[Dixielandjazz] Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn tribute reviewed - + Nighthawks - NY Times

[Robert Ringwald]

Jaunty Songs That Reveal a Bleaker Reality
by Stephen Holden
New York Times, January 11, 2012
An erupting wellspring of euphoria: that would describe the vintage swing emanating
from Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks at the 92nd Street Y during Saturday evening's
season-opening program of Lyrics and Lyricists. It is challenging enough for a band
to churn out museum-ready facsimiles of 80-year-old pop tunes outfitted with stylistically
accurate period arrangements. But Mr. Giordano's ensemble, like the Jazz at Lincoln
Center Orchestra playing the blues, preserves old music with such deep affection
and idiomatic understanding that the past becomes the present and the term "quaint"
simply doesn't apply. In its lighthearted way, the music swung as intensely as any
being created today.
The program, "Makin' Whoopee: Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn and the Jazz Age," the first
of five performances that ended Monday, celebrated the little-known songwriting team
behind the 1928 musical "Whoopee." That show, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and starring
Eddie Cantor and Ruth Etting, yielded the standards "Love Me or Leave Me," which
became Etting's signature song; and "Makin' Whoopee," a woeful tale of sex, marriage,
parenthood and money whose bone-deep cynicism is camouflaged by a perky attitude.
Not all those catchy tunes were as frivolous as they sound when heard in the background.
For instance, the 1921 ditty "Ain't We Got Fun," with lyrics by Kahn and Raymond
Egan and music by Richard Whiting, observes: "There's nothing surer / The rich get
rich and the poor get laid off." Desperately denying the harsh realities of bill
collectors, job loss and an unexpected pregnancy, the couple in the song keep on
dancing.
Robert Kimball, the show's artistic director, who substituted at the last minute
for Charles Osgood as host, told pithy backstage anecdotes about the songwriters
and their occasionally fraught relationship with Ziegfeld. A rotating cast of six
-- Christine Andreas, Jason Graae, Howard McGillin, Laura Osnes and the team of William
Bolcom and Joan Morris -- performed the songs, with the singers occasionally struggling
to keep up with the songs' itchy momentum.
The songs of Donaldson (music), Kahn (lyrics) and their collaborators like Isham
Jones leave little room for singers to strut their interpretive skills or technique
beyond exhibiting their stamina. Mr. Graae and Ms. Osnes, in particular, caught the
spirit. Mr. Graae, a Lyrics and Lyricists regular, is a natural vaudevillian clown,
whose boyish energy seems sprung from an inner catapult that keeps reloading.
As the program whizzed along on hits like "It Had to Be You" (Ms. Andreas), "Yes
Sir! That's My Baby" (Mr. Graae), "My Blue Heaven" (Mr. McGillin) and "Dream a Little
Dream of Me" (Ms. Osnes), I kept thinking of Paul McCartney. Tunes like these were
the source of his whimsical nostalgic side, which was dismissed as trite, old-fashioned
and square in the 1960's and 70's. A better word might be timeless.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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