 | "Mad About The Boy"
Dinah Washington
 |  |
 | "This record stands high on many people’s list of favourite performances, yet it’s quite an oddity - a gay anthem in very British disguise, sung in a peppery, semi-spoken style by one of the great black American divas. Coward himself wrote at least four full refrains for this song, including the lines “I know that quite sincerely/Housman really/Wrote The Shropshire Lad about the boy”, but only the lines sung by Dinah Washington are well-known today. After a trombone introduction by Billy Byers which recalls the sound of Billie Holiday’s late album Lady in Satin, Dinah attacks the song with her most cutting tone, making the whole record a memorable sweet-and-sour experience. If you’re looking for strict realism, there are moments where singer and words don’t match --- when she sings “traces of the cad about the boy”, you do wonder if the word “cad” ever otherwise crossed her lips (“You’re a cad, sir!”) But she betrays no unease about it, and other lines with quite a literary flavour (“this odd diversity of misery and joy”) come off quite well." |  |
Russell Davies
|
 | | | DON'T MISS | | | |  | | Doves
Special guests on Dermot's show this week
| |
|
|
Full Schedule
Newsletter sign-up
Disclaimer:The BBC will put up as many of your comments as possible but we cannot guarantee that all e-mails will be published. The BBC reserves the right to edit comments that are published.