She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina

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Following the radical dream-folk reveries of her 1969 album <i>Illuminations</i>, 1971’s <i>She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina</i> marked Buffy Saint-Marie’s return to the waking world. Despite its groundbreaking use of electronics and quadrophonic sound, <i>Illuminations</i> was too vanguard for her Vanguard Records boss (and longtime producer) Maynard Solomon, who demanded a more commercially viable follow-up. To that end, Solomon handed production duties over to Jack Nitzsche, who had just applied his gilded touch to Neil Young’s <i>After the Gold Rush</i>. “Vanguard really wanted me to make a hit,” Sainte-Marie tells Apple Music, “and they thought, ‘Oh, Jack Nitzsche makes hit.’” But while it’s an infinitely more accessible record than its predecessor, <i>She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina</i> is by no means a return to the acoustic protest hymns that first made Sainte-Marie a folk-scene sensation and pioneering Indigenous icon in the mid-’60. With Nitzsche rallying a Murderers’ Row of collaborators—Neil Young and Crazy Horse, guitarist Ry Cooder, and “Gimme Shelter” belter Merry Clayton among them—<i>Ballerina</i> reimagined Sainte-Marie as a hip-shaking rock ’n’ soul star. “Jack thought it would make me sound hip,” Sainte-Marie recall. “I mean, Tina Turner was really happening at the time. And Jack saw a lot of potential in me as a pop singer.” An equal mix of originals and cover, <i>Ballerina</i> is as vivid a time capsule of the early-’70s Laurel Canyon sound as any: The opening rendition of the Gerry Goffin/Russ Titelman tune “Rollin Mill Man” and the swaggering title track split the difference between dusty country-rock groove and boisterous gospel boogie, while Sainte-Marie elevates Young’s autobiographical ballad “Helpless” into an arm-swaying universal anthem. But Nitzsche’s chart-conquering vision is most clearly realized through “Soldier Blue,” which provides a striking point of contrast to Sainte-Marie’s other military-themed character study, her 1964 signature “Universal Soldier.” Where that song was a plaintive acoustic elegy, “Soldier Blue” is all spotlight-seizing bravado and cinematic sweep (fitting, since it also served as the theme song to the namesake 1970 film about the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne Indians). .

via Apple Music

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