Mort Shuman - Amsterdam

Mort Shuman is best known as being half of one of the great Brill Building songwriting teams in early rock and roll. With his partner Doc Pomus, he crafted songs for many of the great acts of the era. But a few years later he became interested in the work of the French singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, and began working to promote him in the US. Shuman began to provide English translations for Brel's French lyrics, and eventually became part of a group that put together a review called "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," which ran for a long time off-Broadway. To top it off, he became one of the four performers who sang the songs every night. Here he sings Brel's "Amsterdam," an intense and grim portrait of life in the less-than-pretty parts of a port town.