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After kicking off Saturday night's festivities with a
hard-charging version of Cole Porter's "It's Alright With Me," a
beaming Cheryl Bentyne welcomed Catalina Jazz Club's capacity audience by
effusing over the wide array of talent that had assembled for the occasion. Event musical director Ted Howe was poised at
the grand piano and ready to swing, with performers like singers Lorraine
Feather, Gina Eckstine and Mark Winkler, and trombonist Bob McChesney waiting
in the wings.
The up-tempo, finger-snapping atmosphere Ms. Bentyne had
created in the space of four minutes was uniquely indicative of whose life was
being celebrated. Her long recovery from
serious illness hadn't diminished her legendary drive a bit, and that's saying
something--since January of this year the
multiple-Grammy-winning soprano had been undergoing
treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma, and tonight she was celebrating having
successfully dealt with it at the City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment
center north of Los Angeles. Was the
vivacious song stylist looking wan and sounding like a shadow of her former
self? Would this be a solemnly serious
occasion? Forget about it...
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| Lorraine Feather & Cheryl Bentyne |
"This is like one of those old variety shows that
aren't around anymore," Bentyne declared after finishing her first song,
grinning that famous grin as she opened the combination fundraiser and release
party for her new CD Let's Misbehave: the
Cole Porter Songbook (Summit, 2012). "But they're back, and here to
stay."
 | |
| Cheryl and Gina Eckstine |
With that, the artist delivered on her promise by sailing
into another pair of tunes from the recording, "It's Delovely" and
"Let's Misbehave," caressing Porter's famously fun-loving and
life-embracing lyrics with an enthusiasm and energy that sent a warming frisson of electricity through the crowd. It is certain no one in the audience was left
thinking this would be just another polite jazz concert, suitable for the
hardwood floors of a recital hall. All
who knew her for the sensation she had created with The Manhattan Transfer in
1979 when she joined Tim Hauser, Janis Siegel and Alan Paul and helped usher in a decade of the most
memorable vocal jazz since Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and again with her solo
debut on the Mark Isham-produced Something
Cool (Columbia, 1992), were treated to the best news possible. Cheryl Bentyne was well and truly back.
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| Mark Winkler and Charmaine Clamor |
Frequent Bentyne collaborator Mark Winkler and Charmaine
Clamor, a notable L.A.-area singer, did a memorably campy version of Winkler's composition
"Sweet Spot," a nice piece of writing that the duo played for all it
was worth.
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| Gina Eckstine |
But it was Gina Eckstine,
daughter of iconic singer and big band pioneer Billy Eckstine, who got the show
revved up into a higher gear and rolling in earnest. Not only did this mysteriously underrated
singer take command of the stage as she embraced the audience, her power and
control were something to behold. She is
that rare vocalist who can find a note and sustain it without losing a bit of
steam, and without the wavering pitch problems that overcome many a lesser singer. Quite aside from her technical skills, Ekstine's performance
was reminiscent of a bygone era when the blues was not an intellectual
exercise, but a feeling, when jazz was a music that gave people emotional
release and made them happy. So when she
grabbed the microphone and took on her father's "Prisoner of Love"
and "I Apologize," she did it with the authority and presence of big
band-era singers like Ella Fitzgerald.
With more exposure this singer could easily be trumping the pale
offerings of the thin-voiced waifs who struggle to find middle C.
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| Andrea Baker and Steve Wilkerson |
The dynamic seesaw of the evening's program dipped and
slowed a bit with the man-and-wife duo of the Andrea Baker and Steve Wilkerson,
with tunes like Baker's cool, throaty rendition of "I've Got the World On
A String" and Wilkerson's variously fiery, albeit unobtrusive ascents on
the clarinet, music played with a gracious gentleness that worked well in
leavening the many high-powered performances.
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| Lorraine Feather |
What Baker and Wilkerson were also able to accomplish artistically
was a sideways introduction to Lorraine Feather's inimitable songwriting and
singing. Feather is a recording artist
whose skills as a raconteur are on a par with Dave Frishberg's or Mose Allison's,
and in live performance is a naturally facile improvising storyteller and
word-player. Devoted fans know this from a few of her recorded musings, but
listeners who have heard nothing but the "radio hits" selected by
programming directors might not know the treasures to be heard in a live setting. With her typically lazy-eyed sotto voce, she led off her performance
with a wry, understated preamble to "Antarctica," her hilarious
lyrical collaboration with Duke Ellington's composition "The
Ricitic," that left the assembled alternately smiling and laughing out
loud. Her classic commentary on the
frozen tundra of love's Idatarod was followed by another Ellington
lyricization, "Love Call," based on the Duke's "Creole Love
Call," and while the original has doubtless gotten more airplay, it would
be tempting to say that until one has heard Feather's heart-rending soprano and
lyrics paired with the master's composition, one really hasn't heard it all.
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| Bob McChesney |
The evening continued with the meandering gutbucket-to-bebop
ruminations of Bob McChesney, a busy session trombonist who has played with
everyone from Horace Silver to Ray Charles, then went on into the night with a raffle, a solo appearance from Clamor doing Leonard Cohen's
"Halleluja," a standup comic, L.A.-based singer Dolores Scozzesi
(known for her interpretation of Bob Dylan's "One More Cup of
Coffee"), and even more--those who were able to stay for it all said it
ended as well as it had started. The evening's emcee, beautiful radio personality Elizabeth Zero, kept the proceedings moving along with wit and energy, and thanks
largely to the tireless work and promotional skills of producer/publicist Rob
Lowe and his wife Brinka Olberding, whose organization Casting New Lives is
home to a number of jazz artists, the event was a confirmed success.
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| Elizabeth Zero |
All the proceeds from this and the Friday performance went
to benefit the City of Hope, an organization whose efforts helped save the life
of a national treasure, and those in attendance were treated to a style and
quality of music sorely absent from today's music scene. The soaring soprano range and chutzpah of
Cheryl Bentyne melted our hearts once again, and more than that, assured us that
she would be back to melt them again.
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| Cheryl Bentyne |
As a footnote to the night's events, there is the lingering
feeling that Bentyne's prediction while making introductions earlier in the
evening--that the variety show is back and here to stay--might be prophetic. Or at least a self-fulfilling prophesy. Could this resilient redhead be right?
Crazier things have happened. Who would ever have predicted that smack in
the middle of the often bleak synthesizer-and-drum-machine landscape of 1980s
music, Manhattan Transfer's two girls and two guys would ride to the rescue by
doing bop-inflected vocalese, and be the hottest thing in jazz?
Variety is the proverbial spice of life. It's why a festival still works even in
economically depressed times. Whereas
someone might hesitate to purchase a $35 ticket to see a big act, that
hesitation often evaporates when it means seeing six of them. Moreover, what sums up those concepts that
define jazz--the mixing it up with inclusiveness, innovation, unpredictability,
improvisation and an unbridled joie de vivre--better than
the idea of variety? What if the
spectacular stage and television variety shows of the 1960s, jazz's answer to
the rock-and-roll invasion, really were to stage a "comeback" because
they had been here all along, and here to stay?
The divine Ms. B. could be onto something.
Photos:
The two snapshots of Cheryl Bentyne taken at the club sound check, first with Gina Eckstine and then with Lorraine Feather,
are by Bob Barry. The very last shot of Cheryl laughing as she stands by the window, is by Robin Layton. All other photos were
taken by yours truly, Carl L. Hager.