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“Blame It on My Youth”
Metropolitan Room – January 22, 28, 30, February 1, 2
“So, you’re diggin’ the Afro?” D.C.-based vocalist Sharón Clark asked the audience upon stepping onto the stage on the first night of her Metropolitan Room engagement. Her retro hairstyle is part of the packaging for her show “Blame It On My Youth,” in which she offers an array of songs from the 1960s and 1970s. She wore a caftan-like outfit with a bright jungle print, suggesting that a bird of paradise had mated somehow with a tiger. The look suggested Odetta, circa 1967. Clark’s set list includes pop and rock songs, which she gives a jazz-inflected spin. For instance, she sings Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Tears on My Pillow” (Sylvester Bradford, Al Lewis), giving it a steady, full-throated sound, with some attractive gospel-ish underpinnings. She prefaces the song by noting, “I just reconditioned it a little bit.”
The singer perches on a stool, where she stays seated throughout most of the set—but there’s nothing static about Clark’s performance. She has a friendly rapport with the audience throughout. Her patter is obviously not completely off the cuff, but it seems largely spontaneous. When she mentioned that she tours in Russia a good deal, one table erupted with cheers from some Russian fans. Clark riffed with them about Russian geography—but not for so long that others in the room grew restless.
She opens the set with the Marvelettes’ “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Prey” (Smokey Robinson), a smooth, expressive turn in which she seems tickled by the idea of the prey besting the predator. She segues into Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” imbuing it with soulful and at times almost pained intensity. During a lengthy instrumental interlude by the accomplished Chris Grasso Trio, led by musical director Grasso on piano, she maintains her concentration—completely and unselfconsciously.
Clark (who notes that she was born in the same year as Barack Obama) explains that some of the songs she’s chosen were introduced to her by “aunties” and others in her family circle. But she also sings favorites that she first heard when she hung out with white schoolmates. One such title is the old Herman’s Hermits hit “I’m Into Something Good” (Gerry Goffin, Carole King), one of the evening’s most welcome pleasures. Clark sings with absolute joy over the prospect of a new love. On the repeated phrase “Oh, yeah,” she seems to be dishing with a girlfriend about her great, good romantic luck, She alters the lyric at one point to a funny (if ungrammatical) “He was all up on me like I knew he would.” She wraps up the number with a scat-sung tag—a conclusion the Hermits would likely never have imagined for the song back in 1964.
Such anomalous embellishment notwithstanding, Clark is the kind of jazz singer who pays attention to a song’s lyrical content and interprets accordingly. That’s apparent, especially, on two John Lennon and Paul McCartney songs. Clark treats the sentiment of the title “And I Love (Him)” almost as if it were a truth discovered during the unfolding of the song. And her playful “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” ends with the phrase “I’m in love with you” blurted repeatedly, as if—now that the cat’s out of the bag—her secret has become a mantra.
She can do sexy, too. With Gordon Parks’s steamy “Don’t Misunderstand”(from the film Shaft’s Big Score), she all but fans herself to bring down the temperature. She begins “Give a Little Whistle” (Ned Washington, Leigh Harline), from Disney’s Pinocchio in an amusingly sultry style. The lyric advises whistling as a way of warding off temptation—but when mischief-loving Clark puckers up dutifully, nothing much comes out. “Whistle” soon picks up speed, though, and a driving passage of scat singing ensues.
With her deep, clear, resonant sound, this singer has been likened, flatteringly, to the late Sarah Vaughan. While that comparison is apt, I urge people to go to “Blame It On My Youth” not to hear a Vaughan wannabe but to experience Sharón Clark. She is more than worthy of being admired on her own terms.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
“So, you’re diggin’ the Afro?” D.C.-based vocalist Sharón Clark asked the audience upon stepping onto the stage on the first night of her Metropolitan Room engagement. Her retro hairstyle is part of the packaging for her show “Blame It On My Youth,” in which she offers an array of songs from the 1960s and 1970s. She wore a caftan-like outfit with a bright jungle print, suggesting that a bird of paradise had mated somehow with a tiger. The look suggested Odetta, circa 1967. Clark’s set list includes pop and rock songs, which she gives a jazz-inflected spin. For instance, she sings Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Tears on My Pillow” (Sylvester Bradford, Al Lewis), giving it a steady, full-throated sound, with some attractive gospel-ish underpinnings. She prefaces the song by noting, “I just reconditioned it a little bit.”