Fresh Frishberg-Dorough Duo

It’s always a great pleasure to hear the music of Dave Frish- berg and Bob Dorough. But their performance at the Jazz Bakery on Tuesday night offered other, equally important qualities.

On the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary, with the American public attending to the process of grief while the government was issuing dire warnings about new potential dangers, there was a particularly reassuring quality in the duo’s reminders of the enduring relevance of sensitivity, wit and humor.

Their joint appearances usually include a few songs--some co-written--performed together as they face each other across the vista of two grand pianos. On Tuesday, it was the newly written, characteristically whimsical “Money,” as well as Frishberg’s now-familiar cry for clarity in their order of appearance, “Who’s on First” (with its brief reference to Abbott & Costello’s classic skit), and a jaunty sendup of a classic Babs Gonzalez bebop line (with impressive scatting from Dorough).

The bulk of the set, however, was devoted to individual numbers. Dorough, opening the solo segment, displayed the poignant undercurrent that is almost always present in his music, especially in the ballad “But for Now,” as well as in the atmospheric, autobiographical images coursing through “In Arkansas.” He wrapped with a tune he described as a “new blues,” “Wily, Wily Woman,” in which Frish- berg joined him instrumentally while adding a few potent backup-singer-like lines.

Frishberg has an enormous body of work, but anyone expecting him to simply repeat familiar favorites such as “My Attorney, Bernie” is likely to be disappointed. For this show, he offered “The Hopi Way,” a hilarious take on two conflicting cultural points of view, following with the music he “might have written” for “Jaws,” had he received the assignment. Too bad he didn’t, since his laugh-a-line lyrics thoroughly illustrate why he often has been called the “Woody Allen of song.”

Dorough and Frishberg finished by asking the moderate-sized audience to suggest possible encore selections. For Frishberg, it was “Another Song About Paris”--a tune that miraculously manages to be both nostalgic and sardonic and does so via a brilliant stream of perfectly rhymed phrases, accurately depicting what he meant when he told New Yorker writer Whitney Balliett that “good lyrics should come up to the edge of poetry and turn left.”

The audience selection for Dorough was “Baltimore Oriole,” the strangely metaphorical song by Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster.

Dorough has made the number his own over the years, and in this performance he once again grasped the story of a “lady” Baltimore oriole dragging her feathers through the snow, transforming it into a quintessential jazz expression.

*Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. Shows at 8 and 9:30 p.m. Admission: Tonight and Sunday, $25. Friday and Saturday, $30. (310) 271-9039.