What: Lounging At The Waldorf: A Night of Johnny Mercer with Cole Porter Sitting In
When: April 22, 2010
Where: The Presenters Dolan at The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis
Cabaret, as I have noted in the past, is a big tent, with room for a wide variety of musical and performance styles. Anyone who doubts that need only survey the acts that have played the Kranzberg Center’s cabaret room recently. We’ve had the laid-back contemporary pop of Robert Breig, the Vegas-style glitz and volume of Lennie Watts’ Manilow tribute, the musical theatre-themed shows of Alice Kinsella and Jeff Wright, Katie McGrath’s courageous emotional vulnerability, the operetta-based vocal virtuosity of Shana Farr, and even my own tribute to Vaudeville – and that’s just within the last couple of months.
That being the case, there was certainly room in the tent for the jazzy one-night stand of Manhattan mainstay and 2009 MAC Award winner (Best Jazz Singer/Instrumentalist) Daryl Sherman.
Obviously wowed by her elegant pianism and informal, honest performance style, the small but simpatico crowd was reluctant to let her go, despite the show’s one hour and forty-five minute running time – a bit long by cabaret standards. Happily trading licks with St. Louis’ own Dave Troncoso on acoustic bass and guitar, Ms. Sherman gave her audience a generous helping of Great American Songbook standards by the likes of Porter, Waller, Rogers and Hammerstein and, especially, Johnny Mercer. Just for spice, there were also side trips to the realms of the blues (Rhodes Spedale’s “ Get Up Because It’s Mardi Gras” and a driving rendition of Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”), bossa nova (Jobim’s “Insensatez”), and mainstream pop (Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles”).
Having written all that, I would be less than honest if I failed to admit that I was not as won over as most of the rest of the audience.
The fact is, I’m not really a jazz fan. That’s not a knock on the genre or its performers, just a matter of personal taste. It’s also probably the result of having grown up listening to and playing the classics and show tunes and diving heavily into rock and R&B as a teenager. Jazz has just never been a type of music I sought out.
I mention this so that when I carp about Ms. Sherman’s occasional disservice to a song’s lyric (such as those Richard Maltby Jr. wrote for the “Fats” Waller tune that gave the evening its title) and her tendency to take considerable liberties with melodic lines and rhythms, you jazz fans can take it with a grain (or maybe a shaker) of salt. Yes, I appreciate that the traditions of this genre are not those of musical theatre, but it struck me as ironic that someone who has such great admiration for the lyrics of Mercer or Porter was so free with them. Your mileage may vary, as that of the audience clearly did.
My only real disappointment with the evening was the relatively small turnout, despite PR support from two of our leading jazz radio personalities: KFUO’s Don Wolff (who introduced the show) and my fellow KDHX volunteer Al Becker. A performer with Ms. Sherman’s credentials, it seems to me, should have gotten more support from the sizeable local jazz community. Granted, the Kranzberg isn’t known as a jazz room, but it accommodates the form nicely and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be on the radar of aficionados.
So if you love jazz, support it. You don’t have to be a fan to know it’s an endangered species these days.
To find out more about Ms. Sherman, visit her web site, darylsherman.com. For news of upcoming shows at the Kranzberg and other Grand Center venues, visit the Grand Center’s Shows and Events site at www.grandcenter.org/shows_events.
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