The following excerpt from a note I received this morning is an insightful perspective on this phenomenon:

Dear Judy,

We spoke earlier on the phone today. I just wanted to say again how nice it was to talk to somebody in the music business in this town that wasn’t immediately dismissive to a newly-arrived musician looking for opportunities. Kindness and compassion seem to be a rare commodity in this town from time to time, so thank you again.

As for the issue of “tracking” in performances here, I have to say I am pretty surprised that music has deteriorated to that level. Back home I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone using pre-recorded music in a performance - it was always assumed that if you needed more music than you could play yourself, you got another musician to help out… so here are my thoughts on this issue:

In order for music to be emotionally effective, it needs to be able to breathe and flow depending on the energy in the room, but more importantly by the energy and emotion pouring out of the performer. By using tracks, the performers have locked themselves into a static rhythm of expression and phrasing, and cannot allow for the subtle changes in tempo and dynamics that are required to really make a performance memorable and lasting. The push and pull in between the pulse of the music needs to have an elastic quality that allows for it to bend and shift as the phrase requires. Tracking seems to me no better than simply putting on a CD… at which point you should just hire yourself a DJ and call it quits.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents. Thank you again, and it was a real pleasure meeting you.

A dynamic. Yin and yang. Soulful interpretation.
These are inherent qualities of a live musical performance.
A lovely note, and one I will read often.
Thank you….

“Judy Chamberlain sings the hits of George Gerswin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin & Kermit the Frog”

Hmmm…and maybe Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Harry Warren & Kurt Weill.

Yes, definitely.

Actually performing this music is not a fantasy.

Calling it a “One Woman Show” is though, and I’m ready to do it.

Because it’s time to do just that. And I want you to be prepared to laugh and cry when you come to this show. Laugh and cry for all the dreams left undone, all the people who left us too soon… and all the blessings that we do have in our lives. Our partners, families, friends and children.

And the music.

I like performing this music best in an intimate setting, where I can drape myself just above the high keys on the piano, out of the pianists way, and focus my attention on the audience.

But it works well as a concert, too.

We get the room into high gear with songs like “Swanee,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and the fine Harold Arlen paon to Winston Churchill, “My Shining Hour.”

Midway through the evening, a Kermit song — I sing it very sparely and not always in green face paint — like the wonderful “Rainbow Connection.” I mean, who doesn’t love Kermit?

A little Cole Porter, a sentimental Harry Warren tune like “This Heart Of Mine” and maybe some Ellington. Songs that take you back to a happier time, a time when you wrere young or hadn’t even been born yet but just know you would have loved.

“Prelude To A Kiss.” “Take The A-Train.”

And then it’s time for the sad music. Music to recall a lost love, the story that didn’t have a happy ending. The remembrance of pain and longing we thought we’d gotten over.

It’s killer stuff.

You want happy? I can give you happy.

Sad….that’s a whole other animal. It tugs at your heart strings. It takes guts to listen to sad songs, but they are so good for the soul. Songs like:

“The Man That Got Away.”

“It Never Was You”

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

To sleep, perchance to dream…..

Like his peers Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart and Richart Rogers, his songs brought Broadway and Hollywood together in diverse and wonderful ways. Mary Martin, for instance, became an overnight star on Broadway in the Porter vehicle “Leave It To Me!” The woman who would eventually fly thru the air on wire cables as “Peter Pan” stopped the show with a mock strip tease performed on top of a cabin trunk while singing “My Heart Belongs To Daddy”. She would later appear as herself in the 1946 Porter biographical musical epic “Night and Day,” auditioning for Cary Grant, who played Cole Porter in the film.

“DuBarry Was a Lady,” which starred Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman on Broadway in 1940, was made into a 1943 movie with Lucille Ball and Red Skelton in the leading roles, but used very little of the original Porter score.

But Hollywood would soon be further Porter attenuated. His “I Concentrate On You” was one of the big hits from the movie “Broadway Melody of 1940,” while the 1943 film “Something to Shout About” contained the lovely “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”.

