Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 53

Sound Check THE HARTFORD COURANT MUSIC NEWS AND VIEWS THURSDAY FEBRUARY 27, 1992 Cole expects her Grammy awards will breed more orchestral albums of standards By ROGER CATLIN Courant Rock Critic I POP ROCK i -J try, Hank Williams Jr. will tour with Patty Loveless and Doug Stone; and Ricky Van Shelton will tour with Lorrie Morgan and Tracy Lawrence. The Ice-T show at Toad's Place in New Haven Sunday is canceled. A second tour by Ringo Starr Friends is also planned this summer. And the "Rock 'n' Soul Revue" will have a traveling component featuring Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald and Phoebe Snow.

Alligator Records' 20th Anniversary concert tour hits the Pearl Street night club in Northampton, March 10 featuring Koko Taylor, Elvin Bishop, Lonnie Brooks, Katie Webster and Lil' Ed the Blues Imperials on the same bill. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones play Pearl Street March 12. Also coming to the club are the Average White Band March 21, Chris Whitley with Toad the Wet Sprocket March 23, the Del Fuegos March 27 and the Son Seals Band March 28. Dinosaur Jr. plays the Vertex nightclub, formerly Katina's, in Hadley, Tuesday.

Nobody opens the Dire Straits show in Hartford March but opening their tour in England this summer, by contrast, will be both Lyle Lovett and Was (Not Was). Central Connecticut State University station WFCS celebrates the impending release of Spinal Tap's "Break Like the Wind" album with a party 8 p.m.-March 13 at Semester's, on the New Britain campus. Besides the classic film "This is Spinal Tap," they will play new tracks off the new album, plus there will be Spinal Tap karaoke, a worst drummer competition and tap trivia game. It's free. Drummer Kim Plainf ield conducts a clinic at Willie's Steak House in Manchester Tuesday, sponsored by Dynamic Percussion.

question of the academy's chronically conservative tastes. Stipe said awards are nice but "writing a great song and having people dig it is what it's all about. We have more doorstops now," he said, waving his award. "But beautiful ones." As for your humble correspondent's predictions, he did a better-than-Whalers .500, going 7-7, missing largely on the Bryan Adams sweep that never materialized and not anticipating the comeback by 1989 Grammy veterans Bolton and Bonnie Raitt. WHAT'S NEW Dancehall style reggae king Shabba Ranks, who won the best reggae Grammy Tuesday night, plays the Palace Performing Arts Center in New Haven March 11, with tickets already on sale.

The box office is also open for an April 3 show by Cowboy Junkies with John Prine at the Palace. Look for the Steve Miller Band at the Springfield Civic Center in late April and the New Haven Coliseum in early May. Shawn Wayans and Jamie Foxx from "In Living Color" will headline a show featuring eight other comedians, six of them local, on a performance of "Showtime at the Apollo" at Springfield Symphony Hall March 13. It's the first in a four-concert comedy series at the Symphony Hall. Tickets are also available for the second show, featuring Gallagher April 2.

The final two shows in the series are yet to be announced. The closest stop for the Hammer tour so far is the Worcester Centrum April 25. Hartford is not on the itinerary for the first month of the tour, which begins April 1 in Hampton, Va. Opening the show are Boyz II Men, Jodeci and Oaktown 3-5-7. Expect summer touring packages from Chicago with the Moody Blues, Carlos San-tana with Mickey Hart and Steel Pulse and Little Feat with George Thorogood.

In coun NEW YORK Flush with her Grammy-sweeping success Tuesday with "Unforgettable," Natalie Cole predicted an increase in the number of orchestral albums of standards. Speaking to the press backstage at the 34th Annual Grammy Awards at Radio City Music Hall shortly after midnight Wednesday, she said one of the first attempts to create another lush album of standards will be by fellow Grammy winner Michael Bolton. Bolton, a New Haven native and Westport resident, is to go into the studio this year with "Unforgettable" co-producer David Foster and a full orchestra. "It's not going to be a pop album; it's more of a special-projects album," said Foster, who called Bolton "an incredible singer at the peak of his career." Cole also said the newly slim Luther Van-dross (who boasted to the press about dropping 106 pounds) will bulk up on the backing musicians for an orchestral album as well. "And I saw a lot of orchestras on stage tonight," Cole said, referring to such Grammy performances as the one by Queensryche.

