JAZZ REVIEW : Clooney Leads Great American Concert

Rosemary Clooney’s pop stardom in the ‘50s traced to novelty songs such as the inimitable “Come On-a My House.” Occasionally asked to sing “Doggy in the Window,” she points out that it was actually Patti Page’s hit.

“But people just assume,” she said at the Hollywood Bowl Friday night, “that if it was a bad enough song, I probably recorded it.”

All that has changed, now. Her performance in Friday and Saturday night’s Great American Concert revealed what has been apparent on most of her recordings in recent years--that she has matured into a thoughtful, jazz-based vocalist.

What Clooney, 67, brings to her work these days has less to do with improvisation and the blues qualities of jazz than it does with an inherent feeling for easygoing swing and a rich, experiential understanding of the lyrical aspects of jazz singing.

Her readings of “I’m Confessing That I Love You,” “I Remember You” and, especially--given the World War II theme of the concert--”I’ll Be Seeing You” were impressive examples of ballad interpreting. She brought new illumination to the multileveled words of “Hey, Old Friend,” and swung into a foot-tapping groove on “And I Thought About You.”

Like Lee Wiley and Irene Kral, Clooney may not seem to be doing very much except singing the songs, but the trick is in the details, in her capacity to emphasize without blatant overstatement, to allude without minimalization.

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Who knows? Maybe these wonderful skills of Clooney’s were lurking there all along, unable to surface through too many layers of “Half as Much” and “If Tear-drops Were Pennies.”

The bill’s other headliners were described as John and Donald Mills of the Mills Brothers. More accurately, Donald Mills, 80, is the only member of the popular vocal quartet from the ‘30s and ‘40s who is still active, and he performs with his son, John, 38. To their credit, the duo managed--despite some occasionally shaky intonation--to reproduce the smooth timbres and floating rhythms of such Mills Brothers classics as “Glow Worm,” “Paper Doll” and “Up a Lazy River.”

The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hollywood Canteen, played over-orchestrated versions of “In the Mood” and “Sing, Sing, Sing,” and an interminable rendering of Richard Rodgers’ “Victory at Sea,” complete with News of the World-style text.

The fireworks were, as always, spectacular.