Word: brinker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...posters of Frankenstein and the Beatles. He has lately developed a passion for the "rugged primitivism" of rock 'n' roll, recently turned up at an avant-garde concert to play his Bachian treatment of the Beatles' song Yesterday. Attired in the accepted uniform of Hans Brinker cap and rumpled corduroy jacket, he goes to Greenwich Village to hear shockrock, stays up half the night in the coffeehouses discussing philosophy and the merits of LSD. "The only reason I'm not an acidhead right now," he says, "is that I have to play these damn concerts...
Busty, freckle-faced Jan Brinker, 30, slowly struggled to the makeshift stage and began singing I've Got the Sun in the Morning. After that came some chatter ("Golly, you guys have been here a long time, haven't you?") and some more songs. The finale called for Jan to haul a bashful G.I. onstage and croon Love for Sale as she unbuttoned his shirt...
Beer & Slots. Most people in the U.S. have never heard of Jan Brinker, but in South Viet Nam she is almost as famous as Doris Day. Jan, and perhaps a dozen other little-known entertainers, have been touring G.I. bases for a couple of years, and in their own way have become headliners. The USO sponsors tours by bigger names, and Bob Hope visits the troops regularly; still, the demand for entertainment is so insatiable that it has created a flourishing year-round vaudeville circuit...
Back home, entertainers like Jan Brinker and most of her peers would be taking second or third billing in nightclubs. Johnny Leggett, 28, is a country-and-western warbler who never made it past the smalltime in the States, but in Viet Nam he pulls $1,000 a week. Margee McGlory, a Negro pop, blues and jazz singer who does a fair imitation of Eartha Kitt, makes only $300 a week, but that is more than she was able to earn at home. Oliver Pacini, an accordionist who has spent years playing small dates in and around San Francisco, earns...
...performing areas a nightmare. Many of them use taped accompaniments rather than Vietnamese sidemen (who somehow cannot get with the Stateside beat), so one of the more common perils is the blown fuse. But many performers do go, and not only for the pay and the experience. Says Jan Brinker: "We're here for the money, but we also feel an obligation to do what we can for the men out here...