Lambertless, Hendricks & Ross the Hottest Old Group Around

Annie Ross and Jon Hendricks are trying to remember exactly how this reunion came about after, oh, 36 years.

“Let’s see,” she begins, “it was a phone call from a very bright, enterprising young gentleman.”

“My manager,” he says. “In October.”

“Right. He said, ‘How do you feel about reuniting?’ And I said, ‘Great.’ And then what happened? We had lunch?”

“No,” he corrects. “I came up to Birdland, where you were performing.”

“That’s right. You came up and sang.”

“We did one number. ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside.’ And the crowd went nuts, so we figured, ‘Whoooa!’ ”

“Right,” she says--agreement now, finally. “They were running out into the street, trying to buy those instant cameras. They were saying, ‘This is jazz history!’ ”

It is, indeed, at least a piece of history--a two-thirds piece--that’s now on tour, and due to reach Los Angeles on Tuesday, with a five-night run at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.

Four decades ago, these two were part of the trio that took the music world by storm. From the end of 1957 through 1962, few acts were hotter than Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, pioneers in “vocalese,” fast-paced singing and wordplay that duplicated jazz licks. With the Scottish-born Ross stationed between two American scat masters, the voices blended like an intricate carpet weave at times, and replicated the sounds of instruments at others.

The trio hit the charts with “Sing a Song of Basie,” headlined the Newport Jazz Festival, did concerts from Kalamazoo to Copenhagen, barnstormed the campus circuit and managed one of the more breathless one-nighters on record--squeezing in a command performance in London amid a club run in San Francisco.

Then Ross fell ill during a European swing in ’62 and decided to step off the dizzying merry-go-round. A few years later, any thought of a full reunion became an impossibility when a car crash claimed the flamboyant Dave Lambert, a former vaudevillian with a sea captain’s whiskers who dabbled in everything from tree surgery to parachute jumping.

For the surviving two, this was not one of those bitter musical divorces when no one speaks for years until the bank accounts run dry and then, suddenly, they clench their teeth and hit the oldies tour. To the contrary, Ross and Hendricks often seemed on the brink of getting together. Twice they tried out potential subs for Lambert, but “all they could do is make you miss Dave,” Hendricks recalls.

In 1985, Hendricks showed up at one of Ross’ shows at Michael’s Pub and took the stage to do one of the group’s old songs. “I always thought that Jon and I could do something together,” she said then. Still it didn’t happen.

One reason was that they both had plenty going: he with his own band and as a writer (of both lyrics and jazz criticism) and as an inspiration for younger performers, from the Manhattan Transfer to Bobby McFerrin, who named a son for him; she as a performer, lyricist and actress (both in the theater and in films such as “Yanks,” “Superman III,” “Throw Momma From the Train” and Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” in which she also sang).

“It just wasn’t time,” Hendricks says now.

By last summer, however, it clearly seemed about time. Before an L.A. appearance, Ross couldn’t stop talking about her old comrade when asked why there was not much scatting in her repertoire. “I can do it, but I prefer not to,” she explained then. “It’s wonderful when it works on your ear--the way Jon does it.”

The call came from Hendricks’ manager not long after, then the night at Birdland. “It was like an explosion of some kind,” Hendricks says. “Like the spirit was back.”

So were they: Hendricks, now 76; Ross, 69. Several weeks ago, they sat side by side at an Italian restaurant across from Carnegie Hall, trying to get that reunion story straight, ribbing each other and reminiscing a little--OK, a lot. They were a day away from the “official” start of the reunion tour, at the Blue Note down in the Village. But they had already been working up the act on a few Northeast dates.

At a New Jersey show, two sisters, 20 and 22, asked them to sign an album their parents had been playing since they were born. In Schenectady, the sight of a little boy bopping to the music--he was 4, maybe--reminded them how children used to come to their shows clutching their albums, knowing all the words on the back, and if they missed even one, the kids would call them out, make a fuss.

