JAZZ REVIEWS : PAULA KELLY’S NEW ACT AT GARDENIA

How crowded was it at the Gardenia on Friday night? Well, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor couldn’t have gotten in without a reservation. And why the crowd? Because Paula Kelly was breaking in her new nightclub singing act.

Paula Kelly the dancer, Paula Kelly the actress, could enjoy a triumphant career simply as Paula Kelly the singer. Slender, tender and tall, she’s the ultimate sophisticated lady, a performer so gifted and so versatile that her show incorporated every imaginable element in contemporary singing.

From the opening “Moondance” with its eerie synthesizer and conga backing to the riotous blues medley toward the end, she was in total control. Nothing was predictable: On one tune she breathed in rhythm, in another she began midway through the chorus; on the 1922 Al Jolson tear-jerker “My Buddy” she segued to a touching “But Beautiful” while her musical director, Ron Abel, played “My Buddy” on the piano in counterpoint.

Moving with a dancer’s grace to add visual delight, she sang “Besame Mucho” in commendable Spanish and “La Vie en Rose” in excellent French, “Moody’s Mood for Love” in a language known as early vocalese and a riotously funny calypso number in which she sounded as if she’d just stepped off the boat from Jamaica.

Reminiscing about her upbringing in Harlem (“a little community settled by the Dutch”), she took the “A Train” on a slow, slinky uptown trip before easing into a sublimation of “Satin Doll.” An obscure and exquisite song called “Lilac Wine” brought her and her audience to the verge of tears.

What kind of vocalist is Kelly? As Duke Ellington himself would have said, she is beyond category. What other trilingual singer could jump into those Esther Phillips and Joe Williams blues verses with comparable conviction?

Ron Abel, with Mike Smith on congas, Richie Ruttenberg on the synthesizer and Wade Short on Fender bass, played her arrangements with just the diversity of moods and sounds that this performance called for.

Paula Kelly the singer, who returns to the Gardenia on Friday and Saturday, has the most exciting act of its kind this town has seen in a long time. One can only speculate on how much the dancer and the actress will encroach on her singing time.