Word: crooner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Martin lasted so long by embracing show-biz contradictions, then shrugging them off. For a start, he was a traditional crooner who learned intonation from Crosby and salesmanship from Jolson. Yet there was a hint in his gestures (eyes closed in ecstasy, arms stretched out imploringly) that he was parodying the very idea of crooner; he was a mellow modernist. You could also peg Dino as an anachronism, a Joe E. Lewis saloon-lush type, the party animal in a tux. Or maybe he was the first slacker, elevating sloth to a Zen art. The stupefaction he radiated...
...most entertaining cuts show the Beatles' early gift for parody. You'll Be Mine, a Lennon-McCartney jape from 1960, suggests a Five Satins love song as it might have been tortured by a fourth-rate crooner in a Blackpool pub. John offers a basso-preposteroso spoken verse: "My darlin'...I looked into your eyes, and I could see a National Health eyeball..." The band brought the same proto-camp tone to covers of Three Cool Cats and Sheik of Araby, on a failed audition tape for Decca Records on New Year's Day, 1962. Raw and cheeky, the Beatles...
...psychos as Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Boston and Hillside Stranglers--that crowd. His pursuer is a crafty cop (Holly Hunter). His nemesis is a psychologist (Sigourney Weaver) who studies the serial killer's mentality. And his hero is a recently arrested multiple murderer (cleverly played by saloon crooner Harry Connick Jr. as if he were a more deranged cousin of Jim Varney's goony Ernest character...
DIED. BURL IVES, 85, goateed crooner and actor beloved by generations of children for his mellifluous renditions of Frosty the Snowman and The Blue Tail Fly; in Anacortes, Washington. Among the best known of Ives' many stage and screen roles were his starring appearance as Big Daddy in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and his narration of the undying holiday TV special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer...
Stars of the Forties are back with this year's crop of nominees for the 37th annual Grammy Awards. Among the nominees announced today: Tony Bennett, 68-year-old crooner and a Generation X darling of late, received a nomination today for album of the year for his "MTV Unplugged." (He'll go up against "The 3 Tenors in Concert 1994," Eric Clapton's "From the Cradle," Bonnie Raitt's "Longing in Their Hearts," and Seal's self-titled album "Seal.") Frank Sinatra, whose first albumful of digitized duets with rock stars such as U2's Bono was released...