By Marilyn Lester***What a joy to hear Billy Stritch’s album Billy’s Place come to life at Birdland Jazz Club. The euphoria of live performance and of coming home to the venue was palpable for everyone in the house—especially for Stritch, bassist Tom Hubbard and drummer, Mark McLean. The evening was a celebration, not only of getting past 15 months of pandemic lockdown, but of finally being able to celebrate the CD properly. And like quite a few of these post-pandemic, first-time-back-on-stage performances, magic was in the air.
“Meet Me Midnight” (Barry Manilow, Bruce Sussman) was the perfect opener; it’s a partying kind of number whose lyric, “Meet me at midnight… We’ll start the new day right,” invoked the tone of the evening, of being together again. The eponymous CD was born of Stritch’s weekly streamed Billy’s Place shows (for which he even wrote a theme song!). Stritch has an encyclopedic knowledge of the American Songbook, classic and new, so curating the tunes for the shows and narrowing them down to favorites was a task that can definitely be labeled a labor of love. Hearing them live was a profound reminder of what it means to be in a room with performers, especially ones who occupy the top shelf of the entertainment world.
Yet, of course, there was no getting around the sadness and the tests that isolation brought with it. This hard fact was acknowledged but not dwelt on in Stritch’s easy narrative. “Since You Left New York,” written by Stritch and Sandy Knox many years ago, was sung with a deep feeling of realization that suddenly the lyric had taken on an extra layer of meaning.
As a pianist, his style is wonderfully bright and lyrical. He’s at home with jazz and his improvs are often clever and amusing, such as a riff from the opera Carmen during “No Moon at All” (Redd Evans, Dave Mann). It was during this tune that Hubbard got to show off his impressive bassist chops with a solo close to the melody, a freedom for players of the upright who are normally called on to be mainly the time keepers of a band.
As a vocalist, Stritch’s warm tone is easy on the ears and makes anyone feel at home. Combined with innate charm, you get the notion that not only does he absolutely love entertaining, but that he doesn’t take himself too seriously either. That’s not to say Stritch lacks gravitas. There’s plenty of that in his work. He’s sincere, and that quality comes out in his storytelling ability. One of his favorite tunes (one sung by many with varying degrees of interpretive success) “Skylark” (Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael) contained depths of meaning in a light swing arrangement. In its lyric of yearning, many miss the implied hope of the tune. Stritch got that, and he put it across admirably.
In the haunting “Lazy Afternoon” (John Latouche/Jerome Moross), paired with “Estate” (Bruno Martino, Bruno Brighetti, Joel Siegel),and the medley “That Old Feeling” (Sammy Fain, Lew Brown) with “I Thought About You” (Johnny Mercer, Jimmy Van Heusen), Stritch’s authenticity as a storyteller was beyond doubt. Perhaps a Dr. Freud would even intuit that the pandemic experience had deepened him and that this quality poured into what he brings to his art.
But, since Billy’s Place at Birdland was a celebration, after all, there was fun to be had. Bobby Troup’s “The Three Bears” in a good-ole 1940s swing style was a delight, as was “The Coffee Song” (Bob Hilliard, Dick Miles) with its jaunty bossa nova beat. Hats off to Stritch too for acknowledging the work of Jimmy McHugh, an early contributor to the Great American Songbook, whose output was significant, even if he didn’t make the cut for Ella Fitzgerald’s famous Songbook series of albums. A McHugh medley: “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me” (lyrics Clarence Gaskill), “I Just Found Out About Love” (lyrics Harold Adamson), “Say It Over and Over Again” (lyrics Frank Loesser), “Exactly Like You” (lyrics Dorothy Fields), was not only great p.r. for the songwriter, but allowed Hubbard to shine again, as well as the extraordinary, subtle and remarkable drumming of McClean, whose use of the brushes throughout the set was genius.
Among the vast musical riches of Billy’s Place at Birdland was the last (encore) number, “Ordinary Miracles” (Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Marvin Hamlisch), so right for so many reasons—not the least of these being the three towering talents that created the piece, but the profound sentiment of the lyric, a beacon of light to guide us through whatever life brings.
Billy’s Place played at Birdland Jazz Club from Thursday, August 5th through Saturday, August 7th.
Billy’s Place the CD is available wherever music is available to purchase and/or stream. The new single release of “Ordinary Miracles” is a symphonic version of the song, newly released.
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