Word: balladeer
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...Shep Deering has a night job herself -- as a musician. She plays a fine jazz piano and sings a supernal jazz ballad. People like Miles Davis, Wynton and Branford Marsalis and Toots Thielemans play along with her. She also has a brand-new album that is hovering near the top of the Billboard jazz chart. You Won't Forget Me is the title. It may also be read as an unconditional guarantee: Shirley Horn is indelible...
WHITNEY HOUSTON: I'M YOUR BABY TONIGHT (Arista). Now wait a minute. Before you go dismissing her as a beautiful but soul-less dance-floor diva, check out her way with a ballad like All the Man That I Need. She comes within striking distance of classic saloon soul here and proves she's stepping up to fast company...
...they've worked several styles into a single tune. The opening track, Suicide Blonde, starts off with a bluesy harmonica, then boots into a dance track that also rocks hard. By My Side has some suggestions of country, as well as overtones of a classic '40s-style saloon ballad. Says Farriss: "You've got to change musically...
Meanwhile, producer Clavell and his team -- director-choreographer Michael Smuin, adapter-lyricist John Driver and composer Paul Chihara -- hacked away an hour of running time, primarily pageantry. A funeral procession was eliminated. A 3 1/2-minute ballad about the hero's adulterous love was compressed to 30 seconds. A formalized yet rousing 12-minute battle scene was fought and won in five. Musical exchanges between a Portuguese trader and a Jesuit missionary became clearer and quicker as dialogue. Almost every show in tryout undergoes revision, but few weather change of this magnitude...
...Jerry, the boys had a minor hit single in 1957, then followed the folk-music trail into the new decade. Oft-told rock legend 192: how a house producer at Columbia Records without Paul's knowledge added electric guitar, drums and bass to an earnest, intimate, acoustic ballad of Simon's; and how The Sounds of Silence, with its new rock underpinnings, became a No. 1 single in 1966. It was a fluke, but Paul and Artie were smart enough, gifted enough and fast enough to build on it and go for a long, sweet ride...