Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

whatever happened to vanessa williams, singer? she does broadway now, the occasional film or telefilm, even those dreaded radio shack commercials. but vh-1’s endless reruns of a diva’s christmas carol over the holidays reminded me how much I miss her singing. her material wasn’t always up to snuff, true, but with the right stuff, she was divine; her ’91 album the comfort zone is a fine case in point. yes, it includes the drippy “save the best for last” – a time-capsule wedding song, no more and no less – but it also includes such bonbons as the title track (smooth, sexy, then-current but not dated production, apart from perhaps the drum programming), her cover of the isleys’ “work to do” (updated just enough to sound contempo, but not so much as to be a travesty, matching the isleys’ flavor – and with a refreshingly femme perspective without changing any of the lyrics), the sinuous “just for tonight” (played to this day on smooth jazz stations, a perfect candlelight-and-you ballad), and “you gotta go” (a lovely piano-based groover featuring a then-unknown brian mcknight, before he became the black barry manilow). does the v-a-n-e-double-s-a have a current deal? maybe clive davis can lasso her and send her the natalie cole jazzy-soulful-pop route. is arif mardin free? with a voice as supple as her lithe muscles and as gentle as lips on a cheek, her public still awaits.