Word: vocally
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Diva means goddess. All right, the word is as goofily overblown for a female vocal star as "artist" is for any punk with a record contract. But as a job description, "diva" carries certain burdens. One must not only sing one's heart out; one must expose it to the harshest elements. What becomes a legend most? Suffering. A childhood of deprivation; liaisons with powerful, possibly dangerous men; career triumph soured by personal despair. A life of melodrama makes the diva more human, thus more godlike, to her fans. A catchy moniker helps: Callas...Garland...Lady Day...Whitney. The singer...
...Charles" (with arrangements by Ralph Burns and the young Quincy Jones), teamed him with veterans of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington outfits, and he proved he could play with the big boys, winning their respect after initial skepticism. It also showed he could lay his easy, tortured vocal style on such chestnuts as Irving Berlin?s "Alexander?s Ragtime Band" and the Arlen-Mercer "Come Rain or Come Shine." Then he was gone -away from Atlantic, off to ABC Paramount, for the life of an interpretive rather than creative artist. Ray Charles sings country? Well...
...first song, which Darin had written in 12 minutes, begins with water-bubble sounds, cueing its novelty nature; but it had drive and its narrator?s tough-guy befuddlement at finding "a party going on" outside his bathroom. "Queen of the Hop," with Darin?s tentative, occasionally flat vocal submerged beneath a guitar and a sax that both beat a hard rhythm, was choked with references to recent songs ("Peggy Sue," "Good Golly, Miss Molly," "Sugartime," "Short Shorts," "Lollipop," "Sweet Little Sixteen") and dances (the chicken, the stroll), with a commercially canny citation of Dick Clark?s "Bandstand...
...plinking rhythm of "Little Darlin?" (done pizzicato by violins here), the release from "This Little Girl of Mine" and a Don Costa-like mixed chorus, with women singing the heavenly-choir "ooo"s and men answering this siren call with a goofy but musically beguiling "wadda-wadda." Darin?s vocal is much more assured, as if he?d just learned not only how to sing, but why. He wrote a sweet song about pining, and it still sounds fabulous...
...Leiber and Stoller?s "Smokey Joe?s Cafe." A lurking melodrama in the "Hernando?s Hideaway" fashion (but written a year before that Broadway tune), it?s sung by L&S? L.A. discoveries the Robins. It features an almost maniacally comic attack by lead singer Carl Gardner. The vocal could have come right off the Chitlin Circuit of black vaudeville; imagine Mantan Moreland as a great belter. The production is full, clear and incorrigibly boppin?- Leiber and Stoller, out by the Pacific, showing the Atlantic boys how it?s done. Ertegun was smart enough to know he wanted not just...