What do Natalie Cole,
Bonnie Raitt, Pam Tillis, Rosanne Cash, Debby Boone and Jeannie
Kendall have in common other than the fact they are all singers?
All their fathers are,
or were, singers, too.
Natalie’s father, Nat
"King" Cole, isn’t with us any more but she sings his songs and
to me sounds like a female version of him. Style, phrasing, articulation.
It was not always thus.
Natalie
Cole was born in 1950. As a child, she sometimes sang with
her father but it was more of a stunt than a duet. But when she
became a singer in her right it was not as a clone of dad. Starting
in college, she sang soul and rhythm and blues, signing with Capitol
Records in 1975. She had a pretty decent career for many years
but that career really took off in 1991 with an album, Unforgettable,
featuring songs originally recorded by Nat Cole. She even sang
the title song with him, a duet with her singing along with his
recording of the song.
Bonnie
Raitt plays guitar and sings folk and blues, a far cry from
her father’s field. John Raitt was a leading star of musical comedy
on both stage and screen. He made his Broadway debut in Carousel
in 1945. He has starred in Oklahoma, Annie Get Your
Gun, The Pajama Game, The Music Man, and Show
Boat. He has appeared many times in concert, sometimes with
Bonnie, one of those times being a concert with the Boston Pops
Orchestra under John Williams.
Bonnie began playing
and singing for pay 1969, when she dropped out of college. After
playing clubs she got a record contract and did several successful
albums but didn’t hit the national scene in a big way until 1989,
when she won the Grammy Award for her album, Nick of Time.
Asked on a TV interview show how the Grammy had changed her life,
she said it made it easier to get romantically involved. Though
that isn’t exactly how she put it. The phrase she used for "romantically
involved" was earthier and far more graphic.
Rosanne Cash is a child
of Johnny Cash’s first marriage, born in 1955. (Johnny Cash has
been a major country music star for decades.) She writes songs
as well as sings them and many
of her songs have been No. 1 on the country music charts but
she does not think of herself as a "country music" artist. (She
says she "doesn’t know anything about country music.") She also
writes short stories, and a collection of them, "Bodies of Water,"
has been published. Her father sang Ballad Of Teenage Queen
with her in an album titled Right Or Wrong/Seven Year Itch.
Debby Boone sings Christian
songs, pop ballads and country tunes, like her father, Pat Boone.
(Her grandfather, Red Foley, was a singer, too.) Born in 1956,
she sang in a quartet with her sisters, Cherry, Lindy and Laura,
at thirteen. She went on her own in 1977 and won a Grammy with
her recording of You
Light Up My Life. She married Gabriel Ferrer, son of the
late Rosemary Clooney, making her kin by marriage to Rosemary’s
nephew, George Clooney. Cousin? She also writes children’s books.
Country star Pam Tillis,
45, is one of country superstar Mel Tillis’ five children. Mel
Tillis is know for his humor almost as much as for his music.
A stammerer for most of his life, the stammer was not evident
in his singing and was a source of much humor in his between-song
banter. Pam shares his sense of fun. In one of her music videos,
"Cleopatra,
Queen of Denial," she dresses in ancient Egyptian costume
and does pseudo-ancient Egyptian choreography. On her 2001 CD,
Thunder and Roses, she does a duet with her dad. She sometimes
appears in family shows with her sisters, Carrie and Connie, and
her father at his Mel Tillis Branson Theater off the Branson,
Missouri Strip.
Jeannie Kendall differs
from the other ladies whose fathers were also singers. She’s made
a career singing with her late father, Royce. Now 48, and married
to a member of the band, she began singing with her father when
she was 15. They were billed as The Kendalls. You couldn’t tell
they were father and daughter listening to some of their songs.
Their Heaven’s Just a Sin Away was a Country Single Of
The Year. Other titles are You’d Make An Angel Want To Cheat,
Teach Me To Cheat, It Don’t Feel Like Sinnin’ To Me
and Take Me To Heaven Before You Take Me Home.
Maybe it was just a
father's way of informing his daughter about the birds and the
bees.
David Westheimer,
SeniorWomenWeb's resident male, lives with his wife of 57 years,
Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment they moved into from Houston,
Texas 41 years ago. Their son, Fred, is a Senior Vice-President
at the William Morris Agency and his younger brother, Eric, is
a veterinarian. Succeeding generations include five grandchildren
and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist, David worked for
Oveta Culp Hobby.
At 85, David Westheimer
continues to write, and not just for Senior Women. The Great
Wounded Bird, his recollections of World War II, is winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published by Texas
Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where it has
surged to 821,374th on their sales list. It is also listed with
Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. David's latest novel, Delay
En Route, is hovering at 1,485,676th on Amazon's list.
Poet and novelist,
David is a retired Air Force Officer. He can be reached for a
repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks at: DWestheime@aol.com.
