Topic A

The most torrid new torchbearers in that old nightclub marathon are a couple of tawny, husky-voiced singers named Sallie Blair and Abbey Lincoln. Both have a captivating, come-hither way with a song, and the sinuous good looks that make audiences pay attention from ringside clear back to the chromium bar stools. In Manhattan and Detroit last week, Sallie, 24, and Abbey, 27, were peddling Topic A with a gusto that few singers have displayed since Dorothy Dandridge and Eartha Kitt started giving night classes in it for the tavern trade.

Sallie belts them out in the magenta-walled midtown Manhattan convention hall known as the Latin Quarter. In a white gown with red lining, she steps before the gold-spangled curtain and gives a wild-riding reading of Witchcraft, her pelvis bumping out the rhythm, her copper-red hair whipping over her face. Her big-bodied voice can flare to an exuberant shout or sink away to a foggy, muted-trumpet whisper. Occasionally, as she sweeps her almond eyes over the ringside tables, she lets flutter a throaty, tongue-trilling sound that suggests nothing so much as the invitation of an amorous cobra. Within the framework of That Old Black Magic she sings a medley of songs -Hold Him, Joe; Matilda; It Ain't Necessarily So; When the Saints Go Marching In -intersperses them with barefooted, hip-shaking dances. In her finale, she strips to fringed pantaloons and wriggles about the stage in a dance that starts the drummer shouting ("Don't stop now, Sallie, don't stop now!") and the audience stomping and banging out the rhythm.

Abbey is less flamboyant, depends on an occasional shimmy of her spangled hips or a body-shaping gesture of her hands to prime her audience for her blues-tinted ballads -Yon Do Something to Me, Fools Rush In, I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good. In Detroit's Flame Show Bar, she appears sleekly encased in a bare-shouldered black dress, throws her head back, and through pouting lips floats out her sad, sexy lyrics in a voice smoky with longing. Her timing and enunciation are precise. Usually she plays the elegant if slightly shopworn lady, but sometimes she drops that role to launch into a gusty celebration of the simple trials of being a woman: "Like an oven that's crying for heat/ He treats me awful each time we meet/ But I must have that man."

Both Abbey and Sallie would some day like to fill out their careers with acting roles in the movies or on television. But in the meantime, they plan to go on pushing Topic A with unfettered enthusiasm. Says Abbey demurely: "I like the idea of men. I dig men.'' Says Sallie of one of her current crushes: "He's cute as a button; he's one of those people you want to walk up to and say -O.K.?"

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