The Divine Miss M

Many songs on The Divine Miss M were already part of Bette Midler’s shows at the Continental Baths, the bathhouse in New York’s Ansonia Hotel where she began performing in 1970. Barry Manilow, her piano accompanist, co-produced the album with Ahmet Ertegün, Joel Dorn and Geoffrey Haslam.

The sequence moves from “Do You Want to Dance?” and “Chapel of Love” to “Hello in There” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”, and several of these became standards in her repertoire. The album reached number nine on the Billboard 200, and in 1973 it won Midler the Grammy for Best New Artist.