Word: calicoes
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Unable to penetrate her mystery, (So easy to look at/So hard to define) he can only, in true poet's fashion, give her names--"sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life...scorpio sphinx in a calico dress...glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow"--and finally, simply, ask of her, "Don't ever leave me/Don't ever...
Will everyone like so many gingham dogs and calico cats eventually eat each other...
Words like these are meant to be as unobtrusive as the voice that sings them: a calico background saying nothing on its own. The guitar and the fiddle and the steel and the piano are the real talkers, but they speak the same language. Betts's guitar riffs play on tension-and-release--building a taut peak like any good sixties guitar (only more delicate), then instead of dropping it letting it shower down intact, shaking leaves off a tree. Everything soars and subsides, but in tiny arcing weblets rather than waves. This is the kind of guitar that...
...haunts the singing with an urban, Merry-Clayton-in-Gimme-Shelter howl. In the background bobs an electric-haired bass player. On the right stands Vassar Clements, ramrod straight, hair furled and molded back, holding up the fiddle military-high. And in the center Betts, with his plain calico voice and his wondrous guitar, pulling the American Music Show together...
...ending is trite and contrite. He presents her with a length of calico and a new stove. She presents him with twins. It may not be too late to make this marriage work, but Zandy's conversion from misogyny to generosity of spirit comes far too late to save the film...