Lisa Jordan on stage just oozes Southern comfort. In her cabaret debut, Jordan sang in a warm, sweet voice which drew the listener in with its charm and total honesty. Making no attempt to hide or alter her natural Mississippi drawl, Jordan let the audience know right off there was no attempt here to be anything she’s not—that what it was seeing was the real, pure Lisa. In fact, one of her original songs, “Delta State of Mind,” dealt with her resistance to change her style and move into the fast lane after moving to California years ago.

Her Southern roots are “long and deep,” she told the audience, which was  apparent right from the outset—when Leo Chelyapov on clarinet played the opening notes of “Dixie” just prior to her entrance—right through to the end, when the final strains of her closing number, “The Rainbow Connection” (Paul Williams/Kenny Ascher), were replaced by the same clarion notes of “Dixie.”

In between, Jordan wove the story of her life from small town Rolling Forks, Miss.—“where you had to get in the car and go somewhere else to go anywhere,” she explained—through her thirty-five years as a math teacher before returning to her first love, music, only a decade ago.

Mississippi was a major focus early in the show, as Jordan opened with two original songs: the soft, easy rhythms of  “Mississippi” (“the sweetest place on earth,” she told us) and “Mem’ries,” a languid ballad which described the scents and feel of “the real South.”

With the always excellent Todd Schroeder on piano and with Chelyapov switching between clarinet and accordion—which complemented the piano in interesting ways—Jordan had fun with a serving of Southern comfort foods in Kevin Fisher’s “Mashed Potatoes” (“The devil is a warm bowl of mashed potatoes/When I know I should be eating cottage cheese and tomatoes”). It is a song that could have been written as special material for the show but wasn’t.

Jordan—who recently stopped using her late husband’s last name, Greenberg, in favor of her family name—was especially moving on two songs from her favorite musical, The Fantasticks (Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt)—offering a sweet, soft delivery on both “Try to Remember” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain.”

In a more jaunty segment, she led the audience through a series of songs she and her family used to sing in the car going “somewhere else,” which included: “Baby Face” (Harry Akst/Benny Davis); “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” (Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn); and “(I‘ve Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle” (Frank Loesser)—all sung delightfully with Schroeder; and “After You’ve Gone” (Henry Creamer/Taylor Layton) accompanied effectively by Chelyapov on clarinet. The clarinet also added poignance to both “A Love That Will Last” (David Foster/Lynda Thompson) to illustrate Jordan’s falling in love with Bob Greenberg, and the self-penned “You’ve Changed,” to reflect the ups-and-downs of dating again.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
September 30, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org