"But you really have to know what you're doing" when an artist attempts such an album, Cole said. "Otherwise you're going to get killed by the critics." The animosity between best male pop vocalist Bolton and the critics, several of whom voted Bolton's "Time, Love and Tenderness" last year's worst album and roundly booed when his remake of Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" won Tuesday night, provided most of the sparks in the jammed press room afterward. "There's a lot of love in this room, isn't there?" Bolton snarled at reporters, after Associated Press Natalie Cole, beaming over her Grammys Tuesday night, thinks new recordings of pop standards are the wave of the future. telling the room that "cruel, rude critics" who boo him "basically can kiss my ass." "If I was as insensitive as they seem to be, I wouldn't care what critics Say," Bolton said. "But I'm not And it does hurt." But, he added, "if you take a bunch of no-talent chimpanzees and givfttbem a bucket of paint, they'll destroy a Van Gogh every time." Critical darlings R.E.M.

won three Grammys, although they led nominations with seven. But bassist Mike Mills said backstage, "I didn't think anybody won tonight who shouldn't have," although lead singer Michael Stipe, wearing a "White House Stop AIDS" hat, said only, "I'll take the fifth" on the Write to Roger Catlin in care of Sound Check, The Courant. 285 Broad Hartford CT061 15. Please include a telephone number. single "Don't Worry, Be Happy" sold more than 1.5 million copies in the United States.

Both the single and the album went platinum and racked up three Grammy awards: Best Record, Best Song and McFerrin, choir to perform at Jorgensen hall 1Q Pop Vocalist of the Year. In his latest musical explorations, McFerrin has recorded with jazz pianist Chick Corea on "Play" on Blue Note Records, and with virtuoso classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma on "Hush" on Sony Masterworks. With Corea, McFerrin gets to ignite his vocal pyrotechnics on such By OWEN McNALLY Courant Jazz Critic fod, and Genesis of Springfield. Admission: $5 in advance, $6 at the door. Tickets are available at Roz's Records Shop, 283 Barbour and Johnny's Barber Salon, 164 Westland St.

LECTURES ON JAZZ GIANTS The Hartford Camerata Conservatory is of ering a noontime lecture series on four jazz greats, Thelonious Monk, Elvin Jones, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Called "Jazz Giants," the lecture series will be presented by guitarist Norman Johnson, the dean of the conservatory's diploma school. Video and audio tape segments will be used in the lectures that will trace the careers of the four artists. The lineup for the lectures, which will be delivered from noon to 1 p.m., are: Wednesday, Thelonious Monk; March 11, Elvin Jones; March 18, John Coltrane; March 25, Miles Davis. With a box lunch ordered in advance, the series costs $48.

Without the boxed lunch, it costs $20. Admission to individual lectures costs $6 at the door. The conservatory is at 834 Asylum Hartford. For more information and reservations call: 246-2588. I JAZZ CONTEMPORARY on 13 tracks, including five originals alongside such classical pieces as Rachmaninoff's J.S.

Bach's "Air" from Orchestral Suite Number 3, and Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Flight of the Bumblebee," executed in unison with Yo-Yo Ma's cello. The duo gets down on its earthiest selection, the traditional song "Hush Little Baby." The most amusing track is McFerrin's "Hoe-down" number when Bobby and "Yo," as McFerrin calls Yo-Yo Ma, go country, playing foot-stomping, barn-dance music. Now that Blue Note has paired McFerrin with Corea and Sony Masterworks has matched McFerrin with Yo-Yo Ma, one or the other label ought to bring together Corea and Yo-Yo Ma to record together. Tickets for the Jorgensen concert are $15, $13.50 and $11, with discounts for senior citizens and students. Tickets can be purchased at the box office or by phone at 486-4226.

GOSPEL BASH IN HARTFORD The Gospel Prophets of Hartford are among the groups performing at a gospel concert Sunday at 5 p.m: at the Pentecostal Church of Deliverance, 800 Albany Hartford. Also performing are the Spiritual Lites, the Gospel Stars and Northern Winds, all of Hart- Bobby McFerrin, the one-man vocal band, performs with his 10-member choir called Voicestra Monday at 8 p.m. at the University of Connecticut's Jorgensen Auditorium on the Storrs campus. McFerrin and Voicestra sing a dazzling variety of a capella music ranging from African chants and Indian ragas to contemporary vocal numbers to new songs based on the alphabet. McFerrin has won nine Grammy awards, including Best Jazz Vocalist four years in a row.

(His string ended Tuesday night.) McFerrin's ascent to the top of the pop charts began four years ago when his hit jazz pieces as Corea 's McFerrin "Spain," Ornette Coleman's Blues Connotation," Thelohious Monk's Midnight" Kenny Dorham's "Blue Bossa." After opening on a light note by parodying the mellow pop crooner genre on "Autumn Leaves," McFerrin laces the evergreen with his wide-ranging spectrum of sounds. Throughout the album, he sounds like a synthesizer, singing hornlike lines, laying down percussive rhythms or transforming his voice in what sounds like a bass. With Yo-Yo Ma, he displays his vox exotica Write to Owen McNally, The Hartford 285 Broad Hartford, CT 06115..