Her manager calls her "The Animal." "She moves just like Elvis," he says. Adds her director: "When she starts singing, I hafta chase my kids out of the room." This nemesis of children is a babyfaced, 20-year-old Swedish-born singer named Ann-Margret Olson, who, with an arcane appeal to the teen-age mystique, has one of the summer's fastest-moving single records. Songstress Margret (she has dropped her last name professionally) is that rarity in the record field: a girl singer who can really make a pop song pop. In a pulsating, slightly nasalized voice, pleasant but still more callow than mellow, she bleats across the land a sugary lament called / Just Don't Understand:
Well, you say that you need me
Like the ocean needs sand
But the way you mistreat me
I just don't understand.
On the road to teen idolatry, Margret took dancing lessons in a Chicago suburb, where the family moved from Sweden when she was six. Her debut as a radio singer was not auspicious: she lost out on an amateur hour when she was 16 to a Mexican leaf player. Leaving Northwestern University at the end of her freshman year, she got a job singing in a restaurant lounge, was heard and hired by George Burns for his Las Vegas show. Burns gave her some professional advice: get out of her new red velvet slacks and into black Lastex and cashmere. She did, swiveled her hips for good measure—and was quickly signed up by RCA.
Other pop records:
Enroll Garner: Dreamstreet (ABC-Paramount). The first recording in almost three years by the distinguished acrobat whose feats must be heard to be disbelieved. Pianist Garner still has more than his fair share of fingers, but their presence often stupefies rather than charms. A notable exception: the trip-hammered, polyrhythmic ride he gives to the Rodgers-Hart lady who was a tramp.
Quarter to Three (U.S. Bonds; Legrand). His name really is U.S. (for Ulysses Samuel) Bonds, and he sings in a voice so gravelly that he suggests a whole convention of really nasty-sounding hop-trotters. The chaotic results are what buyers of this bestseller deserve.
Maysa Sings (Columbia). A Brazilian singer with a smokily wistful voice speaks of old, unforgotten loves: Something to Remember You By, The End of a Love Affair, The Man That Got Away. Occasional faint echoes of Dietrich but without the Dietrich poise.
Stan Kenton: The Romantic Approach (Capitol). A good big band is rare, and a new one these days is rarer. This band is one of the best Kenton ever put together. The instrumentation is unique even for one of popular music's most tireless experimenters: no strings, generous contingents of trumpets, trombones, saxes, and an instrument of Kenton's own invention —the mellophonium, midway between trumpet and trombone. The result is as smooth as butter, whipped by Kenton's artfully lagging beat and caressing tone in ballads like Moonlight in Vermont.
Dum Dum (Brenda Lee; Decca). The nation's oldest child singer is on with another hit. At 16, after ten years in the business, she shows remarkably few signs of wear.