Judy_at_Carnegie_Hall
Judy at Carnegie Hall
1961 live album by Judy Garland
Judy at Carnegie Hall is a double-LP (re-released decades later as an extended, two-disc CD) live recording of a concert by Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall in New York, with backing orchestra led by Mort Lindsey. This concert appearance, on the night of Sunday April 23, 1961, has been called "the greatest night in show business history".[3][by whom?]
Garland's live performances were a big success at the time and her record company wanted to capture that energy onto a recording. The double album became a smash, both critically and commercially.
The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making Garland the first woman to win the award, and spent thirteen weeks at #1 on the Billboard album chart.
Garland's career had moved from movies in the 1940s to vaudeville and elaborate stage shows in the 1950s. She also suffered from drug and alcohol abuse, and, by 1959, had become overweight and ill and needed extensive medical treatment. After a long convalescence, weight loss, and vocal rest, she returned in 1960 to the concert stage with a simple program of "just Judy," omitting the vaudeville and comic acts that usually preceded her. Garland's 1960–1961 tour of Europe and North America was a success, and her stage presence was highly regarded. At the time Garland was billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer." Audiences were documented as leaving their seats and crowding around the stage to be closer to Garland, and often called her back for encore after encore, even asking her to repeat a song after her book of arrangements was completed.