ladiesvoices
Fabulous Friday - - "I wanna be around"
Happy Friday! Today we have the late great Eydie Gormé singing "I wanna be around" on The Tonight Show in 1996. Everything about this is simply fabulous!
The song
Her performance of the song
Her wig (I refuse to believe that's her hair)
The bow in her wig
The false eyelashes
The dress
The POW POW POW of the sequins
Her handling of the microphone
Two things that you might not notice, and I'm so happy to point out to you (I've probably watched this around thirty times, so I've picked up on some nuances there). There's a close-up of her around 0:40. She's facing forward and the camera is off to the side. She continues looking straight ahead but you can see her eyes darting over to the camera now and then. With skepticism.
She finishes a full run-through of the song around 1:40 and the band does a key change, ramping up to a repeat of the final section. She's spent the whole song standing still or shuffling around a bit in one square foot of the stage. Well, at the key change, she takes four steps forward, and it's the most thrilling thing ever! I wonder (a) if someone told her to do that, (b) she came up with it on her own, or (c) it was completely instinctive and not at all planned. It cracks me up every time.