 2:50
“Buckets of Rain” (Bob Dylan) – 4:00
“Love Says It’s Waiting” (Nick Holmes) – 1:41
From The Promise Suite
Side B
“Shiver Me Timbers”/”Samedi et Vendredi” (Tom Waits)/Midler, Moogy Klingman) – 6:25
“No Jestering” (Carlton Malcolm) – 3:59
“Tragedy” (Gerald Nelson, Fred Burch) – 3:06
“Marahuana” (Arthur Jonston, Sam Coslow) – 2:30
“Let Me Just Follow Behind” (Klingman) – 3:36
Personnel
Bette Midler – lead vocals (all tracks), backing vocals tracks B1-2
Glaswegians Orchestra – arranged and conducted by Arif Mardin (track A1)
Dianne Sumler – backing vocals (track A1)
Luther Vandross – arranger and backing vocals (track A1)
Norman Pride – conga (track A2)
John Siegler – bass guitar (tracks A2-3, 5, B2, 5)
John Wilcox – drums (tracks A2-3, 5, B2, 5)
Todd Rundgren – guitar (tracks A2, B2), backing vocals (track B5)
Moogy Klingman – electric piano, musical arranger, musical conductor, string arrangement (track A2), piano, RMI Computer keyboard, Mini Korg synthesizer, arranger and conductor (track A3), piano, harmonica and arranger (track A5)
Ralph Schuckett – acoustic piano and string arrangement (track A2), clavinet (track A3), arranging assistance, arranger and conductor (track B1), piano, organ, arranger and conductor (track B2), piano (track B3), Sound City piano, electric piano, organ, harmonium, string ensemble, arranger and conductor (track B5)
David Lasley – backing vocals (track A2)
David Spinozza – guitar (tracks A3, B5)
Erin Dickens – backing vocals (tracks A3, B3)
Annie Sutton – backing vocals (track A3)
Randy Brecker – horns (track A3), trumpet solo (track B5)
Michael Brecker – horns (track A3)
Barry Rogers – horns (track A3)
Dick Hyman – piano (tracks A4, B4)
Milt Hinton – acoustic bass (track A4), bass guitar (track B4)
Ted Sommer – drums (tracks A4, B4), percussion (track B4)
Arif Mardin – arranger and conductor (track A4), backing vocals, arranger and conductor (track B4)
Marty Nelson – vocal arranger (track A4)
Bob Dylan – vocals (track A5)
Dave Webster – slide guitar (track A5)
Eric Weissberg – banjo and mandolin (track B1)
Barbara Burton – percussion (track B1)
Don Brooks – harmonica (track B1)
Dominic Cortese – accordion (track B1)
Boris Matusevitch – concertina (track B1)
Steve Gadd – drums (track B1)
John Miller – acoustic bass (track B1)
Kenny Kosek – fiddle (track B1)
John Lissauer – arranger and conductor (track B1), saxes, chimes, arranger and conductor (track B3)
Mark Rosengarden – drums and percussion (track B1)
Jack Malken – additional percussion (track B1)
Sivuca – accordion (track B1)
Jerry Friedman – guitar (track B2)
Angel Allende – percussion (track B2)
David Nadien – strings (track B3)
Barry Finclair – strings (track B3)
Raul Poliakin – strings (track B3)
Tony Posk – strings (track B3)
Gene Orloff – strings (track B3)
Harry Lookofsky – strings (track B3)
Charles McCracken – strings (track B3)
Jessy Levy – strings (track B3)
Donny Beard – backing vocals (track B3)
Charlotte Crossley – backing vocals (tracks A1, B3)
Leata Galloway – backing vocals (track B3)
Ben Harney – backing vocals (track B3)
Rhetta Hughes – backing vocals (track B3)
Thomas Moore – backing vocals (track B3)
Ula Hedwig – backing vocals (tracks A1, B3)
Sharon Redd – backing vocals (tracks A1, B3)
Ramona Stubblefield – backing vocals (track B3)
Clifford Townsend – backing vocals (track B3)
Revelation – backing vocals (track B3)
Rosie – backing vocals (track B3)
Mel Davis – trumpet (track B4)
William Siapin – flute (track B4)
Harry Lookofsky – violin (track B4)
Matthew Raimondi – violin (track B4)
Emanuel Green – violin (track B4)
Gotham – backing vocals (track B4)
Rick Derringer – pedal steel guitar (track B5)
Production
Moogy Klingman – record producer for Moogtown Productions
Jack Malken – production assistant, recording and remix engineer, engineer (track A5)
Bette Midler – assistant engineer, producer (tracks A4, B4)
Deborah Turbville – photography
Michaele Vollbracht – shopping bag
Kenn Duncan – poster photos
Richard Amsel – inner sleeve illustration
Aaron Russo – management
Lew Hahn – recording engineer and remix engineer (track A1)
Gerry Block – assistant engineer (track A1)
Dave Wittman – assistant engineer (track A1)
Arif Mardin – record producer (track A1)
Ahmet Ertegün – production assistance (track A1)
Joel Dorn – producer (tracks A4, B4)
Jan Rathbun – engineer (track A5)
Recorded and mixed at Secret Sound Studio, New York, N.Y.
Track A1 recorded at Electric Lady and Media Sound Studios, New York, N.Y.
