Free Bette Midler by Mark Bego Page A

the wittiest musical performance I’d ever seen. It was striking to see such innate elegance and good taste in someone who superficially appeared not to have elegance or good taste. You know, she never EMBARRASSED onstage” ( 4 ).
    So much for taste and elegance—Ertegun was blown away by what he saw on the stage at Downstairs at the Upstairs that night. “I went to her dressing room after her show and said, ‘Listen, I’m Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic Records, and I would like to sign you.’ She said, ‘That’s it! That’s what I’ve been waiting for.’ I signed her the next day” ( 40 ). It wasn’t long afterward that she went into the studio to begin to record the album that would let the whole world know about the outrageous redhead who began in the Baths.
    The gig at Downstairs at the Upstairs was truly the one that was the charm. In the October 3, 1971, issue of the
New York Times
, Bette received her first major review. Written by John S. Wilson, it really captured her strengths and her weak points at that time. Wilson admitted, “She has presence, she has a fine voice, she has wit and total mobility, including an unusually expressive face.” However, with all of her divergent musical styles, he felt “she never clarifies what she is trying to do.” In spite of that, he pointed out that, his opinion notwithstanding, “The night I saw her, the audience had no doubts; they thought she was absolutely wonderful” ( 41 ).
    Ahmet Ertegun couldn’t wait to get her into the recording studio, but what was he going to do with her when he got her there? Ballads? Boogie-woogie? Rock & roll? Early sixties girl-group pop? “She posed a great problem,” he admitted, “because she didn’t fit into any categories; it’s very hard to make a record that doesn’t fit into any categories, it’s
very
hard to make a record that doesn’t fit into any category and then find an audience. Also, it was obvious that a lot of her appeal was her onstage magic. So there were lots of different theories as to what to do with her, and her first album was a compromise between people tearing her in different directions” ( 4 ).
    Atlantic Records was not only the label that Bette’s idol Aretha Franklin currently recorded for; it was also the home of one of themusic industry’s newest success stories: Roberta Flack. Roberta had been singing in a Washington, D.C., jazz club and had become a local sensation. She was signed to Atlantic and put into the recording studio with a producer who was working for the label: Joel Dorn. Dorn’s success with Roberta’s first albums, and his ability to recapture the intimate magic that existed between Flack and her audience at the Bohemian Caverns in D.C., made him seem the ideal person to turn the diva of the Continental Baths into a recording star.
    Joel Dorn was the perfect producer for Roberta Flack. The song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” brilliantly illustrates this fact. At the time Roberta was projecting the image of a very focused jazz and ballad singer who accompanied herself on the piano. Dorn was great at showing off Flack and her music and its delicate and intricate sound. While several songs in Bette’s repertoire were heartfelt ballads, there was nothing intricate or delicate about her sound, her music, or her appeal.
    Barry Manilow felt that since it was he who had polished Bette’s stage act and done all of her arrangements, he should also be given a chance at producing her in the studio. He was quite disappointed when he learned that Dorn had been selected as Bette’s producer.
    “Bette’s first album was the most painful experience of my life,” remembers Manilow. “They never wanted me to produce it. They got Joel Dorn, a fantastic producer who unfortunately did not know her well enough. I was called in at the very beginning, to lay down the basic arrangements, and they said, ‘Thank you very much. Good-bye.’ So I left. I was very mad, but I left. It