Rose Garden Offers 2 Levels of Entertainment : Performers roam both floors of the West Hollywood establishment

Mark Miller was in heaven.

Singers die for the kind of audience that turned out for his appearance on a recent Saturday at Erika’s at the Rose in West Hollywood.

The 100 or so folks who filled this upstairs room in what’s now known as the Rose Garden Performance Center--it used to be called the Rose Tattoo--were intensely attentive to the jazz-based singer’s efforts at both up-tempo numbers and ballads.

In fact, the only disruption to the solid set presented by Miller and his quartet--pianist Bobby Pierce, bassist Richard Simon, drummer Sherman Ferguson and trumpeter Al Aarons--was piped-in background stuff that occasionally leaked in from an adjacent dining area.

OK, let’s put our cards on the table. This modern-looking room--where the stage is backed by a rose-tinted, stalactite-shaped bas-relief, a plush green carpet adorns the floor, and the walls and ceilings feature mirrors--had more than a few customers who were friends of the artist.

Fellow jazz singer Joe Sardaro, for instance. Sardaro, who appears in such local haunts as Chadney’s in Burbank and the Wave in West Los Angeles, sat at one side of the square room, sharing a table with Charles Decker, who was U.S. consul to Senegal in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“Mark’s sounding wonderful,” said Sardaro after Miller’s 90-minute show. “He’s always improving.”

“He’s got such an easy, natural approach. He sets a mood,” said actor-waiter Steven Basil, another friend of Miller’s who sat at a table with Francis Liong, Anita Chan and Tera Tabrizi--all of them Miller fans.

But you didn’t have to be acquainted with Miller to agree with these responses. The vocalist, who is based in West Hollywood, has sung at the Gardenia and with the Los Angeles Jazz Society’s Jazz Caravan. And he has a way with a song.

From “It’s All Right With Me,” his brisk opener, to “Dedicated to You,” his luxuriant closer, Miller was on the money. Dressed in a light blue silk shirt, violet tie with large turquoise polka dots, gray slacks and blue shoes, Miller applied his pale tenor voice deliciously. He never forced himself into a belting stance--he doesn’t have that kind of a voice--and he never got too cute.

“Old Devil Moon” was typical of Miller’s style. The selection opened with the same finger-popping bass line that underpins Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe,” fooling at least some listeners into thinking this was a rendition of that catchy jazz number. But then Miller slid smoothly into the groove of this classic, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by E. Y. (Yip) Harburg.

The artist turned to look at his audience, making a connection, then closed his eyes and turned sideways, perhaps so that he could mesh more fully with the music and his partners, who offered succulent backing. In a jazz approach, the singer elongated some words and employed a sure-footed rhythmic balance that allowed him to swing right along with his instrumental cohorts.

Pierce, a veteran pianist whom many know from his Prestige Records albums as a jazz organist, was a splendid accompanist. He played sparsely and with great empathy, giving Miller a comfortable sonic platform to stand on. Simon and Ferguson shadowed Pierce with firm support, and Aarons offered a few choice solos, particularly on the crackling take of “Caravan” and a snappy Charlie Parker blues number, “Mohawk,” for which Miller wrote some good lyrics.

The singer, who has appeared at Erika’s at the Rose before, and who is also a waiter, says the room is ideal for intimate singing. “It’s a listening room, and there aren’t that many around. . . . The fact that there’s no phone, no bar, nobody making margaritas during your ballad--all those are major pluses.”

The Rose Garden Performance Center, which can seem like a maze at first, has three performing areas: Erika’s at the Rose; the Rose Cabaret one floor down, directly under Erika’s; and, on the same floor as Erika’s, the lounge, which is now known as Ellington’s at the Rose.

It is the first room you reach after passing through the Rose’s street-level entrance, a doorway that’s smack-dab in the middle of a wild outdoor wall painting that could have been done by Henri Matisse reincarnated as David Hockney. There’s another downstairs entrance for the Cabaret.

