JAZZ REVIEW : Dave Frishberg Tickles Ivories--and Funny Bones

Dave Frishberg returned Wednesday to his Hollywood home base, the Vine Street Bar & Grill, and soon marooned his fans in a blizzard of laughs.

Not immediately, however. As usual, he warmed up alone at the piano, this time with a Harold Arlen medley in his typically crisp manner, economic yet eloquent. Then came the vocals, in that nasal, self-mocking voice, almost all with his own lyrics: a nostalgic tribute to Marilyn Monroe or to a 1916 baseball hero; a put-down of worldly values (“Let’s Eat Home,” the title tune of his new album), a hysterical scat satire of 1949 be-bop (“Professor Bop”) and, of course, his two staples, “Blizzard of Lies” and “I’m Hip.”

When he doesn’t write his own melodies, he fits the words to tunes written by musicians he respects, Al Cohn, Alan Broadbent and particularly Johnny Mandel. Because Mandel was in the house, three of his melodies came up along the way: “Brenda Starr,” from an unreleased movie; the poignantly wistful “You Are There,” and “El Cajon.” (If you can’t see the humor in a line like “in El Cajon we danced the night away,” don’t go to Vine Street.)

Frishberg’s timing in his vocals is as precisely on target as his phrasing at the keyboard. In a brooding piano specialty midway through the set, he showed his understanding of the jazz tradition with an early Ellington work, “The Mooche.”

It is entirely possible that Frishberg could make a comfortable living exercising any one of his three talents, as instrumentalist, singer or songwriter. Fortunately he chooses to remain a triple-threat attraction. His fertile imagination has established him, to paraphrase a comment on last week’s Vine Street attraction, as Bob Dorough with a Minnesota accent. He will sing and play his way through Sunday.