Margolis Sings With Unerring Pitch, Drive

Can it be that there’s something in the San Francisco water that is especially stimulating to jazz singers? Or maybe it’s simply the blues-provoking effect of the fog rolling in off the bay. Whatever the cause, residence in the city seems to be producing some particularly imaginative and uniquely individual work from singers such as Ann Dyer, Madeline Eastman and Kitty Margolis, among others.

Margolis made the latest of what is becoming an annual appearance at El Camino College Saturday night, accompanied by her own San Francisco ensemble. “The nice thing about working at college venues like El Camino,” she noted, “is that I can do it with my own musicians, which is becoming increasingly hard to do at jazz clubs.” She was right, of course, given the economics of the jazz club scene, and she was also right about the musical value of performing with players who know and are sympathetic to her performing style.

Margolis is the most musically intriguing kind of jazz singer--one who draws inspiration and sustenance from the nonvocal side of the music. Singing with superbly unerring pitch and a consistent musical drive, she was at her best with instrumentally oriented numbers such as Charlie Parker’s “Anthropology,” Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud” and Miles Davis’ “So What.” In each case, she supplemented her hard-swinging exposition of the original melodies with crisp vocal improvising, often paraphrasing solos from the numbers’ original versions.

A few blues numbers, including a closing romp through Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’,” brought out Margolis’ whimsically spirited qualities, underscoring the fact that, although she is a consistently adventurous musical artist, she also is a communicative entertainer as well.

The only questionable point in Margolis’ otherwise admirable program, in fact, was a tendency to allow her instrumental style to distract from the lyrics in her ballad numbers. In some cases, her offbeat approaches worked, despite some strikingly out of context musical associations--the African vocalized sounds introducing “Getting to Know You,” for example. At other times--”Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year”--stylization took too much precedence over simple storytelling. But for most of the evening, Margolis clearly had something compelling to offer. And her music, like the efforts of her jazz singing associates in San Francisco, deserves a far wider hearing.