“Song Sung Blue” stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as real-life Milwaukee couple Mike and Claire Sardina, who made a local name for themselves with their Neil Diamond tribute act Lightning & Thunder. Licensing the use of Diamond’s music would typically be job number one for Emmy-winning music supervisor Trygge Toven (“Fallout”), but in this case, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder improbably paved the way.
“It’s crazy, but I believe Eddie initially helped get Neil on board with the documentary side to get the rights,” said Toven, referring to the 2008 Lightning & Thunder documentary, also titled “Song Sung Blue,” that inspired writer/director Craig Brewer to remake the story as a song-packed feature film.
For the scripted version, producer John Davis secured the licensing rights by calling in a big favor — from his mom. “The story I’ve been told is that John’s mother knew Neil Diamond, so he asked her to get his blessings. I still had to clear the non-Neil Diamond songs, but the rest of it was taken care of before I got involved.”
With the music rights secured, the film’s Memphis-based executive producer/composer Scott Bomar reserved studio time at the nearby Sam Phillips Recording Service after tracking down Nashville guitarist Steven Bennett, who’d toured with Diamond for 18 years and knew the songwriter’s repertoire inside and out. “When Steve came in and played on all the Neil Diamond songs, it was incredible,” Bomar said. “Every guitar part sounded like a record. I attribute a lot of the great feedback we’ve been getting to what Richard contributed.”
Bomar, who had previously worked with the actors to figure out the perfect key for “Sweet Caroline,” “Holly Holy,” “I Am, I Said,” “Cherry Cherry,” and other Diamond classics, then supervised a crew of Memphis musicians, including a three-piece horn section, to record fresh arrangements of the Neil Diamond catalog, frequently inspired by the songwriter’s 1971 double album “Hot August Nights.”
With the backing tracks in place, Scott traveled to Los Angeles’s Village Recorders. There, he produced Kate Hudson belting out country hits “Walking After Midnight” and “Sweet Dreams,” since Claire had been a Patsy Cline impersonator before joining forces with Jackman’s Mike. Bomar recalled, “Kate came in very warmed up because she’d recently made her album ‘Glorious’ and had played a couple of festivals. Not just anyone can do justice to a Patsy Cline song, but Kate has natural vocal ability and a natural feel. She’s really got it.”
Next, Hudson, Bomar, Toven, and director Brewer joined Jackman at SST Recording in Weehawken, New Jersey, where Michael Imperioli had already laid down his vocals as the movie’s resident Buddy Holly impersonator. “Michael plays guitar, and he’s really good,” Bomar said. “He’s got his own band in New York.”
In New Jersey, Jackman, who’s been singing professionally since appearing in “Oklahoma” at the age of 25, moved through his solo numbers, including the title song, with minimal fuss. The big challenge came in transforming Diamond’s songs into duets. Bomar said, “At the beginning of this project, one of the things Craig tasked me with was, ‘We have to get Claire (Kate) in there with Hugh singing these songs as much as possible.’ The first one I went to was ‘Sweet Caroline.’ That’s the huge hit everybody knows so let’s take a look and think of it as a duet. When I read the lyrics, I’m like, this song works perfect as a duet! Hugh can take this verse, and Kate can take that verse, and then they can sing the choruses together.”
Once filming began, Jackman and Hudson sang live on set to the “prerecords” piped in through in-ear listening devices. Bomar and his team captured the vocals with hidden lavalier microphones and a boom mic. Toven said, “Hugh and Kate had to know the way they sang in the studio, but they are fully singing. That’s always the best way to do it, I believe, because if you’re just mouthing along, you’re gonna see that.”
Nailing big emotions while tethered to millisecond-specific precision is no easy task, Toven said. On set, “Craig’s watching the performance, Scott and I are there to make sure the guitar part makes sense, that the background drummer is right, and their mouths are right for what they’re singing. All those elements have to match.”
To make the flow between dialogue and musical performance appear seamless, Scott had to intensively prep the actors. “I made quite a few videos right here where I’d get a guitar out and record myself playing,” Bomar said, speaking from his home in Memphis. “I’d send the videos to Hugh and to Michael Imperioli so they could study what the hands are supposed to look like, to a tee. Same with Kate. I’d point the camera to show where the two hands should be on the keyboard. Hugh had a guitar on set all the time, Kate had a keyboard in her trailer — we were constantly working to get them to a place where they felt good about what they were doing on screen with the music. It wasn’t like we made the music, gave it to them, and said, ‘Good luck.’”
The homework paid off in one of Bomar’s favorite sequences, early in the movie, when Mike’s (Jackman) strumming an acoustic guitar and singing “Cherry, Cherry” in Claire’s living room. Hudson/Claire plunks a few notes on the funky upright piano to echo the song’s iconic bass riff. Then, she shifts to a cheap electronic keyboard, and together they segue into “Play Me.” Bomar said, “When I watch the movie with an audience, that seems to be one of the sequences that people react to the strongest because it has so much emotion.”
In the final mix, Jackman and Hudson’s vocals often emerged as a “hybrid” of live on-set performances and in-studio singing, Bomar said, depending on which takes best captured the heart and soul of the onscreen moment. As for Jackman’s ability to channel Neil Diamond’s persona, Bomar said, “Only Neil can do Neil, right? I mean, there’s only one Neil, but I think we got as close as we could.”
And besides, as Jackman’s “Mike” proudly insists throughout the movie, he doesn’t think of himself as being a Neil Diamond impersonation. “It’s an interpretation.”
“Song Sung Blue” is now in theaters.