The Anderson Brothers Play Cole PorterBirdlandTuesdays in OctoberSomehow, I never noticed it before now, but “It’s De-Lovely” has got to be the most meta song ever written — and I more or less grew up with Ella Fitzgerald singing it on “The Cole Porter Songbook.” As performed by the excellent young singer Molly Ryan with Pete and Will Anderson and Birdland, it becomes clear how Porter conceived the song as an ambitious parody that takes on the whole of American marital culture, the music industry, and even the act of singing itself.The verse, in particular, starts with an announcement: The singer tells us that she is about to sing. It will be “the kind of ditty that invokes the spring.” The song kicks off with the verse, which not everyone sings, in which Porter is immediately savaging the conventions of pop music, where it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that nearly every song — the term “ditty” is deliberately reductive — is about young people falling in love in the spring. Next, she warns us that the “verse I started” is, in fact, lousy. Porter wittily dismisses his own work here as “the Tin-Pan-tihesesis of melody.” He’s taking the disapproval of classical music instructors, who advocated that the only music of value was the highest of highbrow symphonies of the big 19th century European composers; everything else was just Tin Pan Alley tripe. Thus, the antithesis of melody becomes the “Tin-Pan-tithesis.”Even then, though, we learn that Porter still hasn’t trashed his own music sufficiently; he’s already warned us that he’s going to “crucify the verse” — and just try to think of one other pop song from all of the 1930s that uses the verb “crucify” — but he takes it even further. It’s not enough to butcher said verse, he next tells us he’s going to “skip the darn thing and sing the refrain.” The rest of the verse is all solfeggio nonsense syllables — “do, do, do; re, re, re; mi, mi, mi.” This has got to be the only song in the whole of the American songbook that demolishes itself as it goes along.After the verse, the refrain settles into a faster, more danceable tempo. The lyrics proceed to parody virtually every song ever, in which the basic idea, expressed so clearly in a zillion songs like “My Blue Heaven,” is that a boy and girl get married and have beautiful children — “and baby makes three.” At the same time, he plays with the sonics of language itself. The words “delightful” and “delicious” start with “de” sounds that make them sound sonorous when following each other. Thus, why not spice up the sequence by taking “lovely” and making it into an appropriate word to follow? Hence, “de-lovely.” Molly Ryan sings it in a way that captures all of Porter’s shades of meaning, starting with his poking fun at both the conventions of Tin Pan Alley and pre-nuclear American family life. At the same time, she brings out the true sincerity underneath the mischievousness: when all was said and done, Porter, for all of his apparent cynicism, truly loved the idea that his songs both depicted and inspired romantic activity. He may be affectionately mocking the couple he depicts in “De-Lovely,” but, as Ms. Ryan brings out, he is genuinely happy for them.The Andersons’ Tuesday evening Porter series is, as we’ve come to expect from them, a wonderful jazz delineation of the words and music of a quintessential American composer. The brothers continually switch between pairings of two different reeds — alto and tenor saxophone on “Begin the Beguine,” clarinet and alto on “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” clarinet and tenor on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Some of the most effective variations are the simplest, like “Night and Day,” performed as a duet of Pete Anderson on tenor and Dalton Ridenhour on piano. Where “I Love Paris,” which featured Will Anderson on alto, has something like a Sonny Rollins-style mambo bounce, other tunes, like “From This Moment On,” are more of a bop-type refrain. “Let’s Do It” is the trio, which also includes bassist Neal Miner and drummer Chuck Redd — alas, not also playing vibes this time around — minus the horns. Ms. Ryan’s own phrasing here seems inspired by the 1941 Peggy Lee-Benny Goodman version.Between their stockpile of reed instruments, Ms. Ryan’s skill at delivering both swingers and ballads, and their ace rhythm section, the brothers provide constant variety. By including fun factoids along the way, they make the early evening crowd at Birdland feel like they’ve attended something closer to a full-on concert than a jam session. It’s something more than a couple of guys blowing tunes. Now, that’s what I call delightful.
