Concert Review: Bob

A Short and Silvery Night/Renowned balladeer weaves a sophisticated mood

A certain moment in the next-to-last tune was the olive inside the nightingale inside the peacock.

The great Bobby Short, gleaming and glittering like the New York sophisticate he is and has been since the heyday of Cole Porter, Gertrude Lawrence and Noel Coward, lifted his hands from the keyboard during the last eight bars of "Street of Dreams" just as he sang the word "silver" in the phrase "gold, silver and gold." It was as if he was holding the word up on a tray, and your heart skipped a beat.

What did it mean? Probably nothing. But by this time, he had them in the palm of his perfectly manicured hand, these well-heeled former boulevardiers and their dates who filled candlelit Catalina's in Hollywood. And their souls were all on the same page of the same song, a ballad for a Broadway baby and her guy, dancing into the night in top hat and tails.

The number he had begun with was "Do What You Wanna Do," taken at a toe-tingling tempo. It was backlit with the sound of an eight-piece band attired in evening clothes like Short, who led from the piano. "Nine minstrels," Short had christened the group, assembled to celebrate his 30th year at Cafe Carlyle in Manhattan.

The septuagenarian voice was gravelly and croaky but throbbing and indomitably exuberant; the eyes were on high beams and the teeth were dazzling. You never heard him like this on a record. He ended his opener with a loud whoop and began another song just as fast: "You've Got That Thing," a Cole Porter ditty written in 1929, which made it not quite as old as Short, who was born in 1926.

The lyrics were full of allusions to coming to the city from the country, a pre-suburban subtext that resonated in several songs, including the next one, "Sophisticated Lady." Here, Short slowed the tempo, cradling the tearjerker between the flagwavers, and the drummer's brushes helped him whisper his homespun admonition: "Dining with some man in a restaurant: Is that all you really want?"

From time to time, the New Yorker rested his chops and indulged in a bit of patter, about the songs and their authors, many of whom were in his vast circle of acquaintance, or about how he got his start around the corner at the Radio Room on Vine Street opening for Mike Riley, the guy who wrote "The Music Goes Down and Around."

His piano playing proved as lovable as his singing and just as full of highly polished antique licks. These he offered in a keyboard-only rendition of "You're Driving Me Crazy," which segued into "Moten Swing," a chart for the band that gave all the cats -- including Ron Stout, trumpet; Loren Schoenberg, musical director and tenor sax; and Jack Nimitz, baritone sax -- a chance to blow.

After a while, the gravel in the voice got tamped down, and peaks were reached with three killer numbers amid Short's familiar, resplendent show-tune repertoire.

"Sunny Side of the Street" was a touching ramble in a roadster filled with flappers and gents in coonskin coats; Short steered it smoothly and gently around the corners. "In the Dark" started out as a smoldering erotic moan and morphed into a barnburner, rocking out with trumpets jabbing a top-of-the-lungs double reprise that brought to mind Clayton, Jackson and Durante doing a shuffle-off to Buffalo.

And then "Street of Dreams," the last number but one, gave 'em the moonbeam filled with silver, ringingly assuring the rapt listeners that no one is poor long as love is sure. Not that anybody there was in any fiduciary danger. Least of all the maestro, who's filled the street with silvery dreams since always.