Recordings from Judy Garland 1967 concert on the Boston Common have been posted to the Yahoo version of The Judy Garland Experience. Judy is in top form as she performs before an enthusiastic audience.
Here are a few reviews from the concert that I found on the live performances site:
Part waif... And All Heart... That's Judy by Gloria Negri - The Boston Evening Globe 09/01/67
She stood there, a small figure in a gold-and-green sequined pants suit, part woman, part waif, and all heart. "We Love ya, Judy!" voices called out in the dark from among the 100,000 Judy worshippers who jammed Boston Common and spilled out into downtown streets last night. "I love you, too." Judy whispered back through the mike. Then, she blew them kisses, first with one hand, then with the other. Arms flung open, she symbolically enveloped them all. "I want you all to come up to my room after the performance." Judy told them. Earth Mother, Soul Sister, Living Legend. Judy Garland is all these things to people.
Boston's mayor, John F. Collins, seated next to Mrs. John A. Volpe, the feeling when he presented Judy with a Paul Revere bowl. "Ordinarily," he told her, "I'm called Mayor Collins," But tonight I'm just one of your 100,000 fans." Judy stopped over from the 20-foot long runway from which she sang and bestowed a kiss on the mayors cheek, and he looked pleased as Punch. Leaving early to avoid the crowds, the mayor stopped in his tracks when Bobby Cole's orchestra struck up the last number. "I'm not going to leave if she's going to sing some more," the mayor told his police escort. And he stayed.
Like a rush of river in a Spring thaw and just as inevitable, it came. HER song. Legs tucked under her, she sat on the runway and belted it out for who-knows-how-many times. "Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high." Incandescent she is. "Don't sing. Just stand there, Judy!" a man yelled to her when she paused between numbers. The beatniks were there, but so were the bankers, the matrons and the kids. Garland has captured the children, just as she captured their parents.
Familiar Blockbuster Magic Uncommonly Delightful By Ernie Santosuosso - Boston Morning Globe 09/01/67
"It was as if her voice had come out of the long years past. It was as biting crisp and burnished brass. At times it was a quasi-echo of Dorothy, from THE WIZARD OF OZ. Then it became a return visit with Polly Benedict of "The Andy Hardy" movies. Her pipes, as awesome as those in the Mormon Tabernacle, quivered here and there with a vibrato that never used to be there. She may have slid momentarily over the right key. But, in the sum total of her performance Thursday night at the Boston Common, Judy Garland delivered with her familiar blockbuster magic. Judy had come to Boston as a 'reverse' birthday gift to the City of Boston in this mammoth concert on the green. While Miss Garland invariably dipped into a comfortable bag of personal winners, it seemed she did it less out of convenience and more from shrewd sense of what her thousands of listeners wanted. The Garland story is for many millions of Americans the incredible fable of the girl who won, lost, won again, lost again and tried even harder with the determination of a snarling tigress. People find it easy to identify with Judy. Combine with that her talent and Miss Garland is everybody's sweetheart.
The Garland voice is a powerfully dramatic instrument. It can leave the blasé a-tremble, can stir the apathetic to cheers and never fails to mobilize a sort of musical catharsis in the multitude. After a psychological warm-up via an orchestral medley...out came Judy. When the screams of "Judy, Judy, Judy!" subsided, she strutted out on the red-carpeted 20-foot runway and wheeled into I FEEL A SONG COMING ON. She belted this all the way to the Parkman Bandstand. On the last chorus of THIS CAN'T BE LOVE, she literally growled the restatement of the theme; she opened JUST IN TIME at a wily stroll and gathered a full head of steam to bring it home.
Meanwhile, the I-love-you-Judy's were raining over the Common like wildly swirling butterflies. Judy responded in kind, always busy on stage. In response to the pleadings of many fans, she replied, I'll get to OVER THE RAINBOW. I always get to OVER THE RAINBOW." (In between her conversational sallies into the night, she shooed camera men who were obstructing the view of the audience.) There was a special white-hot incandescence in her version of Gilbert Becaud's WHAT NOW MY LOVE. For Judy, it was a new song, although it's been performed and recorded since 1942 by many artists.
Thursday's crowd came to hear the ear splitting RKO-type ending that is the Garland signature. In WHAT NOW MY LOVE, Judy kept stroking the blazes to a relentless bolero tempo until the Common exploded from the combustion of voice kindling song. (When the cheers had ceased a close-up transistorized individual yelled out a contrapuntal, "Red Sox leading 2 to 1") After Judy, playing the audience like a metronome, had called out: "I wish you would sing one for me, so I could take a rest." a youngster called out from the Charles ST. flank: "Take your time, we'll wait all night." The audience reciprocated with HELLO, JUDY as they had earlier vocalized on FOR ME AND MY GAL, an un-Common sing-along. On THE TROLLEY SONG she swayed and gestured full-fisted to the end of the line; sang "something new for me," a Jobim bossa nova, HOW INSENSITIVE, swept out over the night with YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU and snapped the whip again on ROCKABYE. She had fun with the verse of SAN FRANCISCO, wheeled into SWANEE and crowned the evening with OVER THE RAINBOW.
No more Dorothy. Polly Benedict is mere legend. The voice is not always true, but the duende -- that blockbusting magic is still part of the Judy Garland package.
