JAZZ REVIEW : PETE BARBUTTI: SERVING UP BARBS WITH A BEAT

Warning: Pete Barbutti may be hazardous to your health. Excessive laughter may induce shortness of breath, and we all know where that can lead.

However, Thursday evening at LeBouvier’s Beverly Hills Saloon Barbutti managed to keep an audience in a state of virtually continuous risibility for well over an hour, with no reported ill effects.

Barbutti is the freshest and hippest product of a long line of musicians who, in a tradition immortalized by Victor Borge and Henny Youngman, announce the tune they are about to play but proceed to wander off into a maze of verbal irrelevances. In Barbutti’s case, he eventually did get to the song. It was Neal Hefti’s “Cute,” played as a cigar solo, with rhythmic puffs replacing the drum breaks.

For the most part, Barbutti confined his barbs to comparisons of cities (“Beverly Hills is just Encino with indoor plumbing.”) and convoluted jokes leading to outrageous puns. One was about a cheap hit man whose triple murder outside a market led the owner to advertise: “Artie Chokes Three for a Dollar.” (Well, you had to be there; after all, delivery is half the battle.)

Along with the prepared material, spontaneity plays a large part. When a woman in the audience kiddingly objected to his jokes about Rudy Vallee as a tightwad, protesting that she was married to him (it turned out she was serious), Barbutti began improvising a song, “I Was Married to Rudy Vallee.” Next, picking up a trumpet so decrepit that it seemed to contain more cellophane tape than tubing, he delivered an excruciating solo on “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

At the piano, he played a pseudo-Liberace “Autumn Leaves,” suddenly switched to gospel, began singing a riotous blues and wound up playing surprisingly genuine jazz piano on his own composition, a waltz called “Trust Me.”

The millions who have seen his frequent visits to “The Tonight Show” may be familiar with some of the Barbutti material, such as “Indiana” played on the piano with his nose, but by the end of the show his nose may not have been as sore as the audiences hands.

Barbutti exemplifies a certain brand of zany humor that is endemic to musicians, though its appeal is universal. The laughter will continue resounding through tonight.