Jazz : Calloway, Nicholases Lift a Dull Show

Was this really the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday, with Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers as the stars of a show paying homage to the famed Cotton Club of yesteryear?

Where were the glamorous, “tall, tanned and terrific” black Cotton Club dancers? In their place were eight blonde white women who opened the show with a vocal on “Bringing in the Sheaves” and proceeded to dance a nondescript Charleston.

And where was the Calloway band, which in its day presented some of the great black jazz artists? Instead, an all-white orchestra tried to tackle an antiquated 1928 Duke Ellington arrangement.

What was astonishing about this show was not simply that aside from the stars and one other singer it was entirely white, but rather that for most of the first hour it seemed designed for Saturday night at the Grand Theater in Podunk. There was even a banjo player who played “Malaguena” and ended by playing the banjo behind his neck.

Things took a rapid turn for the better with an old Nicholas Brothers film. Their dancing-down-the-stairs routine brought an ovation that was redoubled when the brothers themselves walked on stage. Fayard can no longer dance, but brother Harold’s singing and tapping are still a delight, as was his song and dance routine with Mary Rupert.

Marilyn Wolton, the show’s other token black, a sizable woman with a voice that squeals, soars and plunges, sang a blues, “Caravan” and “My Man” to good dramatic effect. Jimbo Ross, a jazz violinist, was the outstanding soloist in the otherwise lackluster orchestra.

Calloway did not appear until more than two hours into the show. Elegant in gray tails, he belted out some of his perennials in a 30-minute set, winding up with that definitive example of ersatz scat, “Minnie the Moocher.” Is it just drivel? Is it 60 years out of date? Maybe, but according to the singing-along audience it ain’t necessarily so.