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Petula Clark hasn’t been in the U.S. for seven or eight years. During the interim, she hasn’t neglected her scales, the pipes have remained expressive and she’s still a stylish singer. She’s also a more mature personality with a witty line of chatter and a blond handsomeness. She attained her major renown with "Downtown" and achieves additional luster with her current catalog, a roster of tunes by Britons who also have made good in the New World and are long-relished in casino country. Her vocal colorations are enriched by the backgrounding of two femme singers and the batoning from the piano by Kenny Clayton. Clark’s vocal bundle from Britain is by some of that country’s more distinguished cleffers. Songs include "Don’t Sleep in the Subway," "Memory" from Cats, a medley of Elton John tunes together with some appropriate lines about him, plus others, some of which had been regarded as Tin Pan Alley output. She gives a gracious performance that at times is extremely punch, as is evidenced by her rendition of "Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina," which has an arrangement that makes it seem completely fresh. Dennis Wolfburg supplies the opening warmup. His start is slow and questionable, but once he gets into his experiences as a school teacher in the South Bronx, particularly with the changes from his youth in the field of sex education, he hits a fine stride and walks off a winner. --Jose |