Word: vocalisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Grandma better get ready to boogie. From the very first cascading wooooo! on I Wanna Dance, the new album showcases a Whitney Houston who sings bolder, blacker, badder. This Whitney doesn't just want to dance with somebody, she wants "to feel the heat with somebody," and the vocal scorches. The rest of the album -- a mixture of party songs and love songs -- displays its star's subtler readings, greater vocal nuance, more dynamism and control. On the jazzy ballad Just the Lonely Talking, she eases into an adventurous scat duet with an alto sax. But she can still sing...
...with her mother Cissy. In the song, a grandmaster's wife and mistress muse about being unable to fulfill his needs for fantasy and security; in this version, mother and daughter sing about a husband-father, and it makes for an electrifying duet. Throughout the album, the range and vocal glamour displayed offer testimony that Cissy's girl has grown up. Whitney marks graduation day for the prom queen of soul...
...pedigree may have made it a 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...
...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...
Nonetheless, long-range prospects are at best uncertain. One looming threat ) emanates from a vocal group that wants to rally the 518,000 PTL Partners in order to oust Falwell. Like the Bakkers, these protesters are Pentecostals and Charismatics, believers in "gifts" of the Holy Spirit, such as healing and speaking in tongues. As a Fundamentalist Baptist, Falwell is doctrinally opposed to these practices, and the five-member PTL board he appointed has no Pentecostal representatives. The loudest of the anti-Falwell group is the Rev. Mike Evans of Fort Worth, who thinks the chastened Bakker "has every right...