Tracks A4 and B4 recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York by Lew Hahn, remixed by Lew Hahn and Arif Mardin
Reviews
Rolling Stone Magazine (RS 208), Stephen Holden
It took Bette Midler two and a half years to make her third album. But all Songs for the New Depression does is once again raise the question of how this gifted stage personality can capture on a record the ebullience, spontaneity and imagination of her performances. Clearly, as her selection of good, recent songs by Bob Dylan. Tom Waits, Nick Holmes and Phoebe Snow indicates, Midler wishes to be regarded as a versatile recording artist of mostly contemporary material as well as a popular entertainer. Yet these are the wrong songs sung poorly. Midler sounds so tense and intimidated by studio problems that her personality is scarcely evident on this album. Ultimately, Songs for the New Depression is a failure because it comes to life only in its trivial endeavors, which is exactly what wasn’t supposed to happen.
The cover portrays Midler rejecting her “Divine Miss M” persona in order to move in a new direction. But the album itself suggests confusion; Midler inexplicably submits to arrangements and production values that strut their own cleverness rather than showcase her talents. Producer Moogy Klingman undermines Midler’s gift for dramatic monologue either by echoing or multitracking her vocals in arrangements as stiff as they are misconceived. An abridged version of Phoebe Snow’s “I Don’t Want the Night to End,” set as an R&B ballad of sorts, drowns Midler’s individuality in echoes, while the arrangement turns an excellent song into bathetic schlock. Tom Waits’s “Shiver Me Timbers,” a high point in Midler’s live act, sinks under the weight of an arrangement so literal-minded that it includes the sound of mewing sea gulls. The Fifties hit “Tragedy,” with expansive choral backup and chimes, is neither spoof nor tear-jerker.
Along with the totally misguided attempt at reggae (“No Jestering”), the album’s excruciating nadir is a disco version of “Strangers in the Night” (produced by Arif Mardin in a style similar to the Bee Gees’ “Fanny”), in which Midler shrieks about a half-tone flat from beginning to end. In more relaxed settings, Midler’s severe pitch problems can be overlooked-indeed, they can serve her dramatic style, as in “Hello in There.” But it seems the height of stubborn self-destructiveness for Midler to ape Gloria Gaynor, fall short so badly and then allow the result to stand.
Midler sounds relaxed only in the two cuts she coproduced with Joel Dorn, whose previous work with her has been her best. A revival of the Patti Page hit “Old Cape Cod” is comfortably nostalgic. On “Marahuana,” an obscure Thirties film tune, Midler camps it up a la Carmen Miranda to re-create the period piece in her own image. Though a very trivial song, it’s at least fun.
On Midler’s duet with Dylan on a lyrically revised “Buckets of Rain,” Dylan’s backup vocal is unaccountably mixed much higher than the lead; the song sounds like a Dylan self-parody. Midler’s own attempts at writing-a phone-call song to “Mr. Rockefeller” and her humorous interpretation of the “Welcome to My Nightmare” slogan in “Samedi et Vendredi” (sung entirely in French)-will at least appeal to Midler’s claque. Both pieces, however, are closer to show-biz bits than to fully realized songs, and Klingman’s production again fails to enhance their humor.
Trivia, nostalgia and camp may validate and sustain the worth of a stage career, but they sure as hell can’t do it for a singing career that asks to be taken seriously.
Consumer Guide, Robert Christgau
It’s going too far to claim that she’s taken on a corporate personality–a very unusual individual does definitely peek out through the curtain of groupthink that hides these songs from the singer and from us. But that individual seems to have taken on so many advisers because she’s afraid of herself, and such fear is not attractive in an artist of Bette Midler’s power. No matter what your voice teachers tell you, wackiness is not something to modulate. C+
Publication Unknown, Author Uknown (1976)
It’s difficult to pinpoint-exactly what is wrong with this album. There is nothing artistically offensive about it. Midler is in good voice her backup musicians are strong and well chosen and the mix of solid contemporary material and older works is not objectionable.
PERHAPS the most obvious lack is a sense of excitement. Expecting to find live performance energy on a record is-a major mistake for any listener but one would hope to find more drive than there is on “Songs.” It may well be that like Barbra Streisand and others, Midler draws her persuasive abilities from an audience and not necessarily from the songs. The audience and the applause are near and dear to her heart. not the lyrics of individual works.
There also seems to be a certain lack of focus to the album. Three producers – with three different styles – worked on “Songs” with two cuts each from Arif Mardin and Joel Dorn and the rest by Moogy Klingman, a member of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia. As a result, the album as a whole lacks unity of perception.
Individually, however, most of the cuts work rather well. A disco version of “Strangers in the Night,” jarring at first, proves surprisingly strong after repeated listening. Midier does well by Phoebe Snow’s “I Don’t Want the Night to End,” Klinngman’s “Let Me Just Follow Behind.” and especially, Tom Waits, “Shiver Me Timbers.” Her version of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” sung with Dylan is a triumph.
That old chestnut “Tragedy” simply drags along, however, “Old Cape Cod,” is done just as the Andrews Sisters did it, which makes it a bit too similar to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Midler’s own “Rocky” and “Marahuana” should prove to be fine stage pieces. but neither is particularly striking on record.
Midler’s future is unlikely to be decided by “Songs For the New Depression.” She is too great a stage performer and vocalist for her to ever have to return to the New York cabaret scene. Unfortunately, “Songs” is not as strong or as indicative of her talents as it might , have been.
Entertainment Weekly, Jess Cagle
Sounds like Bette stayed out too late at Studio 54. A disco version of ”Strangers in the Night”? Yes, it was the ’70s, but that’s no excuse. D
