Word: fred
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...mood of his dances also went beyond the comic energy of tap; his were stories of romance won and lost. Add to this his gorgeous poise and his teeming ingenuity as a choreographer (he was, essentially, the author of his dances) and you have a snapshot of dancing Fred...
...high notes or large gestures of the standard tenor. But that was his genius: even before Bing Crosby, Astaire democratized singing. "Almost every great male icon of the art - Crosby, Sinatra, Torm?, Bennett - takes from Astaire," writes Steve Schwartz on Classical Net. "The male pop singer B.F. (before Fred) sounded something like an Irish tenor. ... The limitations of Astaire's voice forced him to find another way - deceptively casual, never oversold, and at home with the American vernacular. Astaire moved the 'scene' of the singer from the center of the great hall to just across the table, in effect replacing...
...FRED BEFORE GINGER
...half-century of Astaire in the movies has made his achievement seem both ineffable and inevitable. But back in 1932, when Fred came to Hollywood, moguls could be forgiven for not spotting a potential movie star. He and Adele had danced through hit Broadway shows for a dozen years, but Adele was the star; Fred was "and." In "Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920s," Ethan Mordden passes along a typical notice for the sibs' "Lady, Be Good": "Stark Young spent the first half of his Times review entirely on her - 'Adele Astaire Fascinates,' ran the headline - and could...
...know of no film documentation of Adele's work. She didn't make movies, and in 1932 she retired when she married Charles Cavendish, an English lord. She can be heard, though, on the CD "A Portrait of Fred Astaire," an invaluable compilation of his recordings from 1926 to 1938. In these duets with Fred, from their hit shows, Adele has a tweety soprano with no special warmth or color; maybe, those who saw her on Broadway might have said, you had to be there. What's beguiling about these early sides is Fred's attempt to find a style...