Stopping Short at the Gates of Eccentricity

On his Web site, the veteran vocalist Giacomo Gates, who played four shows at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola this week, asserts that he is "committed to education." If there's one thing I would add in the way of advice to young musicians, it would be to find an approach that's exclusively your own, and Mr. Gates is a solid example of a performer who is doing something that no one else does. He evokes an age (that I would hope is not so terribly bygone) when musicians were entertainers and entertainers were musicians, and a sense of humor was as important as a sense of rhythm.

Mr. Gates has positioned himself as the heir apparent to the late Eddie Jefferson (who gets most of the credit, such as it is, for founding the jazz vocalese movement) and he has a dark-timbred baritone that at times is alarmingly similar to Jefferson's. Yet Mr. Gates is also widely regarded as the missing link between two contemporary male vocal headliners: the increasingly iconic Mark Murphy and the younger "worthy stud" (to use the performance artist Lord Buckley's term), Kurt Elling.

Like Messrs. Murphy and Elling, Mr. Gates is a committed eclectic, but unlike those two gentlemen (he has performed in their quartet, the Four Brothers), he stops just short of overt flakiness. One can find a little bit of everything in his vocal equivalent of a pupu platter: the blues, scatting, vocalese, instrumental imitations, novelty, and rhythm songs.

Mr. Gates has a preference for male singer-songwriters of the modern jazz era, a fairly rare breed, yet he seems to know them all, from Jefferson and Jon Hendricks (whose excellent lyric to Duke Ellington's "What Am I Here For?" he sang on Wednesday night) to the more mainstream pianist-entertainers Matt Dennis and Bobby Troup, whose "Hungry Man" was a rhythmic and comic highlight of Wednesday's set, and their more contemporary descendents, such as Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg.

When Mr. Gates sings the "straight" Great American Songbook, it's generally with a boppish twist: His version of "Oh, Lady Be Good" begins deceptively plain before it launches into "Disappointed," Jefferson's set of lyrics to Charlie Parker's solo on the Gershwin line (from a 1946 Jazz at the Philharmonic concert). He also sang "Comes Love," a 1939 show tune long favored by jazz singers, while the closest he came to a genuine ballad was "You Go to My Head," which he performed more as an account of getting wasted than as a salve for a broken heart.

Most of the emotion on this particular number was generated by Mr. Gates's ace accompanist, the fine tenor saxophonist Bob Kindred. There also was a charming duet on "All of Me" with Amanda Carr, a talented female vocalist visiting from Boston. On the whole, Mr. Gates would rather sing Thelonious Monk (the 1952 "Let's Cool One" and the blues "Straight No Chaser") than Cole Porter.

One thing that I've never heard Mr. Gates do — unlike Messrs. Murphy and Elling — is reprise Lord Buckley's famous take on Marc Antony's speech from "Julius Caesar." Still, the opening line of that routine, which begins, "Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies," would seem to apply directly to him. Mr. Gates is, in fact, all of the above.

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Across town at the Café Carlyle, the hitmaker Christopher Cross has just begun a monthlong run. It was Feinstein's at the Regency that began the trend, a few years ago, of bringing pop stars of a more recent vintage into upscale traditional cabaret rooms, where one normally expects to hear Rodgers and Hart or Kurt Weill. This has generally been a positive step, allowing performers to build a direct and intimate connection with their audience, and to open up and reinterpret even their own signature songs.

When Mel Tormé sang Mr. Cross's best-known song, the Oscar-winning "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)," he saturated it with personality, emotion, and rhythm. Mr. Cross's original 1981 hit record sounds sterile and lifeless by comparison, and he hasn't used the intervening years to improve it. His presentation could have been in a Vegas showroom — distant and impersonal, and somehow emphasizing the sameness of his songs. There seemed to be an abundance of "Arthur"-like first-person protagonists who are impelled by larger forces — "Driftin' Away," "Swept Away," "Ride Like the Wind," "Sailing." (No wonder this style of music is sometimes labeled "yacht rock.")

In one of his brief, equally distant snatches of patter, Mr. Cross related that he worked as a bar musician early in his career, and was expected, sadly, to function as a "human jukebox," playing hit songs on request. Even though he now plays his own hits, he still seems like a human jukebox. "Arthur's Theme" is a great song, although without the late Tormé, I never would have known it. Mr. Cross's fans will doubtless feel that the Carlyle show is the best they've ever seen. It's good to know that he is still "caught between the moon and New York City," but I wouldn't like to think that this is the best that he can do.

wfriedwald@nysun.com