Irrepressible Songster

Kenny Rankin is one of those people who just can’t resist breaking into song.

Ask the vocalist-songwriter what tunes he will do at his Christmas Eve eve appearance tonight at the Cinegrill and he says, “The lion’s share will be Christmas songs, like”--and suddenly he sings--” ’Oh, Holy Night,’ ” then, in a normal voice adds, “stuff like that. Or Mel Torme’s, you know,” and again comes that lilting tenor timbre, “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

“Nice little things, just singing them straight. And I’ll do an original or two, accompanying myself on guitar.”

It was a Christmas song that got Kenny Rankin--whose tunes have been recorded by Helen Reddy (her version of Rankin’s “Peaceful” was a hit) and Carmen McRae, among others--into music in the first place, the 49-year-old artist says.

“I was singing ‘O, Holy Night’ in the Christmas pageant when I was in the fourth grade at a boys school in Manhattan and my teacher came over to me and said, ‘Kenneth, that’s lovely,’ and I thought, ‘I’m going to get some more of that.’ ”

He did, and at 17, he signed with Decca Records. “I started recording--my first release was ‘Saturday After the Game’--which not only gave me a real rush, it convinced me that singing is what I wanted to do, and that hit records or not, I’d be singing the rest of my life.”

Up next for the man whose latest album is “Hiding in Myself” (Cypress) is a New Year’s Eve concert in Sedona, Ariz., and recording a new album of classic pop standards.

“I’ve always wanted to do that, because I love the lyrics of those great old songs,” he says. “And the music that came with those chestnuts, it’s eternal and it gives the instruments a wonderful place to visit, in a musical sense.”

What tunes will he do?

“Oh, things like, ‘Day by Day,’ ‘Because of You,’ ‘All of Me,’ ” and, here, that dulcet tenor intones, “all of me, why don’t you take all of me.”

It’s nice some things don’t change.