Masonic Temple, San Francisco 1963

Streisand / LIVE 

Masonic Temple (1963)

San Francisco, California

December 6, 1963
When Barbra Streisand performed a series of one-night concerts in December 1963 to promote The Second Barbra Streisand Album, Marty Erlichman worked with West Coast jazz promoter Irving Granz. Granz was the brother of Jazz at the Philharmonic’s Norman Granz.

The music for the four shows (San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) was under the direction of Barbra’s pianist Peter Daniels but utilized the Jerry Gray orchestra. Jerry Gray arranged and played with the bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. Gray and his orchestra was used to accompanying singers – they played for Judy Garland on her short concert tour in 1955.

Variety reported that for these shows Streisand earned a flat $8,000 fee per night against 50%. The deal was that Streisand’s Barbell Enterprises provided and paid the expenses of the Jerry Gray Orchestra.
Ad for Streisand's show at San Francisco's Masonic Temple
Barbra Streisand played San Francisco's Masonic Temple—on Nob Hill, with well over 2,000 seats—the night after her Sacramento concert. The Freemasons erected the hall in 1957 and it hosted mostly concerts and lectures.

The Oakland Tribune’s reviewer noted the sold-out show was marred by bad sound in the first half – which began with the Jerry Gray Orchestra (sans Mr. Gray that evening) starting off with a medley of Glenn Miller songs. After about 15 minutes, Streisand came on stage “with a string section to augment Gray’s 12 musicians.” She was wearing a long grey skirt with slits on each side, and a white blouse.

For the second half, Streisand arrived on stage wearing a “jet black sequined evening gown.”

Barbra won over The San Francisco Examiner’s reviewer, who wrote: “In off-beat Broadway show tunes, in frivolous numbers like ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’, in her indifference to conventional stage manners, Miss Streisand achieved the same winning blend of tongue-in-cheek sophistication and madcap individualism that marked some of yesterday’s most loved performers.”

Variety reported Streisand's show at the Temple grossed $13,300 — ticket prices ranged from $2.75 to $4.75.

“Barbra Streisand's concert Saturday night was a rare and stunning performance, not for what she did but for its effect upon her audience.

Miss Streisand is a young woman whose accomplished singing voice, brazen assurance and kookie iridescence catapulted her from Brooklyn into a Broadway musical within a matter of months ...

The songs she sang also bore the mark of careful professional attention, even to the point—as on ‘Cry Me a River’—of contrivance. Yet on ballads like ‘Color Him Gray’ and ‘Who Will Buy?’ she established a consistently tender mood.

Her belting treatment of ‘Lovin’ Arms’ and tongue-in-cheek version of ‘Lover Come Back To Me’ won ovations and, together with the mimicry and comedy involved in other numbers attested to her versatility.”

... Oakland Tribune review by Russ Wilson, December 9, 1963

End / San Francisco Masonic Temple / BACK TO LIVE

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