Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Jody Rosen on Eydie Gormé (1928–2013)

 
 

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

With gratitude to Kathy Shaidle, at Five Feet of Fury.

Today at 12:00 PM
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Jody Rosen on Eydie Gormé (1928–2013)
By Jody Rosen
Vulture.com

Eydie Gormé, who died on Saturday at 84, was the beneficiary of two mid-century inventions: the television variety show and the Great American Songbook. Both were actually gentrified updates of earlier pop culture. TV variety reworked brash, bumptious vaudeville for the electronic age; the Great American Songbook was the fifties invention of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and other great singers, who set the pop hits and show tunes of the twenties, thirties, and forties to lush, swinging big band arrangements, put on tuxes and ball gowns, and codified a body of durable American song standards — musical holy writ. Gormé met her husband and musical partner, Steve Lawrence, when both were working on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen. They sang together, onstage, on record, and, frequently, in front of television cameras, for nearly half a century.

In the sixties and seventies, Steve and Eydie’s act was familiar to millions. They joked and they sang, interspersing tart, affectionate, mildly racy husband-and-wife banter with songs by Berlin, Gershwin, and Porter. The shtick was charming, but it wouldn’t have worked if the music hadn’t been good. They could really sing. Lawrence was a smooth, suave stylist in the Dean Martin and Mel Torme mold. Gormé burned hotter. She could sing delicately, tenderly, but she sounded great when she belted; she had a bit of Sophie Tucker brassiness in her voice and made a side specialty of fiery Spanish-language songs....

[Read the whole thing here.]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I well remember Steve and Edyie.

David In TN

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Anonymous said...

I saw a news report yesterday evening that had more details to this story.
What happened was: A group of "people" tried to pass a bad check as a convenience store. The clerk refused to accept it. They left and came back with a gun and forced the clerk to apologize. He apologized and they viciously beat him anyways.
The below link refers to this story but offers no details. The TV news reports I saw last night gave no description of the perps. Just looking at the details of what happened I can guess at the "description". I will bet anyone any amount of money I'm right.
It says in this newspaper item that the police have released no details, though there were more details on the TV news report, of course the reporters were on the spot interviewing the clerk but they didn't ask him to describe the attackers. I'm not sure what's going on here but when the news and police are being shifty about details like this it always involves black perps.
You have violent attackers with a gun running around and our "boys in blue" and "watchdog media" are more concerned with protecting the sacred cow of racial political correctness than public safety. It's like a broken record, happens over and over. Jerry


http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/08/reported_assault_at_north_port.html