Word: ballads
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...that Hungarian popular music has become "decadent," lacking in the "dynamic rhythm of the new democracy." They express a maudlin desire to return to the "good old days." As an example of the kind of song that was out of tune with Marx ism, the council cited the following ballad...
Beer & Beef. Thirteen years ago, burly Frankie Laine was singing for beer and beef at the Stamford (Conn.) German Club; for half a dozen years before, he had been an unnoticed mediocrity on the soggy-ballad circuit around Chicago nightclubs. He had given up singing for selling cars, songwriting (It Only Happens Once) and, during the war, defense work. But, says Frankie, the son of a Chicago barber, "I couldn't stay away from it long . . . I hadda get up in front and sing." In 1946, he made only $2,000 at it. Then things began to happen...
From Broadway to Padua. Porter's music is just as distinctively his. Many of his songs, like Night and Day, favor a long melodic line that breaks out of the traditional four-measure bounds of the popular ballad. He can write gaily, in complicated rhythms (as in Anything Goes). He can match a pointedly off-color lyric with an insinuating tune (as in My Heart Belongs to Daddy). But the true Porter hallmark is cut in the bittersweet lament of What Is This Thing Called Love? and in the sultry, Latin fervor of Begin the Beguine...
...child actors: when relaxed, he is an attractive kid, and when called upon to act, he is not at all repellent. His battle to save his black sheep from the meat block and get it to the county fair might have become moderately tiresome, except for timely interruptions for ballad and cartoon sequences. Beulah Bondi, a Bible-quoting grandmother, and the late Harry Carey, as a kindly farmer, fit almost perfectly into the Hollywood concept of uppercrust hillbillydom...
After Bach comes a program of Beethoven, followed by post-Beethoven music and requests. Gilbert and Sullivan will glut the air waves on Saturday night, and Sunday morning ushers in a ballad corner catering to hillbilly fans. When the merry-go-round will cease had not been decided...