Another Porter tune, “Don’t Fence Me In” provided enjoyable moments in the 1944 film “Hollywood Canteen.” That same year, Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” was heard on Broadway in the 1944 show, “Seven Lively Arts.” It would become Ella Fitzgerald’s favorite song of all time.

The amazing “Kiss Me Kate” opened on Broadway on December 30, 1948, starring Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison. The fabulous score included “Why Can’t You Behave”, “Wunderbar”, “So In Love”, “We Open In Venice”, “Too Darn Hot”, and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”.

Hollywood, not to be outdone, followed with the movie version in 1953, starring Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel and Ann Miller — with a cameo appearance by one Alfred Viola, dressed in a strange costume and playing the guitar. When I asked Al why he had never told me about his bit part in the movie when I had heard all of his other stories many times over, he replied: “How could you tell it was me?” and Howard Keel. “Kiss Me Kate” is and was one of my favorite movies ever, followed closely by the 1956 film “High Society,” which would be one of Porter’s last projects.

The film stars Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm and Louis Armstrong as himself. Musicians appearing as part of Armstrong’s band included Edmond Hall (clarinet), Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass), and Barrett Deems (drums).

Notable not only for Grace Kelly’s last acting role before she became Princess of Monaco, and for being the first on-screen pairing of Sinatra and Crosby, it was also Porter’s first new film score in more than ten years. Noboby who has seen the film will ever forget the scenes and scoring of the classic “True Love,” “Well Did You Evah?” and “Now You Has Jazz,” a bonafide improvisational take on the interaction between singer and instrumentalists that has not been topped yet in a movie. Orchestrators Conrad Salinger and Nelson Riddle and bandleader Johnny Green must have had a lot of fun recording the soundtrack. Armstrong looked like he was having a deliciously time throughout, especially when he and the band launched a glib “High Society Calypso” in the movieland version of a band bus road trip to the Newport Jazz Festival, then in it’s debut infancy stage and the catalyst for this extraordinary romp.

Now you has jazz…jazz…jazzz.

“I’m not sure if I want you to play the Michael Buble version or the Sinatra version,” a client will say — and off we go on an internet surfing safari to find “just the right version.”

So now YouTube is my band’s music director.

Nelson Riddle wouldn’t have liked this either.

The whole beauty of what Dean Martin, Frank Snatra and the rest of the Rat pack did was based on pure spontaneity. One merely has to watch a few of Dean Martin Show re-runs to figure that out.

Dean liked spontaneity so much that he refused to rehearse, preferring to show up in time for the taping and be surprised himself at the antics of his guest stars.

That was back in the days when people who entertained other people actually had some talent.

What a concept.

“Call Judy Chamberlain,” someone said. “She’s the only singer in Los Angeles who sings the songs right.”

Words…and music, the way the composers wrote them. Swinging jazz.

These things do not often go hand in hand.

But they should.

Miles Davis could not have recorded his groundbraking albums in the 1960’s if he hadn’t known where the music came from and who wrote it and why.

Louis Armstrong was a master of authenticity. So were Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerals, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Fred Astaire.

Many were dancers, and could sing tricky phrases filled with emotion while never missing even the hair of the a click of a beat within the meter. They were vitrual “time” machines.

It’s called “swinging.”

Authenticity. Staying true to the words and melody that the composers wrote. Swinging like mad, making everything we play danceable. Meter, time “feel,” correctness.

It cannot be faked.

We play music you can dance to. That doesn’t mean cardboard-rigid phrasing, which is what we hear with a lot of today’s big bands. Oh, the bands are playing nicely enough. But they are READING from a book on a music stand in front of them! Count Basie and Duke Ellington they ain’t. Most of them just don’t swing.

Swinging is an art.

Singing while the band is swinging is an art.

Sinatra did it. Ella Fitzgerald did it. Billie Holiday, even when stoned out of her mind, did it. Ellington, Basie, Bing Crosby — these people all swung like mad.

And that’s what our bands do. It’s what you hire a live band for, especially a live band playing music for dancers at a wedding or other important event. To have anything less is inconceivable. But that is what you often get, even with — especially with — some of the ridiculously overpriced “wedding band options” that are out there in the marketplace. Why? Because they don’t know the history of the music, or of the composer - or event hte right words to the song. Maybe they’ve never played it before and are reading it from a book.

