Baby, it’s you!  Heart-rending, fearless, matchless — Baby Jane Dexter is the one.  In her new show at the Metropolitan Room, Still Bad, Still Blue, she sends a blow to the gut with the desperate verse to “L.A. Breakdown (and Take Me In)” (Larry Marks), stark with loneliness and fear (“Tough enough for me just livin’/Getting tired of bein’ just a loser on the run”).  She moves into the nostalgic flow of “The Way We Were” (Alan and Marilyn Bergman/ Marvin Hamlisch) and builds to its harsh reality: “What's too painful to remember/We simply choose to forget.”  It is a brilliant pairing of loss, suffering and coping.

In this show, Dexter revisits the music that re-sparked her career two decades ago. Erv Raible, owner of the venerable West Village club, Eighty-Eights, was persuaded to feature Dexter one Saturday night. She remained at the club for 18 months.  In that vastly popular show, Big, Bad and Blues, she delivered songs that were life stories, stirring audiences with her gusto and bravado and her commitment to Thomas A. Dorsey’s,“(I’m Gonna) Live the Life I Sing About in My Song.”

Her voice comes from the depths, facing life head-on, truthful, sometimes hilarious, often piercing.  In Still Bad, Still Blue, she mentions the importance of Abbey Lincoln in her life and Lincoln’s powerful anthem, “Throw It Away” (“You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you”).  The jazz gospel message in Clyde Otis’s “Take a Look” and Lincoln’s bluesy backstage tale, “Painted Lady,” are intermingled with newer material, opening with Stephen Sondheim’s regretful look at life, “Good Thing Going.”  A hit song for P!nk, “Glitter in the Air” (Alecia “P!nk” Moore/Billy Mann), asks, “Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, ‘I just don't care’"?  While showing her vulnerability, Dexter never loses the brash urgency that galvanizes her audiences.  She knows what she is singing about, the palpably harsh acceptance in “Damn Your Eyes” (Barbara Wyrick and Steve Bogard), the determination in “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” (Wohlford/Lewis), and the chilling solitude of “Wish Someone Would Care” (Irma Thomas).

Dexter leaves her audience with the powerful compassion of “Everybody Hurts.”  Ross Patterson on piano is always right with her, adding his rousing energy. Still charged with passion, still life-affirming, Baby Jane Dexter’s Still Bad, Still Blue is a must-see experience, perhaps her best show yet.

Baby Jane continues at the Metropolitan Room every Friday & Saturday through December 23.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
November 25, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org