“Johnny Mercer wrote a thousand songs,” Marilyn Maye gaily informs her audience as she opens her show, “and I’m going to do them all tonight.” It is an understandable temptation.  So many of Mercer’s songs have become permanent residents in the popular culture that singling out but a baker’s dozen could be tortuous.  Which is one very good reason why Maye Presents More Mercer includes thirty-nine and, to the ongoing delight of her opening night audience, clocked at almost a full two hours. Whatever your favorites in Mercer’s songbook, Maye offers choices aplenty.

Sure, she was working with Mercer’s treasure trove.  In film musicals’ heyday, Mercer was second only to Sammy Cahn in the number of Academy Award nominations. He garnered sixteen, of which four took home the Oscar, and Maye includes them all in one of several mini collections, “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” (1946) written with Harry Warren, “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (1951) with Hoagy Carmichael, “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (1961 and 1962) with Henry Mancini.

Tallying the numbers, however, says little about Maye’s magical qualities.  There are few performers who can take a stage and command of their audiences as promptly and effectively as Maye. She is light-hearted, whimsical, sardonic and magnetic.  Minutes into her opener, “Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?” – a Mercer/Richard Whiting tune – she twice tripped on the lyrics.  Nonplussed, and to everyone’s great amusement, she tossed her copy of the music to the audience, remarked to her musical director that she didn’t want to open with it anyway, and won instant affection from her audience.

An octogenarian, Maye has a vocal range to give hope to singers half her age, with an accompanying measure of their envy, if not awe, at her ability to wring out a song’s emotion as she segues, for example, from a wistful “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” to a jazz-based, raucous “Blues in the Night” that almost literally brought down the opening-night house.  She keeps the audience with her every step of the way, eliciting enthusiastic train-whistle “woooo woooos," and later “Yippie yi yo kayahs” to accompany her as she sings “I’m an Old Cowhand.”

Part of the show’s perfection (a word from my lexicon I rarely employ) stems from the effective arrangements and smooth accompaniments of the Tedd Firth trio.  Firth, an exquisite jazz keyboardist, Tom Hubbard on bass and drummer Jim Eklof, could not be a better match to Maye as they provide an oft-exciting, “just right” musical setting for her vocals.

Here’s a caution.  The very next night, Maye performed at the Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention, easily adding another thousand-plus admirers to her coterie. Therefore, be forewarned that if you want to see one of cabaret’s most scintillating entertainers (and you should), get on the phone promptly while some reservations may still be available.  Maye will be at the Metropolitan Room every night until Saturday, October 17, except Thursday, October 15.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
October 6, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org