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“Fake Jan” Geri Reischl Steps Into Spotlight As Performance Of “Your Song” Honored By Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fame

 

 

By EDUARDO LOPEZ-LARMO
Published December 16, 2012

A much-loved but often maligned 1970s variety show will soon see the spotlight again.  The Brady Bunch Hour was an American variety television series produced by television dynamos Sid and Marty Krofft and aired on ABC between 1976 to 1977.  When the original “Jan” – actress Eve Plumb – refused to act in the BB Hour, unknown actress Geri Reischl seized the opportunity of a lifetime.  Reischl showed her singing talent in a sublime rendition of Elton John’s “Your Song.”

In February the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame will induct Reischl’s “Your Song” performance into the Hall in a new category called “TV Talent and Variety.”  Reischle belted the Elton John masterpiece in 1977 and made it her own.  After watching the performance in England, Elton John famously said that had he heard Reischle’s version earlier he never would have recorded it himself but instead licensed it to her.

“About midway in the song Reischl sounds like a turbo vibrator playing the kazoo.”

Some music critics panned Reischl’s  soaring vibrato as overly dramatic and lacking in control.  Former MTV VJ Tim Hicks quipped in 1979 that “about midway in the song Reischl sounds like a turbo vibrator playing the kazoo.”  Rolling Stone music critic Ronnie Rosen, however, praises Reischl's intensity: “I remember sitting on my parents couch in 1977 and thinking ‘Jan will never be second fiddle to Marsha again.  She blew the roof off that classic tune and television would never be the same.”  Rosen ranks Reischl’s performance just behind Elvis’ and The Beatles’ performances on The Ed Sullivan Show as the most important television performances in rock history.