Word: ballads
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...time, Canada's Joni Mitchell had much the same problem. She ranked as one of the best young composers in the business, and her tender ballad, Both Sides Now, was successfully recorded by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Judy Collins. But she never recorded the song herself, even though she has a fluty, vanilla-fresh voice with a haunting, pastoral quality...
...Clark wields a strong umbrella, an even stronger arched eyebrow, struts and talks his castrating role for all its raucous humor. Olive, who doesn't have much of a singing voice, is almost obscenely comfortable on a stage, engaging and convincing as he puts across the show's only ballad. Randy Parry (Belle Bottom) develops the indifferent drunken daughter's part well, but is overshadowed by the sensational obscene clowning of Ed Strong and Randy Guffey as the secretarial pool, which Rock lends Bootleg's mayor in anticipation of future favors. Smaller parts are handled with uniform wit and energy...
Aside from the more humorous bits, Hair has some other songs that, though lacking in originality, still are quite wonderful in themselves. A girl named Shelley Plimpton, who has a voice laced with clear-toned innocence, sings a ballad about Frank Mills, a boy who "wears his hair tied in a small bow in the back." It seems that Miss Plimpton lent two dollars to Frank after meeting him in front of the Waverley and then never saw him again--and now she loves him. It captures a teeny-bopper's romantic vision with an appropriate unembellished lyricism...
...most of the time, Promises, Promises is about love (and its ups and downs), and the songs run deep. Just before a suicide attempt, Miss O'Hara sings an anguished ballad (that has also been recorded by Dionne Warwick) in which she tells of the difficult man she loves. As the lyrics and music move from the barest hope ("However you are/ Deep down whatever you are/ Whoever you are/ I love you.") to a kind of understated terror ("From moment to moment/ You're two different people/ Someone I know as the man I love...
Fosse the director is sometimes redeemed by Fosse the choreographer. But it is the score however, that remains the show's real strength. Cy Coleman's hip-flip music flows freely from pure ballad (Where Am I Going?) to Bachish parody (Rhythm of Life). Dorothy Fields, 63, won an Oscar for the lyrics of The Way You Look Tonight back in 1936. She may win another for her insistence on writing wittily for the characters instead of warily for the charts...