Word: rocke
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years ago, she was an unknown, a background vocalist in a cheerleader's body. Moreover, of her first album's ten cuts, six were ballads. This chanteuse had to fight for air play with hard rockers. The young lady had to stand uncowed in the locker room of macho rock. The soul strutter had to seduce a music audience that anointed few black artists with superstardom...
...little easier for her. As Walden notes, "Whitney comes from vocal royalty." Cissy Houston has been a fixture in gospel and pop for three decades. Dionne Warwick, who crafted a unique pop style before Whitney was born, is her cousin. Aretha Franklin, the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is known as "Auntie Ree" around the Houston home. Clive Davis, the industry swami who revived Dionne's and Aretha's fortunes when he signed them for his Arista Records, spent two years preparing each of Whitney's albums...
...admirers, Houston's success represents an overdue vindication of that neglected American institution, the black middle class. Here is a morality play with a happy ending: two strong, affectionate parents nurturing their talented daughter toward the show-biz dream of fame without pain. To scoffers in the rock critical Establishment, though, the 5-ft. 8-in., 115-lb. beauty is a black Barbie doll. To them, Whitney's voice, so willing to roam through the breadth of pop music, shows no emotional depth; they find the selection of her songs bland and timid...
...beginning there was rock and roll. The infant art form embraced gospel and country, blues and ballads. Blacks cohabited with whites on the Top 40; boys packing sexual threat in their jeans shared the bill with girls tenderized in lacquer and lace. The mood could be tender too. On the radio, a slow tune just naturally followed an up-tempo number; it was the heartbeat of teen America. The 19-year-old Aretha Franklin could take a Broadway spiritual like Meredith Willson's Are You Sure and transform it into a righteous steeple raiser. Baby, that was rock and roll...
...consumers of these R-rated sex comedies are often teenagers who, theoretically, must be accompanied to R-rated films by an adult. Rock Musician Frank Zappa, a formidable foe of those who would censor rock lyrics, gets the movie industry's inside joke: "Is there any kid who hasn't seen an R-rated movie ((without his parents))? What was supposed to be a warning has turned into a marketing tool." Teens who stay up past 8 p.m. can watch R-rated films on pay cable, and at midnight, Manhattan minors can watch Robin Byrd, the G- stringed host...