FAMILY : Merrily, They Sing Along : Once a month at the Jazz Bakery, the audience <i> is </i> the show, in a program open to anyone who can carry a tune and enjoys the great standards.

Do you risk audience wrath by humming along at revivals of “South Pacific”? Do you belt out show tunes in the shower or croon through your morning commute?

If so, the Jazz Bakery has a show for you. Actually, at this friendly, eclectic jazz club in the historic Old Helms Bakery Complex, you are the show.

“Sing! Sing! Sing!”--a once-a-month event led by pianist and singer Judy Wolman with a group of other musical professionals--is a sing-along with sophistication, open to anyone, regardless of age, who can carry a tune and who enjoys the great American standards.

Wolman says she’s looking for “anyone who loves the music written in the ‘30s and ‘40s, the Cole Porter lovers, the people who need a place to go to sing it.”

“Anyone” tends to include everyone: from teens to senior citizens, and singles, families and couples.

“This definitely ties generations together,” says Roy Harris, Wolman’s brother and a former Wall Street Journal deputy bureau chief. Harris, a music buff himself, researches and presents background information on the composers and introduces the songs at the shows.

“One of my favorite programs is Memorial Day,” he says, “where we take not only patriotic music but music of the war era. These songs are so evocative. You find people who have lived through that time, they bring their kids along, and all of a sudden there’s a connection made--that the war was very real and it touched people. Music is a great way to experience that.”

Most of the sing-alongs feature the work of one composer or lyricist--Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, the Gershwins--and lyric sheets are provided.

Wolman, who was with the Grammy-winning Gregg Smith Singers for a decade and has been a background singer for TV and such films as “Jurassic Park,” says the act of singing is just part of the appeal for her audiences.

“When people see the words and sing the melody and put it all together,” she says, “it changes their entire feeling for that song--the song becomes them. . . . It changes the relationship for that person to that song forever.”

Wolman augments her American composer sing-alongs with special theme events celebrating holidays. At this year’s Halloween program in October, expect such bewitching selections as “I Don’t Have a Ghost of a Chance With You,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Witchcraft.”

The group’s first all-family event, held on Father’s Day, was attended by parents, grandparents, preschoolers and elementary school-age children and featured songs from children’s movies (mostly Disney music).

More family events are planned down the road, but even when the day isn’t designed for them, families do tend to come. Westside resident Marian Bell, a former professional singer, attends whenever possible. “It’s show tunes, and I lost my heart to Broadway many years ago,” she says. Bell is often accompanied by her son--”he has a beautiful voice”--and daughter-in-law.

I t’s a 45-minute commute for Ruth Fried, 60, who lives in the West Valley area, but she’s a loyal fan because, she says, “I’ve always loved singing. When I have to come to a play or concert alone it’s kind of a drag, but it’s never a problem to go [to the sing-along] by myself, because what I gain there is more than worth it. It’s not really describable to anybody who doesn’t love this kind of music--sometimes it makes my entire month.”

The wide age range among her fellow attendees, Fried says, “is really a tribute to the joy this kind of music brings.”

Tenth-grader Aaron Fruchtman, 14, an aspiring jazz pianist and singer who attends Crossroads School in Santa Monica, came with his parents for the first time in July for a “Best of . . . “ show featuring all the American composers the series has spotlighted in the past.

Fruchtman says he was familiar with most of the standards played.

“My mother was a dancer in New York,” he says, “and she got me interested, singing the songs around the house.” His one disappointment was that he “couldn’t hear the bass at all. I think the drummer was very good--there was actually some brush. I definitely will come again.”

Says organizer Wolman: “The sense of community is so phenomenal. It’s a chance for people who are from all walks of life, who don’t know each other, to share an activity that bonds them. It’s a sharing of emotions, it’s an active activity, not a passive one, and it’s social, educational and musical. And most important,” she adds, “it keeps this music from being forgot-ten.”

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“SING! SING! SING!”: Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. Dates: The next show in the series, “Arlen in the Afternoon,” spotlighting the work of “Over the Rainbow” composer Harold Arlen, is scheduled for next Sunday at 3 p.m. Price: $12; reservations are not necessary. Phone: (310) 546-5470.