Word: balladeers
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...Love (Reprise) contains more tenderness and calm than anything he ever did before. Angel, for example, substitutes rich, poignant Beatlesque harmonies for the handful of blunt blues chord changes that used to characterize much of his work. Drifting is a lighter-than-air romantic ballad that could almost be sung by Crooner Johnny Mathis: "Drifting on a sea of forgotten teardrops/On a life-boat/Sailin' for your love/Sailin'home." Big-beat songs like Freedom and Nightbird Flyin' do hark back to the past, yet for once, there is no screech or reverberation...
...brassy backing of three earlier LPs, she is supported this time by the Full Tilt Boogie Band, a tightly knit combo dominated by Richard Bell's superb piano. Never before did she exercise such control over her voice. To hear her build Kris Kristofferson's country blues ballad, Me & Bobby McGee, from tree-shaded quiet into high-noon bustle is to know that pacing and nuance are not just the property of lieder singers. The familiar full-throated Joplin warbling is still present-in Cry Baby and My Baby. But the final song, Get It While...
...flowering of glory-Pimpernels, the last Lone Rangers, ready for anything, ascetic, hard as knives, Apaches with diplomas from Fort Bragg. For a time they were American heroes. In 1965, Robin Moore's novel The Green Berets became a bestseller, and a year later, Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets went to the top of the song charts. John Wayne even made a mock-heroic hagiographical film, which among the young became Middle America's answer to The Graduate...
...song plugger on Tin Pan Alley -then as now a mythical street on the tattered fringe of Broadway. Hired by Sunbeam Music, Diamond sometimes felt like a tailor, sitting in a tiny cubicle and fitting songs to the needs of assorted Grade B singers. "Gloria wants an up-tempo ballad like that Patti Page thing," the boss would say. "And while you're at it, throw in some bongos...
...Bowles Ballad. It is the extraordinary timing and creation of emotion through character that make Peschka's puppets unique. Explaining his preference for hand-operated puppets over those using strings ("marionettes"), Peschka says, "How on earth can you make emotion travel down a string!" The mannerisms of voice and style and the personalities of the five Standwells are all clearly delineated. Their individual quirks of voice, accent and mannerism permeate whatever characters they portray. Whether portraying a cocotte in a worldly Molnar one-act or chanting a lovelorn ballad in a piece by Jane and Paul Bowles, nobody...