Word: ballads
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...ballad of Frankie & her man, who done her wrong, was called by Carl Sandburg the U.S.'s "classical gutter song." There are upward of 300 versions of Frankie and Johnnie, and no one knows just when & where it began. Frankie Baker, a young tart in St. Louis' Negro district in 1899, was sure she inspired the lament. When her man (Albert Britt) two-timed her, Frankie tongue-lashed him; when he pulled a knife on her, she shot him dead. Tried for murder, she was acquitted because she killed in self-defense. People on the streets began singing...
...Northwest, The Frozen Logger, was written by a onetime mule skinner, hobo poet and bull cook named Jim Stevens, one of the first men to set the tall tales of Paul Bunyan down on paper (1925). He wrote the lyrics in 1928, borrowed the melody of an old ballad to go with them. He finally got it published last year, and the folk-singing Weavers picked it up and boosted it into popularity. So much popularity, says Stevens, 59, that "I hear some of the boys in the woods are beginning to use their thumbs in the coffee again...
Here's To My Lady (Nat "King" Cole; Capitol, 45 r.p.m.), one of Cole's best jobs in recent months; a soft, pretty ballad sung with good taste...
...Only Saw Him Once (Rosemary Clooney; Columbia). Rosemary Clooney takes a sweet ballad for a gentle ride, proves again that she is one of the best female vocalists around...
Behind the color, forms, and ideas of this noted collection of artists, Richter has woven in the music of an equally modern group of composers; the sounds of Milhaud and Bowles happen to be among them. Josh White and Libby Holman sing an ultra-modern ballad, "The Girl With the Pre-Fabricated Heart," behind one of the best sequences. There seems to be no end to the talent assembled here, and though the actors are unknowns, their performances are worthy of the company they...