An Engaging Tribute to Black Male Singers

Assembling the music of Nat King Cole, Cab Calloway, Johnny Mathis and Charley Pride on a single stage, in a single show, is not a task for the faint of heart. But singer Byron Motley is doing precisely that--and more--in his consistently engaging if somewhat cumbersomely titled “The Men, the Myths, the Music & Me” at the Court Theatre.

Thursday night’s hourlong performance was an illuminating dramatic excursion through the lives and times of nearly a century of African American male singers. Working on a bare, multileveled stage, accompanied by a trio of musicians, Motley offered brief cameos of history and song, beginning with the legendary Bert Williams, concluding with Marvin Gaye, and appending a closing segment (the “Me” part of the title) spotlighting three of his own numbers.

It’s the kind of show that might easily have fallen into a pattern of “and then he wrote” sections interspersed with song and dance. But Motley’s presentation, directed by Joshua Rosenzweig, balanced brisk pacing and carefully conceived staging with a script (by Motley) that placed each singer within a social and historical context.

The little-known Williams, for example, was accurately described as a pioneering African American artist who functioned with great effectiveness at the turn of the century in an era still redolent with Civil War memories. And, in a striking effort to rehabilitate the often misunderstood Sammy Davis Jr., Motley pointedly recounted Davis’ insistence upon fair and equal treatment at a time when African American singers’ recordings were routinely being co-opted by white entertainers such as Pat Boone and the McGuire Sisters.

Motley is a tall, slender, personable performer with a voice that ranges from a warm middle register to soaring, almost impossibly high head tones. His interpretations of Calloway singing “Minnie the Moocher,” Cole doing “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” Johnny Mathis’ “Misty,” etc., clearly reflected a wise decision not to attempt impressions of the originals, relying instead upon more subtle, but ultimately more convincing characterizations of manner, style and movement. The best measure of Motley’s impact, in fact, came during his performance of Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” when the audience spontaneously began to sing the backup lines to the melody.

If the show was missing anything, it was the inclusion of several other important male African American singers. One could quibble endlessly about who should or should not have been part of the lineup, but it’s hard to understand the absence of Louis Armstrong, the virtual progenitor of popular singing, a blues artist such as Muddy Waters or Lightning Hopkins, and the enormously influential Ray Charles.

* “The Men, the Myths, the Music & Me,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 1. $20. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.