While Mark Miller was enthralling his audience, Susan Edwards, who had provided pre-Miller solo piano at Erika’s, was now in the lounge, singing as well as instrumentally tantalizing a handful of convivial patrons. Meanwhile, in the downstairs cabaret, Glynis McCants was presenting a series of comedians that included Rhodes Short, a young man not recommended for those with delicate ears.

A complex with several spaces wasn’t what Linda Gerard envisioned when she bought the Rose Tattoo, which was known as the dance club Checkers in 1988. She just wanted to turn the place into what she called “a real New York cabaret.”

“That’s where you have a one-on-one exchange between the audience and the performer, where you can be intimate with each other, sort of like in your own living room, but a bit more formal,” she explained.

Gerard, a native of New Jersey, has worked on Broadway as Barbra Streisand’s understudy in “Funny Girl,” and played nightclubs in New York “from the worst to the Copacabana,” she says. She left show business in the late ‘70s, and owned a bar on Cape Cod until 1988.

She was looking for another business to buy when she visited California for her aunt’s funeral, and eventually purchased the Rose. At the time, it had one performance space--the downstairs room--and a restaurant but no stage in the room that is now Erika’s. The current lounge was a warehouse space that housed Gerard’s office.

After Gerard became owner, she presented some top New York-based talent, including singer Julie Wilson, who regularly headlines at the famed lounge of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan.

When Gerard last summer bought out a partner handling the restaurant operation, she quickly needed someone to take it over.

Enter Richard Christian and Jeff Holden, who had operated Erika’s, a restaurant with entertainment in Pacific Palisades, beginning in February, 1989. Nearby residents had been complaining about Erika’s entertainment policy, and the partners were seeking another venue. Singer and pianist Gayiel Von, who handled the bookings at Erika’s, had also worked the Rose, and she made the introductions.

Christian, who has had a varied career as a concert pianist, opera singer, acting teacher and playwright, and Holden joined forces with Gerard in September. After 10 hectic days of remodeling, the Rose Tattoo reopened as the Rose Garden Performance Center, with Erika’s at the Rose becoming the center’s main dining room.

Entertainment at the Rose varies, with a variety of singers, comedians and instrumentalists on hand. There has always been a smattering of jazz, particularly octogenarian saxophonist Rosy McHargue, who plays traditional sounds in the lounge Sundays, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. In Ellington’s at the Rose, jazz and blues will be heard six nights a week.

The menu at Erika’s at the Rose is not large, but ranges from pastas at $8.95 to Chilean sea bass at $17.95. All entrees include a dinner salad. An abbreviated menu is available in the Rose Cabaret and the lounge.

The extensive wine list focuses on California varieties, including a Castoro Cellars 1987 Cabernet Sauvignon at $17.50 and a Sonoma-Cutrer 1988 Chardonnay at $24.50. French wines are not excluded: For example, there’s a Veuve Clicquot Brut Champagne at $57.50.

The Rose’s bar is equally well-stocked. Well drinks are $4.25, wines by the glass $5, and bottled beer $3 to $4. There’s a wide selection of premium blends as well, among them Glenfiddich single malt Scotch at $5.25 and Martell Cordon Bleu cognac at $9.

With its parking lot right next door, the Rose Garden Performance Center is just as Christian described it: “a one-stop, a place where you can have a full evening of diversified entertainment” under one roof.

The Rose Garden Performance Center, 665 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood. Open 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week. Entertainment in Erika’s, one show only, 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 8:30 p.m. Sundays; in the Cabaret, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; in Ellington’s at the Rose, 8:30 p.m. to midnight Tuesdays through Thursdays and Sundays, and 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Cover charge averages $10, plus $8 drink or food minimum. Dinner at Erika’s at the Rose, 5:30 to 11 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; in the lounge or Rose Cabaret, 4 p.m. to midnight. Call (213) 854-4455.