I suspect they are overpriced because they have to work so hard at rehearsing music they are not accustomed to playing.

Louis Armstrong would roll over in his grave!

Around here, we don’t need no stinking rehearsals! We’ve been playing htis music all of our lives, and we’re very good at it.

And we play it right! We respect and revere what the composer wrote. We pay homage to the words, to the melody. We don’t take liberties with something that’s already perfect. It’s not cool to “re-harmonize” Cole Porter.

But we’re not like most “wedding bands.”

We fool around with tempos — because we CAN. And we turn hip hop songs into standards. Other than that, you’re going to hear music they way you think you should be hearing it. Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby — they were dancers, veritable “time” machines.

That’s what we do.

Don’t try it at home, and don’t expect to get it with a group of “jazzers” you pull out of a bar.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

It helps when musicians know where that music came from, who wrote it and why.

Especially when it’s MODERN vintage music, played with originality and improvisational showmanship by a live band that specializes in weddings and events …and plays an enormous repertoire taht spans every style and decade of vintage music.

Why vintage?

Because almost all music worth playing — for a great LIVE band, that is — is vintage now.

Retro, contemporary, hip and modern, vintage music transcends cultures and generations.

What exactly is vintage music?

Basically, it’s the timeless “pop” music that was written during the Twentieth Century.

Vintage styles include dixieland, ragtime, Roaring Twenties, Deco, ballroom, early and big band swing, mid-century moderne, Sinatra Rat Pack, rock & roll, doo-wop, Motown, R&B, classic country and the Golden Age of Hollywood, including Old Hollywood and “contemporary” Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, James Bond, Cole Porter, Broadway and the Beach Boys. The Eagles, Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole…it’s all in there. And much, much more…..

It’s music you can REALLY dance to. Words and feelings you can understand.

We do it all, sometimes in the same set. Four thousand songs of it.

Having a large repertoire helps a lot when you’re on a big stage looking out at 300 people of varying ages and cultures who are counting on you to take their wedding or party into the stratosphere.

I love it when people gather around the bandstand and call out requests.

Even people who don’t speak English know the words to “Fly Me To The Moon.”

Vintage music is as much fun today as it was when it was simply called…..music.

For a wedding or unique special event, there is no better form of entertainment.

At the high end of sophistication, nobody wants to have their conversation drowned out by a band that thinks it’s the main event…at a rock concert! Live wedding entertainment should mean a live band…too often anymore, the term is being used to connote that somebody hired a DJ!

And while that’s better than an ipod, because somebody is actually giving some thought to the music while it’s happening, there is nothing more musical than a live band.

Live, not loud. But far too many are. We see it all the time at the resorts where we’re booked and another band is playing down the hall…to an empty ballroom, while the guests try to make themselves very small in a corner of the vestibule. The band is playing loud dance music, but nobody’s dancing. What could these people be thinking?

This is not entertainment! It’s ego. Even during dinner, some of these people get carried away. From start to finish, a live band should never be so loud that guests at a wedding cannot talk…or hear themselves think.

That doesn’t mean the music should disappear, either. Live music with what we call “presence” is dependent upon excellent sound, and most wedding bands and DJ’s just don’t have a clue what that is.

It helps to have a reat sound system helps, one with more than the usual two settings of LOUD and OFF. But that’s really just the beginning. Acoustics are avery important. And if you don’t have the right acoustics it’s easy enough to create them. All it takes is planning, knowledge and experience. Like being savvy enough to know that it’s not smart to cram the dance floor right up against the stage. But I digress…

Who would have thought one would have to be a great sound engineer — and room design consultant –to deliver wedding entertainment at a high level? But we do. I mean, I do.

And there is no easy “fix” to great sound. The room, the ceilings, the walls, the furniture…all come into play as part of the equation.

It’s complicated.

Guest: We’ve never been to a wedding before where we could dance to the band, hear the music so well and still have a conversation!

I hear this comment all the time.

Long before the guests arrive, I’m in the ballroom setting up. The band is usually the first to arrive at an event and the last to leave.

