Lot 52
Barbra Streisand's First Recording, 1961
This privately-pressed demo is believed to be the only one in existence. It contains renditions of two of Barbra Streisand’s all-time classics that can be heard nowhere else in the world – “I Stayed Too Long at the Fair” and Cole Porter’s “The Supermarket in Old Peking”.
In the early 1960s, the consignor ran a public relations firm specializing in publicizing companies and personalities in radio and television. One client was a television show owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting called PM East, which ran 1960-61, and one of the hosts was Mike Wallace. A regular guest on the show was the young Barbra Streisand, who sang and was known for her “wacky discussions and brash attitude”.
The consignor came to know her through her growing importance as a media figure on the television program at the time, and when Ms. Streisand had an emergency at the apartment where she lived – which had been sublet and re-sublet in a long chain — he was able to help her when the landlord asked her to leave immediately. After they piled all her belongings into an open convertible, she moved into the consignor’s office, which was actually an apartment residence, where she lived for about a year. After some time had passed, Ms. Streisand’s manager, Marty Erlichman, appointed the consignor’s company as her publicity representative. Of the many biographies written about Barbra Streisand have been written and almost all of them have chapters or passages detailing this period of Barbra Streisand’s life.
In 1962, Ms. Streisand began pursuing a recording contract and made a demo record, pressing ten copies. It was cut at Fine Recording, a little audio studio on West 57th Street in New York City, which has long been out of business. The demos were sent to the major record companies of the time: Decca, RCA Victor, MGM, and Columbia Records. She gave one demo to the consignor, and it was kept in a vault for almost half a century.
Barbra Streisand has had a remarkable, decade-spanning career, and is one of the most famous American singers of all time. She has won eight Grammys and sold tens of millions of records world-wide, including 51 gold and 30 platinum albums in the United States alone. In addition to singing, she is also an award-winning actress and director, as well as having earned highest honors for stage, broadcast, and songwriting achievement. She is most famous for her movies Funny Girl, 1968, Hello Dolly, 1969, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, 1970, The Way We Were, 1973, and Yentl, 1983.
Estimate: $10,000 - $20,000