Lighting up memory lane

The Hollywood Bowl became a time-travel machine over the weekend as an eclectic “Great American Concert” program took two nights of audiences to 1960s Broadway, via Carol Channing and music from “Hello, Dolly!”; Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, with the Sinatra-esque song styling of Michael Buble; and on back to Kitty Hawk, N.C., and the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., with selections by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

On Saturday, at the second of the concerts, the crowd of 14,088 awarded Channing two standing ovations. Ageless at 82, she wore a daringly lacy white blouse, with sparkles at her throat glittering almost as brightly as her trademark smile.

Cascades of laughter greeted a beloved comedy routine in which Channing plays off her famous sibilance by telling the tale of a silent-film star who couldn’t make the transition to talkies because of her hissing Ss. By story’s end, she sounded like a teakettle at full boil. A few minutes later, gossipy reminiscences about Ethel Merman and Ann Miller had Channing turning, like an impish schoolgirl, to conductor John Mauceri to ask whether the material was too blue for the Bowl audience.

In song, Channing’s voice -- once capable of everything from babyish squeaks to husky growls -- wobbled a bit, but it swelled with expression as she revisited the title number from 1964’s “Hello, Dolly!” To punctuate the old-time strut in the Jerry Herman tune, Channing threw in a Rockettes-style kick and some jazzy high-stepping as she reached the song’s famous command “Look at the old girl now, fellas.”

She capped another signature tune -- “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” from 1949’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” -- with some hoochie-coochie shimmying of her upper torso.

Pretty-boy singer Buble -- the 27-year-old Canadian whose debut album has been quickly embraced by the all-important audiences of women and gay men -- also brought sex appeal to the stage.

Looking sharp in a black suit, he snapped and clapped along as the orchestra accompanied him on five lushly retro selections from his album: “For Once in My Life,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Fever,” “That’s All” and “Moondance.”

Given his smooth, rich baritone, his fondness for material from the Great American Songbook and his habit of shaping phrases like a certain famous singer, Buble has been criticized for not venturing far enough from the Sinatra model. But the Bowl audience received him warmly (with fans sending squeals and whistles down from the cheaper seats) and seemed ready to stick around while he grows into his own.

Nostalgia surged through other parts of the concert as Mauceri and the orchestra commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight with Bruce Broughton’s soaring “American Hero,” then brought tears to many eyes by using recorded narration by the late, great Katharine Hepburn to accompany a stately version of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait.”

A fireworks-studded performance of Bruce Healey’s “Saints!” was followed by a salute to another recently departed American original in a lilting rendition of the Bob Hope theme, “Thanks for the Memory.”