[Dixielandjazz] Keely Smith NY Times Review

[Steve Barbone]

What Happens in Las Vegas Stays in Swingin¹ Memories

NY TIMES - By STEPHEN HOLDEN - April 5, 2007

Showbiz longevity has its perks. Whoever has the good luck to remain the
last one standing gets to tell the uncensored version of what life was
really like in the imperial playground. As the golden age of Las Vegas
recedes into the gin-scented mists of Rat Pack lore, that eternal tomboy
Keely Smith, now 79, is the one left standing. She is the kind of garrulous
star witness dear to the hearts of showbiz historians and gossip mongers.

Now appearing at the Café Carlyle, ³the queen of swing,² as she is now
nicknamed, dispenses just enough nuggets of insider dish to whet your
appetite for a marathon. As this still-boy-crazy tattletale alludes to
all-night parties and juicy hookups, she looks back with few regrets. Hers
is no sob story ending in redemption. Las Vegas in ¹58 or thereabouts was
fun, fun, fun. We should have been there.

At Tuesday¹s opening-night show Ms. Smith and her seven-member band
performed variations of the same set she has been doing for the last decade.
As befits the staid Café Carlyle, the balance between hot swingers
associated with Louis Prima and ballads from her early albums, tilted more
toward the sedate. At Feinstein¹s at the Regency, her regular stomping
ground until now, swingers dominated.

Ms. Smith¹s voice remains in reasonably good shape, but in the two years
since I saw her last, signs of fatigue have set in. The evening¹s strongest
performance was a quiet medley of ³When Day Is Done² and ³When Your Lover
Has Gone.² The band, not the singer, pumped most of the excitement into
Prima signature songs like ³Jump, Jive and Wail² and ³Just a Gigolo.²

Those arrangements still define the galvanizing moment when swing and rock
¹n¹ roll fused in the music of the two Louis (Prima and Jordan), and the
saxophone began to honk and the guitar to twang.

But the glue holding the show together was less musical than verbal. After
65, Ms. Smith observed wryly, you can say anything you please and get away
with it. She did, within limits.

Keely Smith appears through April 28 at Café Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel, 35 East
76th Street, Manhattan, (212) 744-1600.