And long before we ever arrive in the ballroom — or the garden, the private estate — I’ve reviewed seating charts, stage setups, dance floor proportions….and so much more.

Staging, sound design, dance floor placement, ballroom seating charts? What, you ask, do these have to do with a Los Angeles wedding band playing live music at a wedding?

Can’t a band just show up and play some music?

The musicians who perform in our Los Angeles wedding bands, jazz bands, swing bands and big band orchestra all know that for me — the person who does the “advance” work on the weddings and parties for which we play our outrageous brand of modern vintage music — the answer is a resounding NO!

We aim for a much better sound than what’s “out there” today in the world of wedding entertainment.

The is not “DJ sound,” folks.

There is no need for the band to be louder than the guests — or for the guests to have to run and hide in the vestibule outside of a hotel ballroom in order to get away from the music.

Live music is about subtlety and nuance, or at least it should be. And while our “sound” has a lot to do with the custom-designed sound system we use, it also has a lot to do with mastering and effecting staging and sound design that’s right for each setting. And each setting is different. Different, too, are the moods our clients want to create. But if they are opting for live music, they deserve to have something better than the two settings almost everyone in the wedding music business is using today: loud and off.

We hate that awful noise as much as you do. Frank SInatra would never have allowed it. Tony Bennett doesn’t allow it. I’ve been to his concerts, and he understands sound. Probably supervises it himself….

We don’t “fly” speakers from poles in the air, with loud sub-woofers aimed at people’s heads.

Our speakers go on the floor, and the sound we project is diffused in a way that fills the room and gives our performances “presence.” Up and out….you can hear it all over the room and it’s delightful.

You can talk while we’re playing, yet we’re not “background music.”

We put on a show, but you don’t have to be paying rapt attention to us in order to enjoy it. You can go outside and smoke a cigar…spread a blanket out under the stars and listen to the sounds wafting out from the ballroom…dance, talk, eat….and enjoy the music.

You can also dance to everything we play, if you want to. And if you don’t want to, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.

This is the way entertainment used to be presented at weddings — and even in nightclubs — when I was a little girl. Perhaps the singer on the stage was Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra. Maybe Benny Goodman’s band was playing. As I recall from my New York City childhood, those people weren’t up there with a “look at me, aren’t I great” attitude. The “house music” didn’t come on to drown our your thoughts and ruin your mood when they took a break, either.

There was no awful guitarist alternating with one of those bands…playing to “tracks” or performing live karaoke like we hear in restaurant after restaurant that professes to have “live entertainment” these days.

At Judy Chamberlain Orchestras and Entertainment, we do things the old-fashioned way, and that means when you hire one of our bands to perform live music for your wedding, party or special event you are going to have great sound. Not loud sound that drowns out your every thought, but great sound that allows for the nuances of live music to weave their magical spell.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to share these nuances, remembered from a time when bands were bands and nightclubs were nightclubs and hotel and DJ sound systems weren’t geared toward loud is better.

Because it’s not.

I recently had a terrific time collaborating on a first dance with a dance instructor in Tucson and a lovely couple whose wedding took place in late December in Arizona. There wasn’t a lot of time for dance lessons, but when the dancers are fast learners it makes things easier. We texted, e-mailed, sent carrier pidgeons back and forth and I timed the timed the sequence with the dance instructor over the phone, merging two distinct tempos.

Nine of us performed on a beautifully lit stage at a lovely resort in the Arizona desert.

Some weddings have a life of their own; this one was on fire! The bride and groom joined guests on the dance floor were on the dance floor seconds after they were announced — to the stirring strains of the Air Force Theme Song — dancing to “Cheek To Cheek” long before it was time for their official first dance.

Now THAT’s a wedding!

And it never slowed down from there.

Filled with heart and soul, lots of personality and and love, the lovely winter wedding was a thriller that united two very special families on an amazing night in a ballroom envisioned and designed by the father of the bride.

“We could actually DANCE to your music,” was a comment I heard all night.

And this: “We could actually carry on a conversation!”

“I felt like I was at a fairy-tale wedding,” one of the guests told me in the hotel lobby the next morning.

I’d have to agree. And the band had as much fun as the guests!

