Word: singer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just about everybody has bought the smile and the sound. Whitney Houston, her first album, has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide to become the best-selling debut in history, garnering the singer a Grammy and seven American Music Awards. And now, as she kicks off a summer-long tour of 45 concerts, she has done it again. Her new collection, Whitney, made pop-music history as the first album by a female singer to debut at No. 1 on Billboard's pop chart. The album's first single, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, scampered...
...youth. But if the camera loves her, so does the microphone. With that voice she could look like Danny DeVito and still be a star. It's true as well that she has been sold smartly and aggressively. But these salesmen had a Mercedes to peddle. As the singer says of herself, "They didn't have to make me over. There would be no 'Whitney Houston' without Whitney Houston." All of which raises the musical questions: Where did she come from? What did she overcome? For that we need a brief course in cultural history. This...
...early '70s, though, a new agenda had been proclaimed. Melody and vocal craft were out, to be replaced by the hip virtues of energy and attitude. Male singer-songwriters were now the Rimbauds of rock and the women merely interpreters, trimming their expertise to the cut of the material. LaBelle or Bette Midler could coax a ballad to tears or go all raw in a rave- up, but that wasn't artistry, only dexterity without the signature of commitment. Meanwhile, FM radio's narrow-cast formats were herding black artists into the chic ghettos of Las Vegas...
Ninety minutes to show time: backstage at the World Theater, the 6-ft. 4-in. Keillor is now chest-deep in an army of young Hawaiians, the 49 members of the Kamehameha School glee club. Singer Kate MacKenzie, a.k.a. Sheila, the Christian Jungle Girl, rushes up to check a cue. Sound men and stagehands circulate. Buster the Show Dog signs autographs, in the person of Actor Tom Keith, who also does the voices of Father Finian and Timmy, the Sad Rich Boy, motor and siren noises and dandy skyrocket effects...
...couple of hours later, give or take about six encores, it's all over. Scottish Singer Jean Redpath has sung in her lovely, clear voice, the Hawaiians have aloha'd, Guitarists Atkins and Leo Kottke have laid down some elegant tunes, Buster has woofed one last time before going on unemployment, the Norwegian bachelor farmers have made their final appearance at the Chatterbox Cafe, and Keillor has carried on shamelessly. "I'm going away, for to stay a little while," he has sung, "but I'm coming back, if I go ten thousand miles." Does he mean...