When Capitol Records signed 17-year-old
Liza Minnelli to a contract in the wake of her appearance in the Off-Broadway musical Best Foot Forward in the spring of 1963, the label was, of course, taking on the talented daughter of one of its major artists,
Judy Garland, and it may have intended to come up with a performer to counter Columbia Records' new star
Barbra Streisand. After a couple of singles in 1963,
Minnelli went into the studio with
Streisand's arranger/conductor
Peter Matz in June 1964 and came out three months later with
Liza! Liza!, her debut LP. As in
Matz's work with
Streisand, the arrangements were inventive with occasional touches of humor. "Together Wherever We Go" from Gypsy, for example, was recast as a ballad, while the Rodgers & Hart standard "Blue Moon" began and ended with a twanging electric guitar, in between boasting a brass section as it turned into a medley with "Taking a Chance on Love." And "I'm All I've Got" was a frisky novelty number that showed off
Minnelli's comic abilities. But the heart of the album was its ballads, on which
Minnelli, to nobody's surprise, sounded a lot like a younger version of her mother, singing with a combination of emotional sensitivity and nearly unbridled power. She showed a special affinity for songs by
John Kander and
Fred Ebb, including the melancholy "If I Were in Your Shoes" and the hopeful, vulnerable "Maybe This Time." The latter would go on to become a signature song for her when it was interpolated into the movie version of Cabaret in 1972, but in 1964 she was already singing it with fervor. Another highlight was "The Travelin' Life," an early composition by her friend
Marvin Hamlisch that could have served as a musical autobiography, given her peripatetic childhood. ~ William Ruhlmann