A Happening in Central Park was performed and taped by video cameras on Saturday, June 17, 1967. The concert, sponsored by Rheingold Beer, and free to the public, was held in the Sheep Meadow section of New York City's Central Park. CBS aired a television special of the concert on September 15, 1968. Columbia Records released the album of the concert to coincide with the airing of the TV show.
Even though the 1967 concert ran over two hours in length, the 1968 CBS video amounted to about 50-minutes of airtime, and Columbia’s album included around 35 minutes of the material.
Barbra’s set list for the Central Park concert was similar to the concerts she was giving in 1966, and, later, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967. For Central Park, though, Barbra did perform two new songs which she never recorded for any other album.
About “Love Is Like A Newborn Child”
Oscar Brown, Jr. recorded four albums for Columbia Records, and “Love Is Like A Newborn Child” appeared on his 1962 album, Between Heaven and Hell (and was arranged by Quincy Jones). The song originated in a 1961 Broadway-bound musical, Kicks & Co., written by Brown about a college campus in the South during segregation. It starred Burgess Meredith as a Satan-like character and featured Nichelle Nichols — before she portrayed Uhura on Star Trek.
About “Natural Sounds”
One of the most beautiful songs Barbra sang at this concert was “Natural Sounds” by Lan O'Kun from the musical The Juggler — which was unproduced. The musical concerned a street performer who has only his talents as a juggler to offer to a statue of the Virgin Mary as a Christmas present. This medieval religious miracle story by French writer Anatole France (1892) tells that the statue came to life.
O'Kun wrote other songs for Streisand in the 1960s and 1970s: “The Minute Waltz,” “The Best Gift,” and “Piano Practicing.”
Lan O'Kun later wrote the screenplay for a 1982 non-musical telemovie titled The Juggler of Notre Dame, which—coincidentally—starred Melinda Dillon as the Virgin Mary sculptor’s transient sister who is redeemed at the end of the movie. Dillon played Tom Wingo's sister in Barbra Streisand's film The Prince of Tides.
