Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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DIED. Howard M. Teichmann, 71, witty playwright and biographer of George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott and Henry Fonda; of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); in New York City. A stylish writer and raconteur, the Chicago-born Teichmann scored a solid hit on Broadway with his 1953 comedy, The Solid Gold Cadillac, co-written with Kaufman...
Whitney's most meaningful cut has to be I Know Him So Well, a power-pop ballad from the Broadway-bound musical Chess, which she sings with her mother Cissy. In the song, a grandmaster's wife and mistress muse about being unable to fulfill his needs for fantasy and security; in this version, mother and daughter sing about a husband-father, and it makes for an electrifying duet. Throughout the album, the range and vocal glamour displayed offer testimony that Cissy's girl has grown up. Whitney marks graduation day for the prom queen of soul...
...threat in their jeans shared the bill with girls tenderized in lacquer and lace. The mood could be tender too. On the radio, a slow tune just naturally followed an up-tempo number; it was the heartbeat of teen America. The 19-year-old Aretha Franklin could take a Broadway spiritual like Meredith Willson's Are You Sure and transform it into a righteous steeple raiser. Baby, that was rock and roll...
Auntie Ree emerged in the early '60s as part of an impressive sorority -- soul sisters from all over. Cousin Dionne, working within the ricochet rhythms of Burt Bacharach's songs, built a brand-new bridge connecting gospel urgency to show-tune sophistication. Barbra Streisand moonlighted from Broadway and never went back. The jazz inflections of Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan enriched the vocabulary of pop. The megaton voices of Jackie DeShannon, Dusty Springfield and Timi Yuro lent powerful shadings to love songs. And the girl groups -- all the -elles and -ettes, the Supremes and Shangri-Las -- kept teen pulses surging...
...stronger than ever, in the work of some young and veteran smooth sisters. Warwick won a Grammy for Bacharach's That's What Friends Are For, and Aretha was back at No. 1 with a George Michael duet, I Knew You Were Waiting ( for Me). Streisand's return to Broadway -- or rather to The Broadway Album -- went platinum last year. New voices are enriching the old melodic sound too. From Britain, Sade translated her Afro-exotic features and bossa-nova ballads into a boffo LP. Anita Baker poured the ache of jazz into pop and sold a couple million copies...