Word: falsettos
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Black and Blue's most important outside influence comes from Billy Preston, who also toured with the Stones last summer. "Melody," a Preston-inspired number--essentially a dialogue between himself and Jagger--has an old fashioned jazzy piano rhythm and stylized vocals which range from falsetto through scatting and even a throaty 'cocktail bar' whisper. The result is something completely unlike anything the Stones have done before, and the departure from standard fare works remarkably well. Jagger sings in an exaggerated style, demonstrating a suprising vocal complexity and range. Clearly he is experimenting with this new-found idiom and enjoying...
...French opera and salon music, with half a dozen parlor songs sung approximately in English. "Vecchia zimarra, senti" the bass "Coat Song" from La Boheme, and "Magische Note," an aria from Goldmark's Queen of Sheba that contains a rare recorded example of Caruso's using falsetto, are the most unusual items. A pair of "Celeste Aidas" (1906 and 1908) raises the question of whether every performance even by the recording industry's first superstar deserves resurrection. In the earlier version tempi are sluggish, with a lugubrious beginning and general somnambulance that pervades until the final phrases...
...until the reign of Emperor Chien Lung (1736 to 1796). The style poses formidable challenges to Western audiences. There is appealing exotica in the pentatonic backgrounds played by such instruments as the two-stringed erh-hu, or alto fiddle, and assorted gongs, clappers, drums and pipes. But the high, falsetto fioritura of the singers is difficult to take at the start, even if it is the Chinese ideal of good singing. Most problematical of all are the symbolic sets and the symbol-laden gestures...
...orientation chord followed by one bar of a cappella opens "Warm Love." You'd expect a children's song, each syllable enunciated in falsetto with proper childish awe. The band only enters between lines, to keep the time, with nuanced emphasis from the bass drum and guitar; two flutes linger through each line as backing vocals. Jackie DeShannon appears for the first chorus, and the song becomes a duet. More idealism, but a far cry from the bliss of "Starting a New Life"--because there's a distance involved, a musing quality absent from Morrison's music for years. Flutes...
...piano tickles with the right hand, fills chords and notes with the left. And the Dixie Hummingbirds are something else. Their oooh's are acapella oriented, rough and husky. The song finishes strongly, showcases them simultaneously, and the highpoint is a single oooh, taken from high tenor to falsetto, laid over the basic choral pattern...