Married in 2004, Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano Finally Give Fans a ‘Blessed Event’ — an Album Recorded Together

Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano‘Painting the Town’Humanchild RecordsComedian Joan Rivers had a routine about a cousin who took forever to get married. “We thought it would never happen,” she said before detailing how the groom was so sleazy that “when we threw rice, it stuck to him.”There were no such problems with the team of singer-pianist Eric Comstock and singer Barbara Fasano. As Mr. Comstock has said in dozens of shows at Birdland and elsewhere, “We met on Nat King Cole’s birthday — known in some homes as St. Patrick’s Day — had our first date on September 13, Mel Torme’s birthday, and married on August 25, Leonard Bernstein’s birthday.”The couple wed in 2004, and ever since fans and devotees of the genres in which they specialize — the Great American Songbook, jazz, the major singer-songwriters, and the most offbeat but worthy show tunes imaginable — have been waiting patiently for a “blessed event,” as Walter Winchell would say. Now, two decades later, the stork has finally delivered “Painting the Town,” the first album by Mr. Comstock and Ms. Fasano as a team. Like most offspring, this bundle of joy resembles both of its parents. Ms. Fasano is as fine a cabaret singer as we have today; at the time she first started working with her future husband, it was more obvious that her original “inspirators,” as Louis Armstrong would say, were Lena Horne and Barbra Streisand. Since then, she’s absorbed their influences and leavened them with a whole lot more, including such contemporary singer-songwriters as Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Where “Cactus Tree” was a highlight of Ms. Fasano’s previous solo album, “Busy Being Free,” this time “Marcie” is one of the more compelling story-songs.Likewise, Mr. Comstock regales us with tales of his youth spent sleeping with Bobby Short’s picture under his pillow — Short himself regarded Mr. Comstock as one of his finest students and successors — and unsuccessfully attempting to invite co-eds from his high school classes to come over and listen to his Noel Coward albums. Listening to Mr. Comstock today, it’s easy to hear that he’s also learned plenty from Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé, and Nat King Cole. Among the highlights of the current disc is an exquisitely sung Tormé-style mashup of two love songs from wildly different generations and even mindsets, Ms. King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” — a number rarely sung from a male perspective — and Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You.” The latter features Mr. Comstock supported by the crooning tenor obligatos of veteran sax master Houston Person, who turned 90 last fall and who also joined the Comstocks this past Sunday to celebrate the album at Birdland.As far as solos go, they each get one Cole Porter song; for her, it’s “In the Still of the Night.” For him, it’s a surprisingly downbeat “Just One of Those Things,” set to Ahmad Jamal Trio-style percussion from Vito Lesczak and brilliant bassistry from Sean Smith. The twosome also share a penchant for Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, as in two rarities, the swinging “Still in Love” and the stunning “Brown Penny,” both aso co-starring Mr. Person.These boy-girl duos are the main event here, though “Still in Love” features Mr. Person so well that it’s practically a trio. The Comstocks have the musicality and humor of Steve & Eydie as well as the modernist sensibility of Jackie & Roy. One of the most introspective tunes, Paul Simon’s “Old Friends” is also one of the most moving; at Birdland, Ms. Fasano recounted how the composer himself, apparently entirely by accident, joined them in the studio and served as de facto producer, which gives their close harmony duet here a remarkable poignance. They give a similar, almost baroque, chamber-music treatment to that most basic of Berlin ballads, “Blue Skies.” The swingiest and bluesiest duet is also the funniest, “The Hamptons,” written by Jim Lowe, the late WNEW deejay and 1950s novelty singer. It’s a rather droll comedy travelog — about “where the literati glitter and the glitterati litter” — set to a melody line Joe Williams could sing. Sunday’s performance at Birdland was advertised as an album launch event, but to longtime fans of the Comstocks it amounted to something more like a baby shower thrown to celebrate the new arrival. The difference was that they were giving us the present, rather than the other way around. You might say that it was nothing less than a bris to build a dream on.

Married in 2004, Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano Finally Give Fans a ‘Blessed Event’ — an Album Recorded Together

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