[Dixielandjazz] Rebecca Kilgore reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

If you forward this, or actually, when forwarding any emails, always exercise "Netiquette."
Delete all names, email addresses, extra forwarding material, etc.  Do not send all
that garbage on to be forwarded on and on forever...


Rebecca Kilgore reviewed
by Stephen Holden
New York Times, August 12, 2011
Has any love goddess had more firsthand experience being a plaything coveted and
discarded by spoiled male collectors of beauty than Marilyn Monroe? In 1920 Irving
Berlin wrote "After You Get What You Want," one of the best songs ever written about
the heart of a fickle playboy, which Monroe sang 34 years later in the movie "There's
No Business Like Show Business."
"You're like a baby," announces a song that distills the dynamics of the restless
erotic chase and its aftermath. "After you get what you want, you don't want what
you wanted at all."
To hear Rebecca Kilgore sing it as a bouncy jazz number in her wonderful show "Some
Like It Hot -- The Music of Marilyn Monroe" on Tuesday evening at Feinstein's at
Loews Regency was to hear a mature woman's touch affectionately applied to lyrics
that could bite, if sung with an accusatory edge.
Ms. Kilgore, accompanied by the Harry Allen Quartet (Mr. Allen on tenor saxophone,
Rossano Sportiello on piano, Joel Forbes on bass and Chuck Riggs on drums), took
the sex-kitten gloss out of songs to which Monroe had half-jokingly applied a flirtatious
wink while retaining Monroe's attitude of playful camaraderie.
A pop-jazz singer whose fluent voice conjures sunlight glinting on running water,
Ms. Kilgore infuses everything she performs with a sense of lighthearted enjoyment.
Her phrasing, like Monroe's, is naturally curvaceous, although underlined with a
stronger current of swing. Instead of striking the pose of a singing pin-up, she
conveys the frisky, fun-loving sensibility of a good sport. Delivering ballads like
"I'm Through With Love" and "Incurably Romantic," she refrained from moping.
Mr. Allen is more than a bandleader. He is Ms. Kilgore's musical partner in a tribute
that is entirely loving and respectful. His saxophone, alternately exuberant and
husky, gave the show a steady pulse of sexy good humor, and his solos caught fire.
Ms. Kilgore conceded that some of the material, like Jim Scott's "She Acts Like a
Woman Should," which Monroe recorded in 1953, was "a little unliberated," but resisted
applying an ironic edge. Her most poignant story recalled Monroe's close friendship
with Ella Fitzgerald.
Dave Frishberg and Alan Broadbent's little-known song "Marilyn Monroe" supplied the
evening's epilogue in its evocation of a goddess who was dreaming, along with her
audience, of "a friendly world where a little girl could be real and true."
Who was she? "She was Hollywood / She was Marilyn Monroe."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book."  
-- Ronald Reagan, B2/6/1911 - D6/5/2004