JAZZ REVIEW : McCorkle: Seamless Panache

There may be more than one living singer who can bring together the songs of Irving Berlin, Bessie Smith, Zoot Sims, Dave Frishberg, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Cole Porter, but none is likely to do so with the seamlessly logical panache that Susannah McCorkle brought to them during her opening show Tuesday at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood.

McCorkle interprets every lyric as if she had written it herself--which, in several instances, she did. Unhappy with the original English version of “Manha Dae Carnavale,” once known here as “A Day in the Life of a Fool,” she introduced her own far superior lyric, “Sunrise.” Another of her several Brazilian songs was Jobim’s “Living in a Dream,” sung bilingually, again using her own words for the English version. Her Portuguese is better than Astrud Gilberto’s English.

Concept, content and consummation are flawlessly interwoven, whether the vehicle is an old Billie Holiday ballad or a witty feminist tract such as “The Ballad of Pearlie Sue” (words and music by Gerry Mulligan).

An intelligent vocal artist requires a backup group to match. McCorkle has it in the fine pianist Lee Musiker, the sensitive drummer Sherman Ferguson and the fluent bassist Dave Carpenter. But it is Susannah McCorkle’s enviable blend of musicality and wit, coupled with her diversity of repertoire that should make Catalina’s a mandatory stop for every other singer within a 50-mile radius. She closes Saturday.