Word: hibbler
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...graduated, from blues shouter to respected blind musician (along with Al Hibbler and George Shearing) to rock star with his immensely popular touring show; and from the segregated days of pop music, when his picture was kept off album covers so as not to frighten the white folks, to a national icon whose rendition of ?America the Beautiful? achieved something like Kate Smith status. Was Charles, as one of his own albums proclaimed, a ?genius?? We?ll save that word for Mozart. But he was surely the genie let out of the R&B bottle. The cork got lost...
...Hibbler, 41, has been a professional singer for 20 years, including an eight-year stretch as vocalist with Duke Ellington, but it is only in the past year that he has caused mass ecstasy. He has a thick, almost syrupy voice with both a hint of maudlin sentimentality and a dash of satirical humor. He is a Negro and has been blind from birth. Al's blacksmith father sent him to the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock, where he sang soprano until he was 17. Long before he graduated, in 1936, he had memorized every nuance...
Even then, Hibbler used to panic the teen-agers by his sudden, disconcerting swoops from a high note to a sub-basement tone. His second big break came a year and a half ago, when Decca signed him up and he recorded a song called Unchained Melody. It became a No. 1 hit. Now he asks $3,000 and up a week for appearances, plays the gaudiest spots in the biggest towns. Between dates he stays at home in Teaneck, N.J. with his wife, listening to the radio. "They tell good stories, those soap operas," he says. "Songs have good...
...Hibbler; Decca). Like Trees, this song may be credited with spawning a whole series of one-word song titles, e.g., Pleasure, Guilty, Never. It also caters to the pseudo-religious trend that is currently bidding for the juke-box nickel-reduced, of course, to the juke-box level of understanding. Sample: "He alone knows where to find the rainbow's end/He alone can see what lies beyond the bend...
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