Legendary Jazz Songbird Nests at Oak Room

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The New York Sun

Like the red-tailed hawks that were evicted from their Fifth Avenue nest last month – and were eventually returned to their home overlooking Central Park after a public outcry – red-haired jazz songbird Barbara Carroll was unceremoniously dismissed from her 24-year gig at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle in 2002, only to resurface, first at Birdland on West 44th Street and now at the Algonquin Hotel.


Jazz fans are ecstatic that Ms. Carroll has found a new home in the Algonquin’s famed Oak Room, where she is performing Sunday brunch and dinner shows through December 26.


“Bemelmans Bar was not a show room. It was not a music room,” Ms. Carroll says while relaxing in her Upper East Side apartment. “The music was there, but everything was not focused on the music. It had its charm, and I must say I loved working there for all those years – I love the hotel and everything about it – but, artistically, it may have left something to be desired.”


Ms. Carroll pauses, battling a cold. Her cozy apartment features a wall of photos taken by her late second husband, booking manager Bert Block, with candid pictures of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz legends, as well as a Steinway decorated with framed snapshots of family and friends. She also has original Tony Bennett oil paintings and pictures of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Enrico Caruso.


“But now I’m at the Algonquin,” she picks up, “which is a totally different venue. It’s a place where people come to listen. It’s fabulous. I’m working with Jay Leonhart, and we’re having absolutely the best time. How wonderful it is to be in that space where Alexander Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, all those great people used to congregate and have a little nip.”


During her December 12 brunch show, Ms. Carroll, with Mr. Leonhart on stand-up bass, treated the crowded Oak Room to unique, impressive versions of “Some Other Time” by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green; “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” in honor of what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 89th birthday; “I’m in Love Again,” by Bill Schluger, Cy Coleman, and Peggy Lee; “A Fine Romance,” by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, on which, she and Mr. Leonhart traded verses; and a pair of songs with lyrics by Parker, “I Wished on the Moon” and “How Am I to Know?”


Near the end of a medley of Stephen Sondheim’s “Do I Hear a Waltz?” and Fats Waller’s “The Jitterbug Waltz,” Ms. Carroll and Mr. Leonhart immersed themselves in a playfully silly improvised instrumental dialogue, one that she vowed nobody would ever hear again. When Ms. Carroll improvises, which is often, Mr. Leonhart never takes his eyes off her fingers as they glide over, under, sideways, and around the melody.


“That’s the way we work together,” Ms. Carroll says. “We do not rehearse – ever. As a matter of fact, I change the tunes very frequently. I don’t do the same show all the time. Never. So Jay never knows what song I’m going to play or how I’m going to play it. It’s kind of dangerous.”


“Barbara is one of the best people to be on the stand with because she’s so sweet and genuine,” says Mr. Leonhart, who has released numerous records of his own. “She is very giving onstage, and that’s what comes across to the audience. She’s great to play with.”


After the main set, they returned for a melancholy encore of “Last Night When We Were Young,” which she dedicated to composer Harold Arlen. Ms. Carroll will be celebrating Mr. Arlen’s centenary when she returns to the Algonquin in late January for a series of special shows.


“There are composers of what we call the Great American Songbook, people such as Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern,” Ms. Carroll explains, “including Harold Arlen. Harold Arlen was the son of a rabbi, and that influence is very much evident in his writing, plus which he was tremendously interested in black music – for instance, he used to go uptown a lot to Harlem to listen to the blues and the big bands. So with this marvelous combination of the Hebraic in fluence and the blues, you know, you can’t get any better than that.”


One of Ms. Carroll’s specialties is reintroducing little-known songs from long-forgotten shows. On her new disc, “Barbara at Birdland!” (Harbinger Records), she resurrects Arlen’s “Don’t Like Goodbyes,” from “House of Flowers.” After she gave an early pressing of the song to Mr. Bennett and encouraged him to play it, the Queens-born crooner recorded it for his most recent CD, “The Art of Romance.”


She also displays her fondness for Cy Coleman on “Barbara at Birdland!” When she declares, “I’m alive again” on “I’m in Love Again,” it’s not a grandiose statement sung with bravado but a subtle aside. When she continues, “I never get bored anymore / I love everything,” it’s almost parenthetical.


“He was a wunderkind,” she says of Coleman, bringing out a photo that Bobby Short just sent her, showing her and Coleman at Mr. Short’s 80th birthday party in September. She met Coleman, who died Nov. 18, when she first started playing Midtown clubs in the 1950s and they both had their own trios.


The former Barbara Carole Coppersmith recalls that her first job after arriving from her hometown of Worcester, Mass., was at the Downbeat Club playing opposite Gillespie’s big band. “On any given night, you could hear Miles Davis, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, etc, etc,” she says of those days. “So when I came here, I was in heaven.”


One of her most treasured memories is when she was asked to accompany Holiday on the “Today” show in 1958, a year before Lady Day died. She was also asked to make sure the troubled singer made it to the show on time.


“They were a little leery of her because she had a reputation for being late and not being dependable,” Ms. Carroll recalls. “So the car came for me, and then we went to pick up Billie [on West 84th Street]. And I didn’t know what to expect. She came down the stairs wearing a beautiful mink coat – fabulous. She was just so wonderful. We went to the studio, and she did everything she was supposed to do. It was really a marvelous experience.”


While many New Yorkers are making a visit to the Oak Room part of their holiday celebration, Ms. Carroll, who says she is currently “single and available,” is keeping the season low key. She’s looking forward to spending time with her daughter, son-in-law (“He’s the mayor of Summit, New Jersey,” she boasts), and two grandsons.


“I’m blessed with them,” she says.


And New York is blessed with her.



Ms. Carroll performs with Jay Leonhart on December 26 at 2 and 8 p.m. (brunch and dinner served earlier) at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel, 59 W. 44th St., 212-840-6800.


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