Word: ballads
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most ambitious work of the evening was a "ballad poem" for narrator, contralto, white and Negro choirs and orchestra: And They Lynched Him on a Tree. Poet Katherine Garrison Chapin (Mrs. Francis Biddle, wife of the U. S. Solicitor General) wrote the words; the music was by shy, devout Negro William Grant Still, who inscribed his score: "Humble thanks to God, the source of inspiration." Composer Still's inspiration often ran to obvious, ear-catching effects, but it kept pace with Mrs. Biddle's ballad: an evocation of Negroes gathering in a pine clearing after the white folks...
...Stadiumgoers, the real part of the evening began when big, magnetic, broad-smiling Negro Baritone Paul Robeson appeared. The Philharmonic, under the come-to-glory gyrations of a new conductor, Mark Warnow of radio's Hit Parade, blared a broad, thoroughly whistleable melody. It was Ballad for Americans, in which Robeson was "the everybody who's nobody . . . the nobody who's everybody," as he was in its radio launching last winter (TIME, Nov. 20). Baritone Robeson sang...
...Mills Brothers-Louis Armstrong ballad of Federal loafing that seemed to affront everyone except those who like to hear a song well swung, raised enough attention to have to be withdrawn (TIME, June...
There will be no bunting in Philadelphia's Convention Hall. The opening song will be no jaunty, vote-inviting parody, but the spine-tingling Ballad for Americans: It will come again-our marching song will come again, Simple as a hit tune, deep as our valleys, High as our mountains, strong as the people who made...
...Ballad For Americans (Victor). Two-disc album of the patriotic spine-tingler first heard on the Pursuit of Happiness radio program (TIME, Nov. 20). Discounting the influence of Poets Whitman, MacLeish, Anderson and Composer Kurt Weill (Knickerbocker Holiday) on the script and score of Messrs. Robinson and Latouche, even sophisticated listeners should get a kick out of this hopeful musical U. S. history. Paul Robeson, as the Voice Nobody Knows until the last stanza, sings bravely...