Erik Leuthäuser feat. Ken Peplowski - Where Do You Start? (J. Mandel, Alan & Marilyn Bergman) 2025

Описание: Artist: Erik Leuthäuser
Album Name: Quality Time In NYC (Double Moon Records DMCHR 71460)
Featuring Alan Broadbent, Ken Peplowski, Allen Farnham, Steve LaSpina & Rich DeRosa

Musicians:
Erik Leuthäuser/vocals
Allen Farnham/piano
Steve LaSpina/double bass
Rich DeRosa/drums
Ken Peplowski/clarinet

Track:
Where Do You Start?
(Johnny Mandel, Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman)

Recorded at Teaneck Sound, New Jersey, United States May 10th, 2021
Mixed & Mastered by David Kowalski http://www.davidkowalski.com/
Produced by Erik Leuthäuser & Volker Dueck
Product coordination by Natasja Wallenburg
Artwork by Juan Carlos Villarroël
Photos by Cy Klock
Styling by Erik Leuthäuser & Konstantinos Giannakopoulos

Dedication:
This album is dedicated to two of my favorite singers: Susannah McCorkle & Irene Kral!

Liner Notes by James Gavin:
The 1970s through the ‘90s were a golden age of cabaret-jazz, a style perfected by a sophisticated breed of saloon singers. They combined a jazz sensibility and a hunger for songs that comment on life in witty, literate, unpredictable ways.
This American art has found a surprising guardian in Erik Leuthäuser, a German-born, Berlin-based singer with a boyish sweetness (he was born in 1996) and an old soul. He delivers lyrics with immaculate musicality, warmth, and no frills; his vocal gifts (which include perfect English diction) always serve the stories at hand. Few American singers can surpass his flair for finding obscure and exceptional material.
Recorded in New York, this album was inspired by two remarkable singers who thrived “at that intersection of jazz and cabaret,” as Erik calls it. He had already celebrated one of them, along with her favorite accompanist, on the album In the Land of Irene Kral and Alan Broadbent. There Erik put a unique spin on the repertoire of a sardonic, incisive singers’ singer and a telepathically sensitive pianist and arranger. Broadbent played on three of Kral’s LPs, notably their Grammy-nominated 1974 duo collaboration Where Is Love?. Erik sought him out, and now you’ll get to hear the two of them performing together in the same piano-voice format.
Susannah McCorkle is another of Erik’s fascinations. Brainy, passionate, and discerning, Susannah released 18 albums before she took her own life in 2001 at age 55. “I have a special fascination with Susannah—her approach to finding every nuance in a lyric, her choice of repertoire and musicians,” says Erik. “She never seemed pretentious; she was always so honest.”
The same could be said of Irene, although unlike Susannah she was no romantic; instead she dealt in the hard, unsweetened truth. (She certainly faced it in life: Irene battled cancer for years, and died of it at 46.) But when Erik sings “Where Is Love?,” the title song of the musical Oliver, his singing bursts with the idealism of youth and hope. Happily he lives in an age when male vocalists can sing love songs explicitly to men, as he has always done.
The rarer tunes he brought to Alan include “I Just Can’t Wait to See You,” written for Carmen McRae by Mark Franklin, the longtime accompanist of singer Marilyn Maye. (Franklin died of AIDS in 1986.) Betty Grable introduced “My Heart Tells Me” in the 1943 film musical Sweet Rosie O’Grady. Erik and Alan capture the bittersweet mixture of longing and fear that can haunt the start of a relationship.
The second half of the album is a valentine to Susannah. It’s bolstered by the presence of four of her best musicians, among them pianist Alan Farnham. “I’m Pulling Through” was Susannah’s declaration of strength; she had learned it from her idol Billie Holiday. “Rain Sometimes” is a mid-‘60s composition of standard quality by Arthur Hamilton of “Cry Me a River” fame.
Erik shares Susannah’s bravery in tackling “Scars,” one of the rawest admissions of human frailty ever written. It came from the acerbic Beat-era lyricist and poet Fran Landesman and Simon Wallace, her composing partner from 1994 until her death in 2011. “Scars” appears on Susannah’s last album along with two other Landesman-Wallace songs; Erik performs them all here. As a bonus salute to classic American jazz, he sings his original German vocalese lyric to “Little Willie Leaps,” one of Miles Davis’s first trademarks.
This album is an impressive achievement by a vocal unicorn who walks a path like no other.

James Gavin, New York City, 2025
[James Gavin’s books include biographies of Chet Baker, Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, and George Michael.]

Thx to: Konstantinos Giannakopoulos, Céline Rudolph, Ben Cassara, Ronny Whyte, David Kowalski, James Gavin, Volker Dueck & all musicians on this album: Recording this music in memory of Susannah McCorkle & Irene Kral with such outstanding musicians was a dream come true!