Singers Salute Songwriters--to the Tune of $500,000

It was the sweet harmony between song and charity that raised $500,000 for the Betty Clooney Foundation for Persons With Brain Injury on Tuesday night. The concert, chaired by Rosalind Wyman and produced by Allen Sviridoff at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, was the fifth annual Singers Salute to the Songwriter, a veritable love-fest between vocalists and composers.

More than a dozen singers, including Linda Ronstadt, Tony Bennett, Chita Rivera, Glen Campbell and the foundation’s honorary chair, Rosemary Clooney, were on stage to sing the works of Marvin Hamlisch, Jimmy Webb, Ira Gershwin, and the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, to a 3,100-strong audience.

“If I’d picked them myself--and I didn’t--these would have been the singers I would have wanted to hear,” said Ebb. One “terrified” singer he heard was Liza Minnelli belting out the first public performance of the title song from the team’s coming musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” The song has a two-octave range and a complex beat, and Minnelli could be seen keeping count on her fingers as she sang.

“We write all of our songs for her,” said “Spider” co-author Kander, as he hugged Minnelli backstage. “No matter who’s singing them.”

Despite the evening’s theme of singers saluting songwriters, Hamlisch took time to praise a fellow composer, Ira Gershwin, the sole posthumous honoree.

“His songs live forever and ever and ever,” said Hamlisch. “They’ve passed the test of time. We’ll all be dead and gone before we know if we pass that test.”