Word: entertainers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
James Brown is too unique a phenomenon to be approached solely as an entertainer. He has ceased to be a man and become a concept, the epitome (defined as the quintessence of the essence of the epitome) of the self-conscious, self-motivated Successful American Black Man. In consequence, he is under considerable pressure to not only entertain, as he does so very well, but also to keep step with and help shape the obvious trend of political opinion among the general populace. This is not his field of special competence. None the less he has made some notable...
...When I'm on that stage," says Nina Simone, "I don't think I'm just out there to entertain." Nina is a Negro and proud of it; she is out there to share with the audience what Soul Singer Ray Charles calls her "message things." When her listeners are not with her, she can be icy: "You're not giving one thing tonight." When they are with her, which is most of the time, the ice melts. "When we connect, an audience and myself, when we hit a certain point, I just get all happy...
...before you can have that, the pain and the injustice have to be exposed, and that's very painful in itself, because nobody wants to look at it." Which is precisely what she is getting at when she says that she is not just out there to entertain...
...should be exciting and relevant. Not so, says Barzun. The well meaning professor who tries to sensationalize his subject matter is catering to the basest instincts of his students. When a teacher is "exciting" instead of informing, "time goes fast and real thought blurs." Course work should discipline, not entertain, and Barzun waxes eloquent on the pleasures of drudgery. Nor do the liberal arts need to be relevant to modern problems. Such relevance he calls the fantasy of instant utility. Relevance for whom, he asks, and for how long? What excites one generation will probably bore the next and transform...
Winton ("Red") Blount, the incoming Postmaster General, keeps a pet pig named Elvira on his 60-acre spread near Montgomery, Ala. The Blounts also have a summer place on nearby Lake Martin, where they entertain friends and family aboard a Chinese junk. Robert Finch, who will be Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the new Cabinet, sometimes sports socks with holes the size of a half-dollar. He turned up recently at a dressy function in a green shirt that he had worn all day working around the house. Says a friend: "I think he puts on clothes just...