 Maya Angelou This one was reissued in 1996 at the height of the "exotica" trend, the result of which has been a proliferation of Martin Denny and Les Baxter CDs in the used CD shops in the past couple years. Aside from the weirdo factor of Maya Angelou doing calypso songs (and the cover art, which features Maya dancing around a fire), there's nothing particularly kitschy or "funny" about the album, and it's important to remember that decades before her 90s resurgence as everybody's favorite poet and elder statesperson, Maya was a nightclub performer, and this album is not all that surprising in that context. These are relatively traditional takes on calypso-flavored pop (not real calypso), featuring Maya backed by guitar and percussion (mainly bongos and congos), and she does a very good job as a vocalist (she's the credited songwriter on several tracks as well). For me, the "hit single" is "Stone Cold Dead in the Market" which features Maya recounting how she killed her husband and why that's okay. The rest of the disc (very short at about 30 minutes, though how much more of this would you really want?) is good, though not something you'll listen to that often. The main reason anyone would buy this is to hear Maya Angelou singing calypso songs, but once the novelty wears off (in the first five seconds) you're left with a fairly regular little album. It's one of Scamp's more lasting offerings, less intentionally cheesy than some of the others (Mel Henke's La Dolce Henke comes to mind), but it does suffer from not really being a "funny" celebrity album nor a genuine calypso album. But this one and Robert Mitchum's Calypso – Is Like So form a nice little dyad of charming, cooler-than-they-should-be fake-world-music albums. Miss Calypso is worth checking out for anyone interested in Maya Angelou, as a memento of one phase of her journey, though fans of celebrity albums need be reminded that they're generally only "good bad" when recorded at the height of a celebrity's fame. Case in point: Seth Green is Blues, released right after Austin Powers but before "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Okay, so that was only released in my fantasy world, but it's a terrible album nonetheless.
Review by Reggie Retina |