Release date: August 7th, 2007
The 1987 release of of Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, featuring some of Leonard Cohen’s most significant work performed, musically revised, and reinterpreted by Jennifer Warnes, was not only a critical and popular success but is widely credited with introducing Cohen’s music to a large, dégagé, if not completely Cohen-naive, audience who found Warnes’ presentation more winsome than his trademark growl.
Her voice is like the California weather - filled with sunlight,
but there’s an earthquake behind it.Leonard Cohen
By 1987, Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen already had a well established friendship and musical relationship dating back to 1970. She was a back-up singer during his European tours and a guest vocalist on Live Songs, Various Positions, I’m Your Man, and The Future. She also recorded The Smokey Life as a duet with Cohen on his Recent Songs album.
Jennifer Warnes
Jennifer Warnes scored her first hit in 1977 with the single, Right Time of the Night, which occupied the #1 slot on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, reached as high as #6 on the Hot 100, was used in the background music of When Harry Met Sally, and sold over 900,000 copies.
She has been especially successful performing music for movies. In 1980 she sang the Academy Award winner for Best Original Song, It Goes Like It Goes, from the motion picture, Norma Rae (1979).
Her 1981 performance of Randy Newman’s “One More Hour” in the soundtrack album from Ragtime was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 1982, she sang a memorable version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Up Where We Belong with Joe Cocker for An Officer and a Gentleman. Released as a single, Up Where We Belong hit #1 for 3 consecutive weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and sold over 2 million copies. In 1983 her duet with Cocker won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
In 1983, she teamed up with Bill Medley for (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack album. That song reached #1 on both the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and the Hot 100 as well as winning the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
She has recorded songs in many other films, performed James Taylor’s Millworker in the American Playhouse production of Working on PBS, sung background vocals with k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt for Roy Orbison’s television special A Black and White Night, and paired with B. J. Thomas to perform the theme song for Growing Pains.
The Reissued Album
As one would expect, the 20th Anniversary Edition of Famous Blue Raincoat is remastered from the original analog master tapes.
Especially noteworthy among the album’s tracks are the guitar work by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robben Ford on the opening song, First We Take Manhattan, Warnes’ vocalizations on Bird On A Wire (arguably the highlight of the album), and, of course, the duet with Cohen on the studio version of Joan of Arc.
Track Listing from Famous Blue Raincoat: 20th Anniversary Edition
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1. First We Take Manhattan
2. Bird On A Wire
3. Famous Blue Raincoat
4. Joan Of Arc (with guest vocal by Leonard Cohen)
5. Ain’t No Cure For Love
6. Coming Back To You
7. Song Of Bernadette
8. A Singer Must Die
9. Came So Far For Beauty
Previously Unreleased Recordings
10. Night Comes On
11. Ballad of the Runaway Horse
12. If It Be Your Will (reprise)
13. Joan of Arc (live in Belgium)
is scheduled for release August 7, 2007
