Thinking about Matt

[lori]

Don't know why this occured to me... I was just wondering.. Since he was traveling most of the time .. Did he memorize his music .. With every song he sang with perfection.. and always with a very receptive live audience. He was so into his music.. the words probebly came so easy to him. I don't know that anyone would have an answer to my qiestion. But it doesn't really matter .. Matt is always singing .....

[mariana44]

Michele might now the answer--I would guess that he memorised most of the songs.

[keithgood838]

I think this is an interesting topic, Lori and Marian(a).
When watching a live performance I am always in awe
of singers who sing song after song, perhaps 20 per
appearance and never stumble over a lyric or simply
lose the thread thereof. Songs of Matt's such as What To Do?
and Somewhere are numbers whose word order
is fraught with pitfalls. Yet they obviously all sing from memory.
Tony Bennett is case in point, a man in his 80s who is
always word perfect. Professionalism writ large.
Keith

[paul jh]

I'm sure that Matt Monro memorised his lyrics for performances. I remember Michele showing us a clip of him singing This Is All I Ask. I am very familiar with the lyrics and am certain he got several of the phrases reversed. It just didn't seem correct and it affected the overall theme of the song. This can happen fairly often with singers, but usually no one notices.

Many years ago I accompanied a singer on Memory from Cats at programme at a theatre in Washington. She would often forget part of the lyrics and make things up as she went along. A friend from work attended the concert. Being a perfectionist, he mentioned later that he wasn't familiar with the some of the lyrics she sang. Rather than telling him she made them up, I simply said that they were the original lyrics from the English production. He totally bought that explanation.

[Marian]

Jack Jones often forgets his lyrics and it has become part of his performance.

[paul jh]

And we have (live from Berlin) the very best version of Mack the Knife where Ella Fitzgerald forgets an entire verse and has great fun with it.

[Lena & Harry Smith]

Sinatra done both, he often added some of his own words much to the annoyance of some critics, but then forgot words in his twilight performances.

[mariana44]

I have been to many concerts of Johnny Mathis where he forgets the words-even to something as familiar as "Misty"--he tends to make a joke of it--one time he was singing "Tonight I celebrate my love for you" [never recorded], and started by singing the first verse only-the 2nd night he tried to finish the song--got completely lost--improvised by singing "Tonight--I'm never going to sing a new song"--turned to his guitarist, Gil, and asked--"What was that word again Gil."--and it ended up with them both in hysterics-as was the audience--it was just so funny.

He sang it perfectly the following night.

By the way, the reason that he did not know it was that 2 of my friends requested he sing it, and they dashed all over London, to find the sheet music of it--so he did not really know the song.

[lori]

Thankyou all so much for all of your comments.... so apptrciated .. I guess t he reason I thought about it ... Matt sang as I 've said before to perfection. And I do believe he made every song so personal he was able to capture the words with little trouble. I feel he made every song his very own One would think I really love this man... !!