Green’s Songs Capture Imagination, Emotions

Second- and third-generation show-business careers are not exactly front-page news in the glittering Southland entertainment world.

Even in the relatively rarefied arena of film composing and songwriting, there are such notable examples as the remarkable Newman family and, a coast away, the offspring of Richard Rodgers.

Add Babbie Green to the list. The gifted singer-songwriter, the daughter of composer Johnny Green (“Body and Soul,” “Out of Nowhere,” etc.), offered an engaging collection of her superb songs Sunday afternoon at the Jazz Bakery.

And, listening to the compelling array of characters, emotions and narratives flowing through her presentation, one could only wonder why a talent so filled with imaginative music and insightful words has such relatively low visibility.

Part of the problem may trace to the fact that Green works primarily in the world of cabaret and musical theater--an arena that is no longer the fertile source of popular song that it was in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Perhaps equally problematic, virtually all her songs are emotionally multilayered and profuse with unexpected musical twists and turns. Like Stephen Sondheim, she tends to steer clear of standard pop song forms in favor of a more intimate companionship between the primal elements of melody and language.

That said, however, Green’s songs offer extraordinary pleasures to the receptive listener. Her Bakery program, in which she was accompanied by pianist John Boswell (with the occasional companionship of singers Stan Chandler and longtime associates Laurie McIntosh and Kirsten Benton), ranged from atmospheric storytelling to whimsical good humor.

Songs such as “Two Homes” (the tale of a child of divorce, climaxed with the line, “Wherever I am, half of me isn’t there”) and “The Man on the Stage” (darkly delineating the hazards of romance with a celebrity) were penetrating, unsentimental studies of real life. Other works--the conflicted adolescent emotions of “Boywatch”, the sweet insights of “At the Pound” and the classic “La Ronde” qualities of “The Carousel”--were the product of an imagination that moves seamlessly through the poignancy of humor and the perils of irony.

Although Green was making her first full concert appearance as a stand-up singer, rather than a singer-pianist, she offered her songs with winning effectiveness.

Using body language, gesture and dramatic vocal characterizations, she added a powerful element of accessibility to a program of music that deserves a far wider hearing.