Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Saturday 15 March 1969, page 15


LEISURE—THE ARTS ON BEAT

An exciting swinger

UNRESERVED com-

mitments tend to rebound on a critic, but Wendy Saddington de-serves the best adjec-

tives.

Miss Saddington is a rhythm and hlues singer with a group called The Chain which plays tonight and tomorrow afternoon at Pacesetter.

She is by far the best female rhythm and blues

singer in the country. That's a relative judgment; objectively she is an excit-ing, raging swinger in the style of Aretha Franklin.

While I was in Mel-bourne last week I tried to arrange an interview for these colmuns but she and the group have moved to Sydney where they will be based from now on.

The group and the singer were in Canberra several weeks ago and gave me the finest night of live rhythm

and blues I've heard from an Australian group.

Miss Saddington affects the visual style of Julie Driscoll out of Jimi Hen-drix; vocally she screams and roars and sighs with the rhythmic feel of Miss Franklin.

My one quibble lies in that fact. She is derivative of Aretha Franklin to a large extent. Miss Sad-dington has enough talent to stand on her own feet, to come out from under the shadow of Miss Frank-lin.

THE latest news from

Melbourne is that the Canned Heat tour has been cancelled.

Advertisements in capital city newspapers say the

cancellation was forced by "circumstances beyond our control".

T HAVE a friend who

dismisses Jose Feliciano as "just another Trini Lopez".

The fact that I still talk

to this friend is proof of a deep and resilient relationship.

It was good to sec Feliciano pick up two Grammics in the awards announced on Thursday, one for 'Light My Fire' as the best male pop vocal performance, and one as the best new star of 1968.

'Little Green Apples' by Hobby Russell was predictable as the best song of the year. It must have been the most recorded melody

of 1968 and 1 would not have been surprised to sec a version' by Tito Gobbi.

But, for my taste, Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' was the best of the nominated tunes. Still, Campbell gained some consolation with the award of the best album of the year. 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix'.

Grammy awards of course follow the trends of music through a particular year. If I said I was generally delighted with the awards and the music in the running for the awards, it would only be another way of saying that the music of 196fi was generally my kind of bag.

■you may not have

noticed it but that piece of mediocrity 'Little Arrows' by Lcapy Lee dropped out of the hit parades this week.

That track gets niy Grammy for the worst track of 1968.

'Golden Hits for Dancing, Volume 2', Joe Meat's Happy Sound, World. Becord CUib.

T ESTER Lanin has his

■*-J counterparts in Europe.

Among them is Joe Ment and his Happy Sound, the authors of this WRC piece.

This is an honest record. It is made up of successful hit parade material orchestrated strictly for dancing. I presume that the value of the hits is that the prospective dancers will recognise the music in a background sort of way. Apart from that I don't see that the subject matter makes very much difference, as long as "it's got a beat you can dance

to".

For what it is attempting