We’re classically trained jazz musicians with a swing sensibility and rock and roll souls. Known for playing the right music at the right time, we don’t use a lot of music onstage because we’re moving fast. Sometimes we’re moving REALLY fast!

We can take a bunch of songs that have nothing to do with each other, mix up the styles and genres, eras and decades and play a continuous medley of music for hours. Like our “forefathers”, the musicians who played in the Lester Lanin and Meyer Davis society wedding bands, we don’t have to slow down to turn pages in a book. We go with “the flow” and keep parties exciting, pacing with great tempos when people are dancing. Keeping the energy level interesting while staying under the level of conversation is a neat trick. We’re not loud, but we are a lot of fun. We improvise … because we can. And we never play anything the same way once.

Unless it’s your first dance.

For THAT, you’ll know exactly what to expect. Like a great song and dance team, you become part of us and we become part of you.

The song the couple chose to dance to was Michael Buble’s “Everything.” FABULOUS tune. They learned rumba steps to go with it. They also wanted to have a tempo change midway, so we planned that they would switch to a waltz as a surprise. We LOVE surprises; they are the stuff wedding memories are made of.

For the waltz, they decided on “Melody Of Love.” A beautiful, perfectwaltz, it was one of about a dozen I’d suggested, and my favorite of the batch. Written in 1903, with words added in 1954, it had been my parents “song” when they were married in the 1930’s.

Our three-way long-distance “rehearsal” had worked very well, and the result was flawless!

Of course, some people are just natural-born dancers.

We had a LOT of help in the form of musical creativity and planning expertise from the mother of the bride, who knows even more songs than I do!

Additional support and encouragement came from the father of the bride, who envisioned an intimate room rather than a sterile hotel ballroom and made it happen! The mother of the groom was a big help, too, rounding out the collaborative effor of putting together the “signature” dance songs.

For the bride’s dance with her father, we played “Young At Heart.” He is.

The groom and his mother danced to a rocked-out version of “Without A Song,” with the tempo choice specified by the musically-talented groom as he led his mom onto the floor.

It was GREAT!

For me, some of the most poignant and meaningful moments of the evening came when the bride’s parents danced to “Time After Time” — “time after time, I tell myself that I’m…so LUCKY to be loving you” — and the groom’s parents danced to “You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me.

A spectacular video presentation, FANTASTIC lighting from a local lighting wizard, food service by an amazing catering department at the Westin La Paloma in Tucson — and added expertise provided by the groom’s brother, a video producer who has radar antennae growing out of his tuxedo lapels all contributed to the perfection of the evening.

For the last dance, we played “Destination Moon,” sending the couple off on the groom’s “rocket ship” for a “supersonic honeymoon” …wherever it was they were going.

That’s a joke, ok?

But being something of an “original,” the standards we play are not at all in the “cover band” category.

To us, happiness is no longer having to apologize for not being a “Top 40″ band. Evidently, a lot of people don’t want to hear that music anymore from a live band.

So we are thrilled when our clinets tell us:

“I don’t want to be like other brides.”

“Please don’t play the same songs everyone plays at weddings.”

“Nothing cheesy, schmaltzy, old or dated.”

“DO NOT play that awful 1980’s crap.”

“If we hear ‘Celebrate’ one more time at a wedding, we’re going to SCREAM.”

“We don’t care as much about dancing as we do having an elegant party with great food and good conversation.”

“We just want our guests to have a good time.”

“We want our wedding music to reflect our personalities.”

“Help! We have no idea what we want…but we know we want it to be good.”

“We think music can carry the day.

“Please make everything you play really your own.”

“We hired you because you’re NOT a cover band.”

Clearly, something is changing out there.

People who have the taste level and desire to utilize live music for their wedding, special event or corporate function are looking for something really special.

We can play hip hop on our CD player. Our CD player is even bi-lingual. We use it for breaks. But when it comes to LIVE MUSIC, there seems to be a trend back to….well, REALLy live music.

The music we call “the good stuff.”

And they want it played the way it’s supposed to be played…the way we’ve always played it…with passion, spirit and skillfully improvised originality. Fresh takes on the standards.

The standards!

Yay!