If some like it hot, Feinstein’s at Loews Regency was smokin’ with Pamela Rose and a knockout quartet. Swinging, scatting and high-powered, Rose recited a list of favorite tunes in the American sSongbook and then revealed that the lyrics or music were written by women, songs like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Big Spender.”  Rose chose fourteen delectable songs for a jazzy, bluesy good-time tribute to these Wild Women of Song.

A San Francisco jazz singer, Rose crafted an ebullient and enthusiatic program. To one side of the stage, a screen projected photos of the writers while Rose offered smart introductory patter before singing her song. An example, Kay Swift, though married, had a longtime love affair with George Gershwin and Rose’s comments about their romance lent a rueful fatefulness to Swift’s melody set to colloquial lyrics (by husband Paul James) to “Can’t We Be Friends?”:

I thought I found the man I could trust
What a bust,
this is how the story ends.

When Stanley Adams wrote English lyrics to Mexico’s Maria Grever’s “Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado,” the song’s meaning changed to “What a Diff’rence a Day Made,” a hit for Dinah Washington. Rose took down the tempo gently and let the lines flow, a reading that was more introspective than sassy.

With pianist Tammy Hall’s bluesy chords, Pamela Rose belted Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin’s “Down Hearted Blues.” Hunter was a successful 1920s’ Chicago blues singer and songwriter who retired in the 1940s.  She returned to show business at age 82 and enjoyed a successful run at New York’s The Cookery.

Ruth Davies on bass, drummer Kent Bryson and a saxophone player with showmanship, Kristen Strom, all joined Hall to back Rose with a sexy, soaring balance of major and minor keys in “Close Your Eyes” (Bernice Petkere) and “Just For a Thrill” by Lil Hardin Armstrong was thrill itself, sultry and well-phrased.

Pamela Rose and her dynamic band captured the audience for one soulful night with Wild Women of Song.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
January 7, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org