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Feinstein’s at Loews Regency – November 7 – 10
Cabaret critics are allowed at least the occasional crush. Come on, you know we are. So long as we’ve not actually met or known the objects of our affection and promise not to leave our critical faculties at the door when we review these artists (and when we’re doing it, to tone down the purple prose). Like hordes of other jazz-pop aficionados, I’ve loved Sue Raney for going on 40 years. She has lived in Los Angeles for her entire career, and living in LA myself for the most of that time I’ve often had the chance to see her perform at such storied Southern California venues as the Cinegrill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the Jazz Bakery. Non-traveling New Yorkers and other deprived souls mostly have had to content themselves with her superlative recordings, which have been too few and far between. But now, Raney—blonde, bouncy and svelte as ever—is back in a New York club for the first time in 27 years. (She played Fat Tuesday’s in 1985.) High time.
Definitely favoring the jazzier side of her style in this eclectic outing, Raney left her introduction number entirely to the Alan Broadbent Trio: Broadbent (who also arranged all the songs) on piano, Harvie S on bass, and Bill Goodwin on drums. Just so we’d know with whom we’re dealing here, the trio lustily played an extended riff on “How Deep is the Ocean?” (Irving Berlin) that mostly strays, charmingly, from the melody, referring to it only very occasionally. And when Raney took the stage, she made it clear with her rendition of “That Face” (Lew Spence, Alan Bergman) that she would be scatting and trilling in what lesser singers might consider unlikely songs. Her real opener, given her long absence, was “I Love Being Here with You” (Peggy Lee, William Schluger), which was Lee’s cabaret and concert opening number in her later years. Raney paid a silent tribute to Lee by singing it much the same way.
Like any other jazz singer, Raney reserves the right to revise her set list, adding, deleting or repositioning numbers, but the core of this program comes from her two most recent CDs: Heart’s Desire: A Tribute to Doris Day, from 2007, and Listen Here, a collection from the great American songbook, from 2011. On opening night, Raney began her mini-Day-homage with a title song, “Heart’s Desire,” written by Broadbent and Dave Frishberg. Her version of Day’s breakthrough song, “Sentimental Journey” (Les Brown, Ben Homer, Arthur Green), is more syncopated than Day’s original big-band version. Raney’s treatment of Day’s signature song, “Que Sera, Sera” (Jay Livingston, Ray Evans), the Oscar-winner from the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Man Who Knew Too Much, was slowed down from Day’s jingly mega-hit to less than half tempo, giving the song so much more weight. On the other hand, Raney bubbled right along in the same tempo as Day’s 1958 hit “Everybody Loves a Lover” (Richard Adler, Robert Allen).
Unlike the Doris Day tribute album, which was done with a full orchestra, for Listen Here Raney had only Broadbent’s piano to rely on, and it was more than enough. Accordingly, Harvie S and Goodwin discreetly left the stage for the numbers from this recording. Opening night she sang “Melancholy Baby,” a staple of her repertoire since that night at a club when she asked aloud, “What should I sing next?” and an inebriated patron trotted out the old line, “Sing ‘Melancholy Baby.’” And so she did, achingly and with its long, usually unperformed verse. “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (Eric Maschwitz, Manning Sherwin) benefited from her jazzy, uptempo treatment. Two Richard Rodgers songs, “He Was Too Good to Me” (Lorenz Hart) and “It Might As Well Be Spring” (Oscar Hammerstein II), another Oscar winner, from State Fair, made perfect sense here, back to back. Particular fun was Raney and Broadbent’s interpolations of lines from other spring songs into the latter: “I Love Paris” (in the Springtime), “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year,” etc.
Her final two numbers (with the full trio again) require responses, from me at least. From her very first album, recorded with Nelson Riddle in 1955, when she was 17, Raney reprised—with naturally more intensity than her younger self—”Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?” (Billy Barnes). Based on this show, I’d give a resounding “No” to that question. I saw and heard no diminution whatsoever in Raney’s voice or delivery, and anyone who can slide from a low D to a D-flat three octaves higher, trilling yet, has a great many more merry-go-round rides in her. As to her finale (no encore), “I’ll Be Seeing You” (Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal), the only response from fans can be, “Soon again, in New York, we fervently hope.”
Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.
