Pointer Sisters Draw Audience of Fans at Spa
by Irv Dean, The Post-Star, July 5, 1975
The Pointer Sisters, with their flowered tresses, severe high-heeled shoes that used to be called “spikes,” silky strapped gowns and rhinestones, drew an audience of fans this week at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
The sisters — June, Ruth, Anita and Bonnie — specialize in 1940s music and they perform with seemingly boundless energy, carrying out their opening act pledge: “Ladies and gentlemen and children, too … these brown babies gonna boogie for you.”
And boogie they did, much to the delight of the small audience — less than 2,000 but nearly all of them rabid fans.
While comedian Jimmie Walker was bouncing back and forth in his repertoire from sex to blacks and back to sex, a young man and a young woman slipped out of the amphitheater and disappeared in a nearby grove. They emerged a while later with a big bouquet of wild flowers, and when the Pointers emerged on stage, the young man stretched across the footlights to proffer the posies. One of the sisters, beaming approval, leaned over to accept them.
It was that kind of crowd. The lawn audience was practically non-existent. The Pointer Sisters are a commodity that needs to be seen as well as heard, and you don’t see much from the lawn.
As the Pointers wailed out the tongue-twisting lyrics of “Salt Peanuts,” a very large girl in a white dress was spied in a balcony aisle, abandoning herself to the mood, twisting and contorting herself in a variation on what used to be known as “the shimmy.” Except for the white dress, she would have been barely perceptible. She kept up the show for quite some time before a man — apparently a SPAC attendant — stole up behind her. As he neared, she spotted him and hastily reclaimed her seat.
Again, it was that kind of crowd of dyed-in-the-wool fans who ranged in age from young folk who probably claim the Pointers’ music as their own to the older folk who remember well when they first heard those jazzy numbers.
The quartet, backed up by a four-piece ensemble consisting of guitarist, bass guitarist, pianist and a versatile drummer, got a particularly rousing ovation for their “country” hit, “Fairytale.”
There were also waves of applause for their “Mood Indigo” and “Satin Doll” and “Save the Bones for Henry Jones.” The sisters responded to one standing ovation with a brief return and then they were gone.
As for Walker, the comedian-actor who stars as J.J. in TV’s “Good Times,” he may be fine in a supper club. But the SPAC crowd, which included quite a few young children, grew uneasy as Walker grew more and more lewd. It’s not that he dwells on double-entendre too much. He’s not that subtle.
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