I DIDNT SEE Buffy Sainte-Marie perform live until a ...
From her first album, It's My Way! (1964), on through the early 70s, this very Native American singer slammed out songs with a brute-force commitment to whatever topic she chose?war, love, religion and, especially, the treatment of the American Indian. Her range was (and still is) broad, from classic Scots ballads to her own blasts at government policy.
Buffy's an interesting, complex bundle. A Canadian Cree raised in the U.S., she holds a Ph.D. in fine art from the University of Massachusetts, became a major songwriting force in the late 60s, then in 1976 dropped out of recording for 17 years to concentrate on digital art, motherhood and a five-year spot on Sesame Street.
In both voice and figure it would be hard to say if she's beautiful, but she's an intensely sensual, captivating presence. With her long, black, Indian-maiden hair, she could look almost mythic. Her rich alto held a unique vibrato (pretty much gone when I saw her perform), often serving as a strong underline, at other times intrusive if not bizarre. But nobody ever wrote more powerful lyrics or sang them with such body-blow intensity.
As usual, I don't know what became of my copy of It's My Way!, but I later picked up the double-album The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie (1970)?which is what I'll talk mostly about?and the later Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie, Vol. 2, from which I taped maybe five songs before giving it away.
The original Best of hits every side of Buffy's songwriting, though it includes none of the Scots (or other) ballads. I'm not sure which is my favorite?maybe "Rolling Log Blues." Here, her voice leaps, slides, hovers and does back flips. Still, it's not just the vocal acrobatics that grab you, but the way they so perfectly match and build on the lyrics.
The native mouth bow makes a lovely, eerie backdrop to "Cripple Creek," a rollicking down-home paean to courting. "Piney Wood Hills" catches all the beauty of back-roads America, and in the traditional tune "Ground Hog," you can almost smell the beast in his burrow.
Her best-known compositions are probably the antiwar "Universal Soldier" and "Until It's Time for You to Go," which has been covered by a flood of divas. Personally, I don't think "Universal Soldier" holds up that well with time. On the other hand, the Native American laments, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" and especially "My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" are agonized cries of injustice laced with venomous accusation that can leave you shaken. And "Cod'ine" is one hell of an addiction song.
The best of her love songs, such as "Soulful Shade of Blue," are surprisingly lyrical, tender and gentle. Some of the others, however?"Summer Boy" and "Winter Boy"?verge on the saccharine. And in a few cases, she serves up some real doozies (how they ended up on a "best of" is beyond me). Leonard Cohen's "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot"?which I always think of as "God Is a Thigh, Magic Is a Foot"?is so stupid it makes me cringe; "The Vampire," with its synthesizer whoops, borders on the ridiculous; and on "Los Pescadores," her vibrato simulates an earthquake warning.
For all of this, Best of really does include most of her early triumphs. The second volume, however, is mostly leftovers, except for the soaring devotional, "Ananias."
What's Out There: Both "best of"s are easy to get, but many of the original albums seem to be teetering on extinction. To learn more about Buffy, see www.creative-native.com.