PHOTOS: (Above) Streisand and Don Costa in the recording studio; (Below) An early advertisement for this album with a 'working title' of Act Two.
My Name Is Barbra, Two... was released October 1965 to coincide with the rebroadcast of Barbra’s first television special on CBS.
Two followed the trend set by the previous My Name is Barbra album – it contained mostly songs which were not on the TV special—only “Second Hand Rose” and the “Poverty Medley,” which closes the album, were sung by Streisand on TV. The medley was a big selling point for the second album – the back cover featured photos of Barbra in Bergdorf Goodman department store. The back cover also declared that My Name is Barbra was an Emmy award winning TV show (Barbra won the Emmy the previous month, September 1965).
Columbia released “He Touched Me” as a single (Columbia #4-43403) about a month before this album came out. The song was from the Broadway production of Drat! The Cat!, a musical with music by Milton Schafer and lyrics by Ira Levin. Elliott Gould sang “She Touched Me” in the show.
“The Shadow of Your Smile” (which has become a jazz standard) was the theme song for the 1965 Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton film, The Sandpiper. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1966.
“Quiet Night” is from the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical, On Your Toes. Incidentally, “Quiet Night” was recorded by Barbra at an earlier session on August 4, 1964.
“How Much of the Dream Comes True” was written by film composer John Barry, with lyrics by Trevor Peacock. It was from their West End musical, Passion Flower Hotel, about a young girl attending an English girls' boarding school. The girls decide to lose their virginity by luring the boys from the school from across the lake. (A musical about girls losing their virginity!) The show opened at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, England on July 30, 1965 and transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre, London, on August 24, 1965. (Streisand performed Funny Girl at the Prince of Wales in March 1966.) Besides having London in common with John Barry at the time, Streisand's manager, Marty Erlichman, also began representing Barry in 1965.
“Second Hand Rose” by James Hanley, with lyrics by Grant Clarke, was first recorded and performed by Fanny Brice in 1921.
Barbra recorded Peter Matz’s arrangement of “The Kind of Man a Woman Needs” back in February 1965. It is another song from the score of The Yearling by Barbra’s friends Michael Leonard and Hugh Martin.
Composer Neil Wolfe wrote “All That I Want.” The song was originally recorded by Wolfe as a 45-rpm single for Columbia, titled “Barbra” (Columbia #4-43291). Later, Francine Forest wrote lyrics to the melody. Wolfe and his band opened for Barbra at Forest Hills in 1965. He also recorded a Columbia Records tribute album called Piano For Barbra (# CS 9600) in which he covered Streisand's best-known songs of the time.
Barbra included another Rodgers and Hart song on the album – “Where’s That Rainbow?,” from the 1927 musical Peggy-Ann.
Songwriting team David Shire and Richard Maltby contributed “No More Songs For Me” to My Name is Barbra, Two. Shire was the pit pianist for Funny Girl on Broadway, and served as Barbra's accompanist. Streisand recorded other Maltby/Shire songs: “Autumn”, “Starting Here, Starting Now,” “The Morning After” and “What About Today?”
The “Poverty Medley” which closes the album was pre-recorded in March, before Streisand and crew taped the segment at Bergdorf Goodman. They have edited the track for length on this album, cutting out the dance music before “Give Me the Simple Life” and during “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.”
