Paying Homage to the Fox and the Hedgehog of Cabaret

The 37th New York Cabaret ConventionRose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln CenterThrough October 15This year marks the 37th edition of the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s annual three-night Cabaret Convention (the final night is tonight, Thursday), and two of the three nights this season are dedicated to the legacies of two iconic Black performers: Mabel Mercer herself and Sammy Davis Jr. My first thought is that this is an admirable move, since the “Cab Con,” as we call it, is the primary event in the artistic medium loosely known as “cabaret,” which is generally associated, I think it’s fair to say, with older, upscale, mostly white audiences.However, those two nights and the two artists they celebrate bring to mind an aphorism attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus and later elaborated upon by Isaiah Berlin: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”As the concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday nights underscored, the late Mercer and Davis had very different philosophies. Mercer was all about one big thing: The idea of music as narrative, communicating a specific and relatable story to the listener with every song, in the simplest and most direct way possible. Davis was all about a lot of things: He had an apparently unlimited arsenal of tools and methods by which he could reach an audience. Mabel Mercer was an oil painting, resplendent and perfectly finished; Sammy Davis Jr. was more like a mosaic, inventing an artistry out of a thousand little pieces stuck together in ways that were unpredictable but hardly random.Mabel Mercer performing in 1965 at a nightclub. Via Arthur Schatz/Getty ImagesMabel Mercer’s was the art of simplicity and understatement. A typical performance involved just herself, usually seated (at least in her later years), a piano, and a sequence of songs that generally occupied a sort of middle tempo and were simultaneously happy and sad, funny, and melancholy. Unlike such disciples as Tony Bennett and Sinatra, she did not rely on alternating ballads and swingers. Her music was all things at all times in virtually every number.Mercer’s oeuvre was well understood by the lineup of mostly veteran artists at Tuesday’s concert, starting with the two cohosts and longtime Mabelistas: Andrea Marcovicci, especially on “Looking at You,” which Mel Tormé inherited from Mabel, and Jeff Harnar, who showed how Mercer’s interpretation could turn Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely” into a multi-chorus epic with its own private vocabulary. The Kenyan vocal trio MOIPEI opened with “Once in a Blue Moon,” a Jerome Kern tune with an almost Bach-like melody.There is no one better at inhabiting a song and singing it from the inside out, à la Mabel, than Marissa Mulder, whose treatment of Noël Coward’s adorable waltz “Chase Me, Charlie” was at once whimsical and poignant. And there is no one better than Sidney Myer at finding the laugh lines in “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore,” which is a canonical Mercer text. She leaned heavily on songs about lost innocence, often in 3/4 time; in inviting listeners to enter the private past of the texts, Mercer and her latter-day disciples first bring us out of ourselves and then, stealthily, back in. The backstories of these lyrics are not those of the singer or the songwriter; they are always our own.Wednesday’s concert was aptly titled “Sammy: All the Way & Then Some! The Songs of Sammy Davis Jr.” It was indeed about that one aspect of Davis’s artistry: the songs and the singing. To do full justice to what Sammy hath wrought, we would need about 20 singers, which they had, but also a tap dancer, a comedian, an impressionist (in the sense of a mimic, not a painter), a dramatic actor, and a guy who could play many instruments (including drums, vibes, and even trumpet).Sammy Davis Jr. visiting Israel in 1969. Dan Hadani Collection/ Wikimedia CommonsThe Sammy salute included a number of impressive youngsters. Among them were Reed Harris Butts, who sang “The Birth of the Blues” and is the grandson of the late and much-missed Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts III (who actually preached on that very stage at the Rose Theater with Wynton Marsalis), and the prodigious dynamo of a singer-pianist Bryan Eng, on “Cheek to Cheek,” one of Davis’s classic duets with Carmen McRae. There were also great moments from the svelte hostess, Natalie Douglas, in Davis’s late-career triumph and cautionary tale “Mr. Bojangles,” and from Stephanie Pope, who incorporated dancing into two songs by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse; Sammy would have approved. Amanda King reinterpreted “Rhythm of Life,” a combination spiritual and beatnik manifesto that was Davis’s showstopper in the film version of “Sweet Charity.” Diva LaMarr reinforced “I’ve Gotta Be Me,” another of Sammy’s signature show tunes, as an argument for our shared humanity.Each night also had a memorable climax. On Tuesday, Marilyn Maye took us home with a characteristic mash-up of songs starting with “My Romance.” On Wednesday, Clint Holmes had us all standing up and cheering when he reprised Davis’s “West Side Story” medley (from the live album “Sammy Davis Jr. at the Cocoanut Grove,” recorded in 1962 and released in 1963), backed only by drummer Shawn Dustin, somehow keeping in tune and in tempo with percussion alone.Even as we were all still standing and yelling our fool heads off, Natalie Douglas came back out to lead the house in Davis’s 1972 blockbuster hit “The Candy Man.” I couldn’t help but linger on Bricusse and Newley’s lyric: “Who can take a sunrise? / Sprinkle it with dew / Cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two?” That’s what Mabel Mercer and Sammy Davis Jr. really were: Sweet miracles.

Paying Homage to the Fox and the Hedgehog of Cabaret

Paying Homage to the Fox and the Hedgehog of Cabaret

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