It`s one thing to re-create the look of a posh, pre-rock era cabaret.
It`s quite another to bring back its sounds, its chic atmosphere, its moment in pop music history.
Yet Tuesday afternoon in the studios of WTTW-Ch. 11 on North St. Louis Avenue, the era that nurtured such lamented Chicago clubs as the Chez Paree, London House and Mister Kelly`s seemed palpably returned to life.
With singer-pianist Michael Feinstein holding court at the concert grand, Rosemary Clooney offering classic valentines of the `20s through the `50s, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra igniting one swing number after another, the venture would seem destined to succeed.
But this taping of ”Michael Feinstein & Friends,” produced by WTTW for national broadcast on Oct. 11, had more going for it than just a well-chosen cast.
For one, there was the magical look of the set, its elevated stage surrounded by the kind of tiny cabaret tables that once were pervasive in America`s most plush nightspots. Each had been decked out with long-stemmed champagne glasses, and the audience that gathered for the taping was sipping the real thing, bubbles and all.
Beyond the visuals, though, the show offered a careful mix of sweet nostalgia and living, breathing music. In other words, while tipping a hat to the wondrous era that produced classics by Gershwin, Kern, Berlin and Ellington, the show also yielded performances as vibrant and alive as the tunes must have seemed the first time around.
Much of the credit for this delicate balance goes to Feinstein, who was the centerpiece of the taping and reveled in the spotlight. Watch Feinstein hit a sequence of swelling chords on the piano, listen to him belt a lyric by Ira Gershwin or Dorothy Fields, and you are witnessing a man who was born for an entertainment milieu that has all but vanished.
Feinstein isn`t just a belter, though. He took the Gershwin standard
”How Long Has This Been Going On?,” for instance, at an audaciously slow tempo, and with a sly and understated delivery to match. But even when singing at a whisper, Feinstein conveyed a kind of quiet fervor that said far more than the brassiest performance could.
Feinstein`s star guest was Rosemary Clooney, whom he often has called his favorite singer. She`s worthy of the praise, as she proved in a melancholy ”I Got It Bad and That Ain`t Good” and an airborne ”It Don`t Mean a Thing If Ain`t Got That Swing.”
After all these years, Clooney`s voice remains a remarkable instrument, cleverly used. Sounding dusky in ballads, hard-charging in swing numbers and reverential toward lyrics in all instances, Clooney modulated every rendition specifically for the material at hand. Only a short list of pop song interpreters could claim to do the same.
Together, Feinstein and Clooney clearly have a warm, easy rapport, and not just in the chit-chat that invariably turns up in such programs. When singing tunes by Irving Berlin, for example, the two singers sounded as if they were simply speaking to each other, so effortlessly did they exchange phrases.
If all this material is edited as handsomely as it was performed and presented, it could make a beguiling TV special. At the very least, a program featuring Feinstein and Clooney could hardly fail to inspire students of the great American pop song.
