The ‘20s Come a-Roarin’ Back

Every Monday night, the bar at the St. James Hotel on Sunset Boulevard takes a hairpin turn to Tin Pan Alley. That’s when Richard Halpern re-creates “the musical stylings of the teens and ‘20s.”

This is virgin territory, even for most nostalgia buffs, and a refreshing change it is for those who aren’t ready to accept that Culture Club belongs to the “oldies” circuit.

“People think of the 1920s as old men in Styrofoam hats and striped jackets in a pizza parlor,” Halpern says. “But that’s not what it is at all.”

Most of the audience is caught by surprise, unprepared for the wit and naughty sophistication of the material, which comes from an era that predates the psycho-sexual coma of the mid-century. These are songs that come not from movies or Broadway, but from popular theater, which way back then was geared toward the ribald entertainment of the masses.

From Halpern’s native Brooklyn, there’s “The Yiddish Charleston” and “The Sheik of Avenue B.” Halpern vamps it up, wiggling his eyebrows. With his narrow-shouldered tuxedo and slicked-back hair, he’s nerdy and spry, his boyish charm a counterpoint to the risque humor of the songs.

As Halpern reaches the end of “Making Whoopie” from 1928, he snatches up an O.J. Simpson comic book brought in by a friend and holds it aloft while he sings the last lines: You’d better keep her/you’ll find it’s cheaper/than making whoopie.

A young tourist wanders in from the street, wearing bicycle shorts and carrying a Chanel shopping bag. She takes it all in with a blank expression and circumnavigates the dining room and balcony to reach the bar.

When Halpern asks for requests, there’s a lot of head-scratching. “Only from the teens and ‘20s, right?” someone whispers. Finally a young man stammers out an answer, as if this were some kind of black-tie quiz show: “Um, Porgy and Bess?”

A young woman named Marea acts as hostess. She’s wearing turn-of-the-century red velvet. “We don’t have a word for this music, like ‘Swing,’ so it’s falling out of our consciousness.”

Bandleader Brad Kay is responsible for the original arrangements. “A lot of groups that play the ‘20s-type music play the old stock arrangements. When I listen to the records from the period, they didn’t use those arrangements at all. Well, they may have used them the way you use a bouillon cube to make soup.”

The bar at the St. James is a plush Art Deco room with soft, gentle light. Like the music, it’s fresh without being trendy. But will it catch on? Halpern has every reason to think so.

“Margaret O’Brien was in the other night,” he says with a merry twinkle.

*

Where: The St. James Hotel, 8358 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood; (213) 654-7100.

When: Mondays, 9:30 p.m.

Cost: Cocktails, $5.75-$7. Wine by the glass, $7.50-$9; champagne, $7.50-$10. Bar menu available.