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Comprehensive three disc set complete with a 28-page booklet richly illustrated by period photographs; reminiscences from the record producer Rod Gammons and live show director Nica Burns, as well as an introductory word from Eartha's daughter Kitt Shapiro. Recorded at the height of her powers in 1989, 'I'm Still Here' was an engaging and inventive studio album combining electronic pop with her signature cabaret brilliance. This expanded re-issue of that album contains five collaborations with celebrated synth-pop act Bronski Beat on different versions of Eartha's chart hit, 'Cha Cha Heels' (UK #32) and on the deft, jazz-styled "battle of the sexes" provocation of 'My Discarded Men'. Plus the extended and edit versions of '80s electronic music pioneer and Art Of Noise founding member JJ Jeczalik's remix of 'Primitive Man' as two of the album's six bonus tracks. The set also includes two ebullient, fully fledged orchestrations; the title track 'I'm Still Here' written by musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim and the medley 'All By Myself' / 'Beautiful At Forty' which couples 'All By Myself', the Eric Carmen-penned cabaret standard based on classical composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor', with Eartha Kitt's heartfelt, self-written, musically backed poem, 'Beautiful At Forty', that pays tribute to her own survival through personal adversities in a verse-form celebration of ageing with grace and dignity. Discs two and three provide a stunning record of one of her more memorable theatre residencies when she performed with full orchestra for a couple of weeks in 1989 in London's Shaftesbury Theatre in an unforgettable two act stage-show directed by Nica Burns. The 20 song extravaganza was a mix of Eartha's own career defining chart hits - 'Just An Old Fashioned Girl', 'I Want To Be Evil' 'Uska Dara' & 'C'est Si Bon' - alongside evergreen cabaret standards like 'Here's To Life' and Jacques Brel's 'Ne Me Quitte Pas', as well as a few unforgettable surprises like her rendition of Edith Piaf's 'Hymn To Love', a touching re-reading of Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' and an inventive orchestration of her early '80s Hi-NRG club hit 'Where Is My Man?' which was written for her by celebrated Village People producer Jacques Morali. These discs celebrate Eartha's unique gift as an interpreter of song and as a live tour-de-force on a veritable treasury of song from the celebrated, and much missed, pop/cabaret superstar whose consummate performative skills and emotional investment across this diverse repertoire, makes every song unmistakably and thrillingly her own!
Eartha Kitt