Nov. 20, 1976 review: Phoebe Snow at Shea's Buffalo
Some shows, you go in loving the artist a lot and come out loving them even more.
Nov.
20, 1976
Phoebe Knocks Them Dead
It was the old Jo Stafford tune,
“Teach Me Tonight.” It came up second before a sold-out Shea’s
Snow, having already jolted the crowd
to attention by opening with the rip-roaring Motown hit, “Shakey Ground,”
followed it up by driving folks to their feet with an incredible display of
vocal acrobatics on the ‘50s standard.
The coy hit of a generation ago was
enough of a surprise on the singer’s “It Looks Like Snow” album, but the
recorded version scarcely was an indication of what she does to it in person.
It became a vehicle for her full array
of jazzy manipulations and she loaded it to the hilt, sliding notes,
embellishing phrases, quavering her vibrato and extending syllables to the
point where the word “teach” broke into four parts.
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TO
TOP it all off, she did what she called a shuffle off to Buffalo with her two
backup harmony men – “My All-Male Revue and Sanctified Chorus,” she later
introduced them.
“I actually can tap dance,” she
revealed next, prompting the drummer to mischievously set up a rhythm for it.
“I really do not wanta get into this,”
she protested, even as her heels kicked up and she bobbed about with her
guitar.
It was that kind of show, giddy with
delight, tickled with whimsical asides about Snow’s 11-month-old daughter,
dieting (a reference to her double tummy) and the wacky guy in
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*
“I
AM so crazy tonight. I don’t know what it is,” she said later, starting an
encore of “San Francisco Bay Blues,” where she dueted with the bassist, and her
torrid “Let the Good Times Roll.”
Wearing tinted glasses, tight curls, a
crocheted jacket and a baggy-legged jumpsuit, she guided her half-dozen
musicians through a set which included most of her new album.
The group (“I love this band very
much,” she said) was as loose and whimsical as she was. A special standout was
Steve Burgh, a guitarist built like a lumberjack.
If the new selections had been more
familiar to the crowd, no doubt there would have been a pandemonium of
applause, the likes of which surrounded older favorites like “Poetry Man” and
“Two-Fisted Love.”
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OPENING
the evening was Rochester-area singer-songwriter Bat McGrath, a last-minute
fill-in for veteran Richie Havens, who was ill with bronchitis.
McGrath, accompanied by an electric
guitarist and bassist, got his scruffy humor across just fine while he talked
between songs, but a lopsided sound mix obliterated half his lyrics and totally
leveled the landscape of his highly personal style. It’s hoped he’ll get better
audio tonight when he opens for Asleep at the Wheel at Buffalo State
College.
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* * *
IN
THE PHOTO: Album cover photo from “It Looks Like Snow.”
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FOOTNOTE:
Phoebe Snow at this point was still flying high on the magic of her spectacular
self-titled debut album from 1974 and her big hit with “Poetry Man,” but things
had gotten bumpy. She had a fight with her original record label, Shelter, and
moved to
As she devoted herself to caring for Valerie at home,
her career lost direction. Though she toured from time to time, she didn’t
record for most of the 1980s, supporting herself by singing commercial jingles.
Her last chart success came with her 1989 album, “Something Real,” and she
spent the 1990s in collaborations with everyone from Michael McDonald to
Ladysmith Black Mombazo. She died in 2011, a year after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
Setlist.fm has no information on what she played or who played with her during
this tour, but there’s a recording from her show in Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29
with these songs:
Shakey Ground
Teach Me Tonight
My Faith Is Blind
Autobiography (Shine, Shine, Shine)
No Regrets
In My Girlish Days
Fat Chance
Don’t Let Me Down
Poetry Man
Mercy on Those
Two-Fisted Love
Harpo’s Blues
Dear Valerie
Cash In
Good Times
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