I know, I know, hybridization is the hallmark of post-postmodern art, but lots of people still stubbornly insist on disliking works of art they find difficult to pigeonhole. I suspect that’s why Hollywood Homicide slipped through the cracks so quickly, and I know it’s why Mary Foster Conklin isn’t nearly as popular as she ought to be–she’s not quite jazz, not quite cabaret, and not even slightly worried about it. She sings what she wants the way she wants, and if you don’t get it, somebody else will. Me, I think she’s the best cabaret singer on the East Coast (Wesla Whitfield being the best cabaret singer on the West Coast–they don’t sing a whole lot of cabaret in between coasts), so I made sure I was at Danny’s Skylight Room last week for the opening of “Caught in the Trance: The Songs of Matt Dennis,” Conklin’s first single-composer show ever.
You know Matt Dennis, even though you don’t think you do. He wrote the music for “Angel Eyes,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “Let’s Get Away From It All,” “The Night We Called It a Day,” and a half-dozen other blue-chip standards that get sung all the time. Conklin sang them at Danny’s, but she also left plenty of room for such lesser-known gems as “That Tired Routine Called Love,” “Where Am I to Go?,” “Compared to You,” and “Blues for Breakfast” (“No coffee, please”). In between tunes, she talked about Dennis and his lyricists, wittily and charmingly and never excessively. She brought along an amazingly hot band led by pianist-arranger John di Martino, whose dapper, Shearingesque arrangements were unfailingly appropriate. I don’t think I’ve ever heard tastier drumming on a cabaret gig than that supplied by Ron Vincent. There was even a printed program!
As for Conklin herself, I can’t do any better than quote from what I wrote about her in “Second City” a couple of years ago: “Mary Foster Conklin…started out as an actress, and her style is precisely balanced between jazz and cabaret. Scratch her witty tough-girl-from-Jersey patter and you’ll find a sensitive artist (but not frail!) with a wide-ranging, boldly colored voice and an open ear for offbeat material.”
Conklin and her band will be returning to Danny’s July 23 and 24 for two more performances of “Caught in the Trance.” Both shows start at 9:15.