Leonhart: Humor played to a bass rhythm

Add Jay Leonhart to the small, very exclusive list of jazz humorists. The New York bassist-singer-songwriter’s performance at the Friar’s Club on Sunday easily positioned him in the upper echelon of a group that includes Oscar Brown Jr., Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough.

Appearing as the headliner in a “Parlor Performances” event, Leonhart offered a one-man show, “The Bass Lesson,” singing and telling his original songs and stories with the sole accompaniment of his own bass playing.

He immediately addressed the quandary he faced by singing “It’s Impossible to Sing and Play the Bass,” countering the premise of the song by displaying that -- given sufficient talent -- it was indeed possible to simultaneously sing while operating his cumbersome instrument.

Another number, “Ban Bass Solos,” decried the difficulties facing audience members when bassists take their solos, drummers get lost, and listeners lose their musical reference points. Continuing his lesson, he described his instrument’s origins with a humorous fragment explaining its development by the 16th century violin maker Gasparo da Salo.

Reaching even further back, he came up with a hilarious fantasy about the “first bass players” in a song describing the difficulties of “Life in the Middle Ages.”

Along the way, other tunes were tossed into the hopper: a description of a plane trip in which he was assigned a seat next to Leonard Bernstein (who “did the London Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes -- with a pen”); a sardonic view of the flight of the Hindenburg; and the need to keep dogs away from basses (“they’re made of wood, you know”).

Good stuff, all of it, the product of a whimsical imagination combined with artfully understated musical virtuosity.