Word: wail
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...wail begins as a moan. The sensual anguish of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint can be traced back to a fictive lament written when he was 26. The film version of Goodbye, Columbus is wise enough to preserve his undeniable assets: the sexual candor, the sour salt of Jewish skepticism, the ear that has overheard everything and forgiven nothing. The movie goes astray occasionally, not because it is too faithful to Roth's text, but because it imitates other films, notably The Graduate. A pity. Goodbye, Columbus is stronger on dialogue and longer on humanity...
...muscle, as what seemed to be the entire population of northeast Tennessee tried to reach him for one last swing or kick. Finally the cops quieted the crowd, which must have thought the old man was dead or dying. The curtains were drawn, and I waited for the wail of an ambulance, for surely Pop was in need of medical aid. But the sly possum suddenly jumped to his feet, not a mark on him, and strode into the dressing room with a sinister grin on his face, basking in the hatred of the fans and confident that next week...
...Winter is the swingingest, funkiest new white blues singer to come out of the South in years. His electric guitar crackles with a kind of voltage that can only come from the gut, not an AC outlet. His singing ranges from a harsh, staccato yell to a high soprano wail. Many of his songs are his own-improvised on the spot, or written down the night before. Like Leland, Mississippi Blues, which he sang to a crowd of shouting enthusiasts recently at Manhattan's Fillmore East...
...Aretha Franklin at the top of the female jazz, blues and soul camp. On piano, she can tinkle along simply like Count Basic or pile chord upon chord like Rubinstein playing Tchaikovsky. At times, her voice has the reedy wobble of a Dixieland clarinet, but it can also whisper, wail, or break in above the instrumental accompaniment like an Indian shehnai. As Ray Charles notes, nobody ever comes close to imitating her, or even trying, "probably because everybody knows she's the only one who can do it." To Jazz Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, Nina is the natural successor...
Nobody performs the blues like B. B. King -except, perhaps, Lucille. Resplendent in an iridescent raspberry-red suit, King clutches his fists up beside his temples as his voice shifts from a plangent baritone to a falsetto wail: "Worry, worry, worry- worry...