In Boston, they recalled how the crowds there used to spill from the clubs into the lobby, hoping to hear whatever they could. They recalled the exact introduction they got at their first trip to Newport, in 1960, and how Annie had to dress with the Raylettes, Ray Charles’ backups. “Each time we gig, more memories return,” Hendricks says. “At least in my case, I was so busy doing what I was doing, there was no time to remember. . . . Now they come swarming back.”

The prospect of returning to Los Angeles as a pair reminds them how their first show there, as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, drew Sunset Boulevard’s legendary headliner to a front row table--Nat King Cole. Cole was such a fan that when Dave Lambert wrote a tune called “What’s This?,” he recorded an answer, scatting, “That’s What!”

Hendricks knew Cole from his days growing up in Toledo, Ohio, a city that--as a switching point for the railroads--drew a procession of jazz figures. Hendricks was the son of a minister who learned first to sing hymns and spirituals in church. He was indoctrinated into jazz, at 14, by a neighbor a few blocks away, pianist Art Tatum. No less than Charlie Parker later urged him to come to New York to perform and abandon the career he was considering, in the law.

Years later, The Times’ late jazz critic, Leonard Feather, called Hendricks “a walking dictionary” because of his talents with lyrics and compared his manner to Louis Armstrong’s, the “rare combination of personal timbre, a natural beat and a strong undercurrent of humor.”

Ross was a prodigy, as well, coming from England to New York at age 4 to live with her aunt, singer Ella Logan. By 8 she was in Hollywood, appearing in “Little Rascals” productions and three years later was playing Judy Garland’s sister in “Presenting Lily Mars.” As a singer, she once followed Billie Holiday into the Apollo theater. And she too had a Charlie Parker connection--he was the godfather to her son with drummer Kenny Clarke.

Though the jazz subculture was well versed in misery, the creation of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross reflected a time before art had to embrace darkness, above all else, to be taken seriously. They brought an upbeat verve to the stage with ditties such as “Home Cookin’ ” and “Tickle Toe.” In contrast to today, when surly attitude seems de rigueur, they embraced elegance.

Hendricks takes heart that society’s mood can change. The current revival of interest in swing music and dancing (“which we knew as jitterbuggin’ ”) was one reason he thought the time might be right, in 1999, to offer up the old arrangements again.

“Artistic things, cultural things, don’t have the same age span as mortal life,” Hendricks says. “We have 70 years. But music has hundreds of years, you know, to become popular or unpopular. Something like this, having been new when we first did it, 35 years later it’s still young, still relatively new.”

They, of course, are not that young any longer.

“We were rusty because we hadn’t sung [the old numbers] in so long,” Ross acknowledges.

“We found that, physically, both our voices had lowered drastically,” Hendricks says. “So that necessitated changing keys, lowering keys.”

Another change they don’t ignore, or downplay, is the missing voice. They are two now, not three. Hendricks laughs at the memory of his old partner, and friendly rival. “We had this competition scatting against each other, like two horn players,” he recalls. “ ‘Next solo, I’m gonna kick your butt.’ So one time I went first, into my John Coltrane bag, and the audience ate it up. And Dave came behind me and did his thing, intense swing--he could swing like a dog. Then he hit this high note, stretched out both arms and fell over backwards, and his legs went up in the air and he hit the stage.”

“I thought he had a heart attack,” Ross says. “That was one great fall!”

Then Hendricks says, “Dave would have dug this.”

The next night, at the Blue Note, they don’t wring the emotion out of what’s going on--the tradition dictates cool and class, after all. Hendricks waits until it’s time to introduce the band to remind the crowd that the guitarist, Paul Meyers, was “playing Dave Lambert’s old lines, of course.”

Hendricks has taken the stage in a glow-in-the-dark red sports coat with a white pocket hankie and carnation, a checked tux tie and a white sailor’s cap.

Ross, in a black cocktail dress, looks over at him and declares, “The Captain and Tennille!”

He asks: “Where we been for 36 years?”

“It seems like an extended vacation,” she says.

“It feels like 36 minutes,” he says, “except all my kids are grown.”