http://youtu.be/Ug1AS3yyWtw
That’s the pre-Partridge Family Hal Blaine [playing drums in the above clip]!
I have no specific memory of playing Peggy Lipton’s album, which actually came out on Ode in 1968, shortly after MOD SQUAD took the country by storm, so I’ll have to dig it out sometime. Didn’t recall that she sang such buoyant country-pop, assuming that’s what she eventually put out; I probably mixed her record up with Cybill Shepherd’s, which was devoted to tepid Cole Porter stylings! LOL
That latter received one of the lowest grades that Bob Christgau has ever meted out—
Cybill Does It . . . to Cole Porter [Paramount, 1974]
Her voice is surprisingly pleasant, but you’d never know how these songs sparkle. Since Cole didn’t like to . . . do it with (or "to") women very much, maybe the "do" is as hostile as it sounds. D-
And I’d forgotten just how utterly gorgeous the young Peggy really was. Given that she really could act & sing, those cheekbones & that smile would vault her over virtually every present-day show biz celeb in a second!
I’ve sampled the three YouTube clips appended to Peggy Lipton’s Discogs.com entry http://www.discogs.com/Peggy-Lipton-Peggy-Lipton/release/2417741, and I’m pleased to report that she was a devotee of both Laura Nyro and Gerry Goffin/Carole King, and that she certainly did more justice to my beloved La Nyro than did La Streisand herself, though sans the chart action, alas!
They covered the same two classics (“Stoney End” and “Hands Off the Man (Flim Flam Man)”, both of which I adore), so the means of comparison are unusually fair. Miz Lipton knew how to finesse her way through the challenging twists and turns of Miz Laura’s notoriously eccentric melodic contours, while Miz Barbra never let such things get in the way of displaying her all-too-legendary VOCAL WATTAGE, unfortunately! Wish Lipton had also attempted La Bowie’s “Life on Mars”, which Streisand rendered all but unlistenable on her BUTTERFLY LP! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-lY952YrEw
– Tom Kipp
