COME TO THE CABARET
As a member of perhaps the newest generation of cabaret devotees, I count myself lucky to be able to witness the art's recent resurgence. New clubs and rooms have been sprouting mushroom-like in the dark, fertile atmosphere of New York nights, while some of the old ones have been rejuvenated. Born too late, war baby that I am, to catch many of the legendary artists in their prime, I am greatly comforted by the continuing trickle of record reissues on such labels as Stanyan and Monmouth-Evergreen as well as by the stamina of those venerable artists who still carry on the tradition live.
One of these is the "incomparable" Hildegarde, who last year celebrated fifty years as a performer with a concert at New York's Town Hall. She still retains the visual trap pings of sophisticated romanticism she has cultivated for so long-the red roses, the long black gloves, the clinging gown, and the white lace handkerchief. More important, she has lost none of her vocal artistry. Indeed, the studio recording inspired by the anniversary concert (now out for review) displays a voice richer and mellower than ever before; the phrasing is more precise, and there is greater emphasis on the dramatic presentation. There is also, to be sure, a tendency to talk a line from time to time to compensate for a some what diminished breath support, but, far from being a drawback, this sails her right into Ma bel Mercer waters, where the sometimes bitter wisdom of maturity more than compensates for the lost sweetness of youth.
It is hard to find a vocabulary to communicate an enthusiasm for a performer who is at once so special (in her art) and so universal (in her humanity) as Mabel Mercer. Exerting, all my willpower so as not to "doyenne" and "diseuse" you to death, I refer you instead to other critical explorations of the talents and history of this earth-mother of popular song:
read Whitney Balliett's penetrating chapter on her in his book Alec Wilder and His Friends (Houghton Mifflin, 1974), Henry Pleasants' discussion in his The Great American Popular Singers (Simon & Schuster, 1974), and William Livingstone's article in February 1975 STEREO REVIEW on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday.
The parties, awards, and other festivities in honor of Miss Mercer's attainment of the three-quarter-century mark gave me my chance to experience her art firsthand-and under rather unusual circumstances. "AM New York," an early-morning TV program, was featuring her in a special two-hour broad cast with a cabaret format. And so, in a make shift studio re-creation of a night club, a host of early-rising friends and fans of Mabel Mercer were deployed among tables and champagne glasses to play "audience." Miss Mercer sang regally seated in her own special chair, transported from the St. Regis Hotel's Mabel Mercer Room for the occasion. I found myself seated beside The Chair, mercilessly exposed to the TV cameras on the outer edge of the singer's spotlight and, of course, perspiring madly. As Miss Mercer's voice, a bit shaky yet firmly in control of each lyrical nuance, caressed It Isn't Easy Being Green and
---- PETER ALLEN: Often delightfully extravagant
turned Wait 'Til You're Sixty-four into a witty, knowing promise of the future, the lights, the cameras, and my discomfort were forgot ten in the aura emanating from this wise, quiet woman who practically compels belief and mandates comfort in her listeners. When she sings, there is simply nothing more important, for she knows what is important and you feel privileged to share that knowledge.
THERE is a wonderful sense of discovery for neophytes like me who begin exploring this music, for there is a golden network of influences that leads us inexorably from performer to performer and back again. It is impossible, for instance, to mention Mabel Mercer with out having Bobby Short, that suavest of cabaret babies, spring to mind. Bobby Short leads one to think of Blossom Dearie, and Blossom Dearie brings all the others along in a rush Chris Connor, Portia Nelson, Mel Torme, Sylvia Syms, Elly Stone. The flow is free-associative, for the similarities are often tenuous and the styles diverse. The common de nominator in all these performers is their dedication to style, to a particularly subtle, polished form of musical expression that has nothing to do with the maddening pow-bam of the typical Las Vegas singer. Often they share material or arrangers, so when I search through the record bargain bins where these artists usually (and unfairly) end up I'll occasionally take a chance on an unknown for that reason alone. In this way I've come up with some marvelous music by Carol Sloane and Claire Hogan, both of whose thus-far limited careers deserve expansion, and Teddi King and Sylvia Syms, whose popularity is on a welcome upswing.
His fine web of musical from finished, for a new generation of per formers is being woven into it right now. Jane Olivor and Peter Allen are but two newcomers with the requisite devotion to style, though I confess it is not always easy to cram the exuberant Allen into the cabaret bag. His performances are often delightfully extravagant-he may leap up from his piano to sing sitting on top of it or dance about brandishing a pair of maracas overhead. But then he will slip smoothly from the rambunctious gaiety of I Go to Rio to a touchingly tender bow to Judy Garland called Quiet Please, There's a Lady On Stage. Despite the obvious rock elements, Allen's show is scaled to club size; the audience rapport it requires cannot be established anywhere else.
Jane Olivor is twenty-four-carat supper club. Her voice is an exquisite, resonant instrument intelligently used and controlled so that it thoroughly penetrates every cranny of a song. Her current showpiece is a version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Some Enchanted Evening, which she takes apart and puts back together again so that Ezio Pinza's own mother wouldn't recognize it. Much as Barbra Streisand (with whom she's been compared) startled and entranced her early audiences at the Bon Soir and Blue Angel with a melancholy Happy Days Are Here Again, Olivor has personalized a song we know well, playing against our expectations of it and skillfully creating an entirely new musical experience.
She also has an extraordinarily effective way of reaching under a high note, pouring energy into it until it simply bursts into bloom on key, a technique far from that of your average graduate of the Talk Show School of Singing for whom sheer volume seems to be all.
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Also see:
BUYING GUIDELINES FOR CAR STEREO--It's coming closer to home IVAN BERGER
EQUIPMENT TEST REPORTS: Hirsch-Houck Laboratory test results on the: Audio Pulse Model One time-delay system, Avid 101 speaker system, Realistic SA-2000 integrated stereo amplifier, and Shure M24H stereo/quadraphonic phono cartridge, JULIAN D. HIRSCH