Bodkin spoke in a slow unhurried voice, with a softer tone than his usual blunt delivery, as if Kerans had now become a member of a select inner group.

Her repertory is increasingly spiced with standards, but her blunt, empathic delivery with its wide-open vibrato harks back to the untamed shout of girl groups produced by Phil Spector in the 1960's.

Although her repertory is spiced with standards, her blunt, emphatic delivery, with its wide-open vibrato, harks back to the wild, untamed shout of 1960's girl groups.

A blunt delivery of hits from "Let There Be Rock" to "You Shook Me All Night Long" and pleasant enough selections from its new album, "Stiff Upper Lip" (Elektra), provided the necessary jolt.

His blunt delivery distinguishes his voice amid the capital's verbal effluent.

"In and Out of Vogue" - written with Judith Warner, who has also written biographies of Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich - does not have the breathiness of fashion-magazine prose but rather the simple, blunt delivery that Ms. Mirabella prides herself on.

Ms. Keyes, a transplanted Texan with a blunt delivery, makes this sound like shady ethics.

And yet there was a touching naivety about that phrase, unlike the blunt delivery of his undead mentor.