Swinging Like Sinatra at the Intersection of Broadway and Jazz

“Broadway By Day,” Spencer DayClub44 Records “Broadway By Day” is an excellent new album by the singer — and, frequently, pianist and songwriter — Spencer Day. Throughout the 12 tracks, Mr. Day taps deeply into the long history of cross-pollination between Broadway show music and jazz. Performance-wise, the two genres are generally regarded as entirely different disciplines. Virtually no Broadway-trained singer-actor could swing like Tony Bennett or Nat King Cole, and, at the same time, you wouldn’t have wanted to see Ella Fitzgerald as Julie Jordan or Eliza Doolittle. It may be that the only 20th century superstars who could handily check both boxes were the perennially underappreciated Steve Lawrence and the late Sammy Davis Jr. Yet the two forms, at the very least, share a joint repertoire. The great musical theater composers provide jazz singers and musicians with a large body of work that they can draw on, bring their creativity to, and, in the best cases, make something entirely new and original out of. In return, these interpretations help disseminate show tunes far beyond Broadway to Main Streets across America — as in the title of Laurence Maslon’s essential NPR radio show and podcast, “Broadway to Main Street.”Virtually every major singer of the early 12” LP era made a Broadway album, the most famous being Fitzgerald’s “Ella Sings Broadway” (1963), “Mel Tormé Swings Shubert Alley” (1960), and Peggy Lee’s “Latin ala Lee!” (1960, and yes, it’s simultaneously a show tune album and a lightly Latin album). That’s not to mention at least two by Davis and four by Mr. Lawrence — two with his personal and professional partner, the late Eydie Gorme. There have been far fewer, alas, by living artists in more recent decades, such as Janis Siegel’s “Sketches of Broadway” (2004) and Sondheim sets by Cheryl Bentine, Cyrille Aimee, and others.The title of “Broadway by Day” is, rather cleverly, inspired by two classic albums by the legendary Doris Day (“Day by Night” and “Day by Day”), but the content seems most clearly influence by the Tormé “Shubert Alley” album, as well as Harry Connick’s “Songs I Heard” (2001) and his most recent, “True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter.” Mr. Day is a modern day beneficiary, not exactly a pun, of the legacy of Frank Sinatra, who was the first to show that you could take a “serious” song and swing it, in a way that enhanced, rather than negated, the meaning of the words. “Who Will Buy” reprises the general groove and octave-style guitar soloing, courtesy John Storie, of Wes Montgomery’s early ’60s groups. “It Only Takes a Moment,” in which Mr. Day is joined by Jane Monheit, makes the case that the title song from “Hello, Dolly!” isn’t the only song from that memorable score worthy of the jazz treatment. “Bali Ha’i” is somehow a highly romantic love song, an exotic tale of a South Pacific island complete with exotic percussion and Hawaiian guitars, and a swinging dance number, all at the same time.Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, in particular, should telegram Mr. Day his most effusive congratulations for proving that his songs have more emotional and musical depth than many of us were willing to admit. “I’d Be Good For You” boasts a slithery, serpentine melody, enhanced by a sinewy vocal by Mr. Day. The arrangement takes advantage of the circumstance of Mr. Day’s having recorded the album in Mexico (during a pandemic moment when he was quarantined there), draws on elements of both flamenco and tango in a kind of pan-Hispanic paea of an arrangement, with more effective guitar by Mr. Storie. “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” is usually done as more of an anthemic rock-and-roll power ballad, but Mr. Day makes it affably tender.The package begins and ends agreeably with two songs from “A Chorus Line,” a score, for the most part, sadly overlooked by the jazz world until now. “One,” combines lush strings and a full-blooded hammond organ pumped throughout, written as an over-the-top, show-stopping song-and-dance number in the show, but sung by Mr. Day with admirable restraint. “What I Did for Love” is an agreeable closer, but for me the high point here is “Getting to Know You” a lightly swinging 4/4 treatment of one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most celebrated waltzes. The song still makes us feel warm all over — as indeed it did when Kelli O’Hara sang it during Lincoln Center’s recent revival of “The King and I” — but how nice that now we can tap our feet to it as well.

Swinging Like Sinatra at the Intersection of Broadway and Jazz

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