POP BALLADS: WHAT’S RACE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Question: Why is it that black artists like Whitney Houston and Luther Vandross are considered giants of the genre when they sing lush traditional pop ballads, while white artists are dismissed as tear-jerking wimps for doing the same thing?

Clive Davis, who as president of Arista Records has guided Houston’s career at the label, might not use the word wimp , but he wonders about the question, too.

In a speech last year at the annual Music Symposium industry conference in Los Angeles, Davis said: “Candidly, I doubt very much if Whitney’s ‘Saving All My Love for You’ would have gotten a fraction of the attention it did if it were performed by a white singer, say, Melissa Manchester.

“Without an R&B; base,” he added, “a pop ballad doesn’t stand much of a chance. Songs that used to be sung by a Streisand, Diamond or Manilow can now only become hits by black artists.”

That’s an opinion that Davis still stands by a year later. “There’s a Top 40 resistance to ballads by white artists,” he said in a phone interview from New York. “If the ballad also features strings in the background, that’s the kiss of death when it comes to getting Top 40 air play.”

And while there are few young white singers these days getting major-label deals by doing the kind of impassioned love ballads that made Barbra Streisand famous, Whitney Houston--one of the hottest pop arrivals in years--has been dubbed a “young Streisand” on the strength of her soaring vocals and choice of romantic material.

“And not that Barbra Streisand is doing badly, “ said Davis, “but why should she have to do a concept album (“The Broadway Album”) to sell records? She should be free to do what she does best.”

There’s a strange double standard at work in pop music these days. Ballads when performed by black artists--be they Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross or Freddie Jackson--sell in the millions and receive more than a modicum of respect from the critics.

Houston is lauded by the Village Voice as having “a big voice, the kind that makes you laugh and weep at the same time.” Rolling Stone hails Vandross as “one of the reigning neoclassicists . . . a master of the mood of pure pop romanticism,” and also applauds Jackson’s ability to “get under your skin with his hushed intimacy, his trust-in-me sincerity.”

A Barry Manilow, on the other hand, sells millions of copies of ballad hits that are, according to “The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll,” “unabashedly romantic (verging on mawkish) pop. . . . “

Ken Barnes, vice president and editor of Radio and Records, a music trade weekly, acknowledged that it’s difficult for a white artist to get Top 40 air play these days unless it’s with an up-tempo, rock-oriented tune. Says Barnes: “An exception to that is what I’d call a subspecies: ‘the power ballad.’ That’s a ballad with a heavy rock guitar break and it’s usually done by a group like Heart.”

Ballads by white artists generally stand a better chance at air play on stations with a “contemporary hits” or “album-oriented rock” format, and those are the kinds of stations that don’t generate as much revenue for an artist. “So the psychology at work at most record companies is: If (Top 40) radio is resistant, don’t do it,” says Barnes.

Harold Childs, president of Qwest Records--a label whose biggest artist is black balladeer James Ingram--points to the current strength of the black music market as the reason behind the popularity of the R&B-based; ballad: “The black urban market has become so dominant that I don’t believe ‘Somewhere Out There’ (a hit ballad duet by Ingram and Linda Ronstadt) would have been as big a hit if Ronstadt had recorded it alone. Black music is just the hippest sound right now.”

And as for the respect factor of, say, a Manilow versus a Vandross ballad, Melba Moore--whose current “A Lot of Love” album has spawned four black Top 10 ballad singles--summed it up simply:

“When you listen to Luther Vandross, you can hear a hunger in his music, a striving to succeed. Barry Manilow has made it, so that’s what you hear in his music. If artists like Vandross or Freddie Jackson get too comfortable and start to just crank the music out, they’ll be criticized also.”

That her own album is largely composed of R&B;/pop ballads is no accident, she added: “I didn’t go by my own taste in making the album. I concentrated on ballads because that’s what people have told me I sound best singing.

“There’s been a lot of personnel turnover at my record company (Capitol Records), so while my records haven’t crossed over, I attribute the hits I have gotten to strong music--and not to a strong sales or promotion department.”

A newcomer to Capitol Records is Step Johnson, who was recently named vice president of the label’s black music division. Says Johnson: “Not everyone can relate to up-tempo dance music because not everyone can dance. But everyone has been in love, so people can usually relate to ballads. The public has great ears and they know what they want to hear.”

He drew comparisons between R&B; and country music: “The two are more similar than we’d like to believe. White pop audiences don’t seem to believe pop artists who perform ballads because that power and conviction isn’t there. Hard times make you turn to love for relief, and that’s why you see so many hardcore R&B; and country-Western ballads on the charts.”

Johnson pointed to soul singer Shirley Murdock’s recent tear-drenched ballad, “As We Lay,” a Top 10 black hit about infidelity told from the other woman’s viewpoint: “That song was so powerful that I can’t imagine someone like a Petula Clark trying to sing it. But I could picture a country-Western singer doing it. The storytelling believability would be there.”

Ultra-romantic, lushly orchestrated ballads written by composers like Michael Masser and the Burt Bacharach-Carole Bayer Sager team are almost exclusively submitted these days to black singers, according to Clive Davis.

“It’s not about the merit of black singers over white singers,” he stresses, adding that a ballad sung by a black artist simply stands “a better chance at becoming a hit.”

Paul Grein, a Billboard magazine columnist and occasional Times contributor, cites several examples of white artists who have been successful with ballad material in recent years, including Phil Collins, George Michael and Peter Cetera. “It’s true that a ballad like ‘After the Lovin,’ which was a hit for Engelbert Humperdinck 10 years ago, probably wouldn’t be a hit today,” he says.

“On the other hand, you have Miami Sound Machine’s ballad, ‘Words Get in the Way,’ which sounds like the kind of hits that the Carpenters and Helen Reddy used to record.”

As for why white ballad-singing artists like Manilow tend to get written off as schlocky and wimpy by the same critics who praise black ballad singers, Grein observes: “Most critics are rock fans so they are sympathetic toward black singers--if only because they realize that rock is an offshoot of R&B.; Critics see a Manilow-style ballad as the kind of music that rock was supposed to overthrow.

“And most rock critics are white, which makes them reluctant to criticize black singers for fear of being perceived as racist. They might not like the balladry of a Lionel Richie or a Billy Ocean, but it’s easier for them to tear into someone like Manilow with glee because race never becomes an issue.

The best way, he added, for a ballad by a white artist to become a Top 40 hit is to have a movie tie-in--such as Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” from the film “Top Gun”--or to be rock-oriented and avoid sentimentality like U2’s “With or Without You.” Grein also pointed to the recent Elektra Records signing of cabaret crooner Michael Feinstein, a specialist in George Gershwin and Irving Berlin tunes, as a positive sign.

“White balladeers aren’t on the way out,” he emphasizes. “There’s just been a changing of the old guard, from artists like Manilow and Neil Diamond to more contemporary singers like Billy Vera and Chris DeBurgh. It’s just evolution.”

And who knows? Maybe the next major white balladeer on the scene will be someone who sells as many records as Manilow . . . and wows as many critics as Vandross. Stranger things have happened.