Music Review: Julie Kelly swings into Mambo’s Café

Julie Kelly’s last album, “Happy to Be” (JazzedMedia) into a CD player and a couple of things jump out at you. One is her assured phrasing on a complex lyric taken at a bright tempo like Bob Dorough’s “You’re the Dangerous Type.” Another is the casual comfort on a lyric with a dark subtext like Phoebe Snow’s “Harpo’s Blues.” Where Snow wrestled with the tune’s emotion, Kelly shelves the angst in favor of subtle swing.

“Something like that is hard to work on,” Kelly says. “If I worked on that stuff it was unconscious — it’s more about feel than design.”

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Presently, Kelly can be heard every other month or so at Mambo’s Café, the Cuban restaurant and music room in Glendale; that’s where she lands again Thursday night. “I’ve been working there for a couple of years,” she says, “and it’s really nice.” Proprietor Raul Gonzalez books a potent schedule of music, mostly Latin sounds. “He’s a musician,” Kelly points out, “and that really makes all the difference for me. The room is comfy — 40 people and it’s full, 50 and it’s packed. And the food is great.”

Pianist Bill Cunliffe is a prime colleague and collaborator; he contributed keyboards and creative ideas to “Happy to Be.” They share a musical history: she arrived in L.A. from the Bay area in 1980, he from Cincinnati in ’89. They’ve worked together a lot over the years, in bygone rooms hospitable to singers and piano duos like Le Café in Sherman Oaks, Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood, Alleycat Bistro in Culver City, One For L.A. in Studio City, the Jazz Spot in Los Angeles, Chadney’s and the Smoke House in Burbank, Drake’s in Glendale, Inn Arty’s in Pasadena, At My Place in Santa Monica, Linda’s and Nucleus Nuance in West Hollywood. “I played ‘em all,” Cunliffe notes with fondness but resignation, “and they’re all gone now.”

“You could leave home at five,” Julie wistfully recalls, “go someplace and hear someone, go to another place to hear someone else, then go to an after-hours spot. And it was great to be able to work all those little clubs.”

Cunliffe has discerned a creative arc to Kelly’s singing. “Julie was one of the first singers I worked with when I first got here,” he specifies. “I noticed an R&B aspect to her that I thought was cool. Since then she’s gotten into a Brazilian thing. And she plays guitar pretty well.”

“Julie’s a real pure artist,” he declares. “She wants the music to be right and she’s always looking for interesting new things to do. She’s very open to new ideas and there’s a lot to listen to in her music; it’s quite varied. But she’s found the balance between exploration and retaining her core.”

Speaking of singers who’ve moved her, Kelly remembers: “There was a record store up north called the Magic Flute and that’s where I first heard Anny Lincoln. They played her real early stuff from the ‘50s a lot. It was good but the arrangements sounded stiff to me. In the ‘80s she started doing her own songs and as her singing loosened up, I thought that was fantastic. It was an original approach — very different from the traditional treatments. Everything came together for her.”

“Abby wasn’t so much of a direct influence on me,” Kelly offers, “but she was a precursor to the singer who generates her own material and interprets it in a very personal way. That’s very important.”

Cunliffe likes Kelly’s maturation process: “I like the economy she’s taken on in her singing — saying more with less. She’s got agendas but she’ll switch them in a moment if you’ve got a good idea; and we come up with good things together. I don’t think of her as a singer but as a co-conspirator.”

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What: Julie Kelly

Where: Mambo’s Café, 1701 Victory Blvd., Glendale

When: Thursday, March 24

More info: (818) 545-8613

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KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.

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