Julie Wilson is a lyricist’s delight and a listener’s dream.

Wilson doesn’t sing but rather speaks the lyrics with dramatic flair and powerful emotion, with the music simply as background — and her exquisite diction and delivery make every lyric clear and distinct and meaningful, sometimes enhanced by a flicker of her arm or a widening of her eyes.  Even her pauses convey emotion.

She saluted her friend and heroine Billie Holiday in a show at Tom Rolla’s Gardenia, singing more than a dozen songs connected with Lady Day.  In actuality, Wilson has been saluting Holiday pretty much since she made Holiday’s signature gardenia her own shortly after the singer’s death in 1959.

Wilson’s unique approach works best on ballads: her medley of “Body and Soul” paired with “Good Morning Heartache” and her reading of  “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” were highlights in an evening of highlights.

But she also worked her magic on more up-tempo songs: raising her arms and swinging her hips at one point in “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do”; and giving a variety of readings to the “ooh, ooh, ooh” refrain in “What a Little Moonlight Will Do,” coming off as funny, sweet or sexy, as the lyric dictated.

At 84, Wilson is simply mesmerizing.

Even when she forgets a lyric — and that is often — her accompanist, Christopher Denny, prompts her — sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully but never impatiently.  It’s all just part of the show.  But even flubbing lyrics and recovering, or going back to catch up with herself, Wilson is never rattled, never anything less than gracious and never anything but fascinating and fabulous.

Wilson said she created this tribute to correct what she felt was a slight nearly 50 years ago when she was asked to record an album of songs Holiday might have recorded were she still alive in 1962; but the recording that resulted — Meet Julie Wilson — made no acknowledgement of the Holiday connection, which upset Wilson and prompted her to create this tribute all these years later, she explained.

Closing the show with “God Bless the Child,” Wilson left her appreciative audience undoubtedly thinking “God Bless Julie Wilson.”

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
January 28, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org