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Nicole Henry
August 2, 2009
The Metropolitan Room ~ 34 West 22nd Street
Friday, July 31 at 7:30
Nicole Henry sings with such brassy force that it’s as if a parade is coming up the street with a battery of baton-twirlers in the lead. She can modulate her tones when she wants to-and she often wants to-but it’s the power of the singing that lends it its most engaging quality: joy. Even when she was slithering through a downbeat lyric at her recent Metropolitan Room stay, joy and jubilation seeped through.
The idea that the lyrics may not be uppermost in Henry’s mind is the giveaway that the primary raison d’etre here is jazz. The improvisational support lent her by pianist John DiMartino, bassist Richie Goods and drummer Alvester Garnett pretty much seals the proclivity. And, wow, did those boys pile on the craft whenever the floor was turned over to them!
Yes, the interest in reconstructing melody is uppermost with Henry, who was tall and gorgeous in a floor-length print gown as jazzy as her stylings. But it can still be said that a lyricist’s intent regularly came through, because Henry’s determination to nail a tune to the back wall often worked to nail the words as well. She also had fun at the ends of songs, extending the wordsmith’s message with made-up rhymes and jovial riffs. Often, too, if she didn’t indulge in the add-ons, she held some last notes so long that Ethel Merman must have been paying attention from wherever her final resting-place is.
The ability to instill immediacy to words and music worked on just about everything Henry sang, all but one of the ditties standards that have gotten the once- and twice-over thousands of times in the past. From the “You Better Love Me” (Timothy Gray-Hugh Martin) opener to the partially a capella “Home” (Charlie Smalls) closer, Henry refreshed whatever she committed herself to. Included were second and third items, “That Old Black Magic” (Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen) and ‘Teach Me Tonight” (Sammy Cahn-Gene DePaul) and later John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which doesn’t often hit cabaret rooms.
Only when Henry reached her fourth number, “When I Fall in Love” (Edward Heyman-Victor Young) did she contain that waterfall-glittery mezzo, an approach she employed again later with “The Nearness of You” (Ned Jones-Hoagy Carmichael). Which brings up another, perhaps questionable Henry habit. She sometimes inserts words that don’t do much to enhance what she’s about. Okay, the second time through “Teach Me Tonight,” she can’t be blamed for upping the ante on writing “‘I love you’ a thousand times across the sky” to writing “‘I love you’ a million times across the sky.” But changing the words in “The Nearness of You” from “the right to hold you ever so tight” to “each right to hold you ever so tight” doesn’t make a lot of sense. How many individual rights, a reviewer wants to know, does a person have to hold another person so tight?
When introing the numbers, the gaily off-hand Henry has the dulcet tones of a late-night deejay, one of those women who sound like angels commenting from a plush cloud on high. Not a bad quality to have, even if she’s describing a few of her selections as “songs about getting some action.” Come to think of it, “action” could be Henry’s middle name.
