Nicotine Cantata

Nightclubs have always had their own brand of pollution: cigarette smoke. But now one nightclub chanteuse at least is trying to clear the air. Felicia Sanders, sometimes known as "the American Edith Piaf," recently introduced It's a Drag to patrons of Manhattan's Rainbow Grill, an elegant gin-mill-in-the-sky atop the RCA Building. Though the customers habitually puff away until the air turns blue, Sanders' smoky boogie had them snuffing out their cigarettes in alarm.

Except for its opening, a deceptively mild verse of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the lyrics of It's a Drag were written by Milt Robertson and are a pastiche of radio and TV anti-smoking spots. "I don't have no more blood in my bloodstream," Felicia sings raspily, "just a mixture of tar and nicotine. So give it up, put it down and leave it there." She smiles brightly through her recital of nicotine terrors, gets progressively hoarser, ends in a thoroughly convincing coughing fit. Created by Sanders and her husband, Pianist-Arranger Irving Joseph, It's a Drag is a confession of the singer's own past. She smoked half a pack a day for 20 years. "I got so I couldn't breathe properly, and I started worrying about my voice." As a singing crusader, though, Felicia Sanders has discovered she has a private price to pay: "The song reminds me I've just quit smoking. When I get to my dressing room, I want a cigarette so bad I could just die."

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