Influence and Style
Bivens' voice gave We Five its distinctive and memorable sound. Almost operatic in quality, its range was described as low tenor to high soprano. Bob Jones has recalled that "Bev had this husky kind of voice, and somehow there's this old soul in there".
Bivens' performances on the album You Were On My Mind and in concert largely foreshadowed a female vocal style that, by 1967, was associated with, among others, Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane, Grace Slick of the Great Society and Jefferson Airplane, and Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas. Bivens was said to have inspired Jefferson Airplane's original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson, who was already well established on San Francisco's jazz and folk scene before joining the Airplane. It may be no coincidence either that Karen Carpenter who, like Bivens, had a fine vocal range, was signed by Alpert to A&M, with her brother Richard, in 1969.
Bivens' influence was apparent too in recordings by some male bands: for example, the Turtles' single Happy Together and the Cowsills' The Rain, the Park and Other Things (both major hits in 1967), as well as I Will Have You (1966) by the seemingly imitative British band, Just Five. In 2002, the British newspaper The Independent described We Five as having "bridged the gap" between Peter, Paul and Mary and the Mamas and Papas; indeed, Bivens' voice and that of Mary Travers had a similar atmospheric quality, although Bivens' was the more commanding. In the latter respect, there was a similarity with both Judith Durham of the Australian group the Seekers and Dusty Springfield, initially of the Springfields, who made their names in England in the early to mid-1960s as the lead singers of folk-oriented groups. Others whose vocal delivery has borne comparison have included, in the 1960s, Judy Dyble, the original lead singer of England's premier folk-rock band, Fairport Convention, and Kerrilee Male and Dorris Henderson, successive lead singers of Eclection, and, more recently, Lavinia Blackwall of Trembling Bells and Zooey Deschanel in her recordings with M. Ward as She & Him.
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