‘Tony Danza: Sinatra & Stories’
Café Carlyle
Through October 2

Tony Danza is a highly entertaining individual: He sings songs, he tells stories, he cracks jokes, he ad-libs constantly with the audience and with the four members of his band, he plays the ukulele, and he even tap dances. Yet the most compelling moment of his very full show this season at Café Carlyle is perhaps the quietest.

Accompanied only by pianist James Sampliner, he sings “The House I Live In,” which was a highly controversial song in 1945.  Although we music and pop culture buffs are loath to admit it, this was indeed a fairly unenlightened period of American history, an unfortunately long-lasting moment in which many believed that not all Americans were entitled to equal rights and racial segregation was the law of much of the land. The song was considered so inflammatory in early post-war America that nearly everyone connected with it was officially blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

Mr. Danza sang it simply and movingly, letting Abel Meeropol’s words speak for themselves: “All races and religions / That’s America to me.” He even sat down in a chair for the only time during the evening, indicating that he didn’t want the audience to look at him, or to even think about the Tony Danza-ness of it all — just to think about those words and what they were saying.

In calling his latest offering “Sinatra & Stories,” Mr. Danza is tapping into a long-established supper club tradition. Some shows feature a celebrity and show business veteran singing and telling stories of his or her own life, and other shows have entertainers you’ve never heard of paying homage to others.  

But “Sinatra & Stories” is the rare kind of show when one major contemporary artist celebrates an all-time show biz legend, and, in this case, keeps the focus on his own history and personal relationship with that legend, Frank Sinatra. “These stories are about the man whom I think is the greatest entertainer of all time,” he tells us about three songs in. “Now, I’m biased, I’m Italian.”

For the next 80 minutes or so, he weaves a coherent narrative that starts with his first exposure to the world of Sinatra, through his mother, one of the original bobbysoxers in the first wave of Sinatrauma during World War II. “And then my mother becomes one of the millions of women and men who make Frank Sinatra the number one recording star and the number one movie star at the same time. He’s Tom Cruise and he’s Taylor Swift.” 

He tells of his first encounter with the Chairman, during the filming of the 1984 all-star auto race comedy “Cannonball Run II,” and extends through the singer’s final major appearance, on his 80th birthday special in 1995.

Along the way he works in more than a dozen Sinatra standards, starting with that perennial cheerful opener, “Come Fly With Me,” and then immediately progressing to the hard stuff with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” followed by another tune Sinatra started many a concert with, “I’ve Got the World on a String.” There are also a few less frequently heard tunes, like “Learnin’ the Blues” and “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry.” He is to be commended for avoiding “My Way.” He also makes a point, in the Frankish tradition, to mention the names of the composers of every song.

Mr. Danza’s stature as a singer — as well as a dancer in his two toe-tapping breaks — has increased dramatically during his 10 seasons of appearing at the Carlyle, which is celebrating its 95th anniversary this season.  

Mr. Danza is helped immeasurably by Mr. Sampliner as musical director, in addition to bassist John Arbo, guitarist Dave Shoup, and drummer Eddie Caccavale. In a book of brilliant arrangements by the late John Oddo, Mr. Sampliner frequently plays block chords that Mr. Shoup doubles and triples with his guitar notes.  

On the surface, the group evokes the classic sound of the George Shearing Quintet, which serves to provide Mr. Danza with a very full background — as if he has a full orchestra with brass and reeds behind him. When Mr. Danza launched into “The Lady is a Tramp,” I expected Mr. Sampliner to reprise the famous piano introduction by Bill Miller, but instead the only time he summoned Miller was on the even more iconic piano part to the encore, “One for My Baby.” 

As always, Mr. Danza is charmingly entertaining and vice versa. Yet he makes “The House I LIve In” a poignant ode for our time, not least by inserting a few additional nouns into the final line: “The church, the mosque, the synagogue, the million lights I see / But especially the people, that’s America to me.” Without being the least bit preachy, he illuminates the values of these words during an age when such thoughts are no longer the common currency of our realm. 

His most moving and understated anecdote tells of one of the very few private and intimate conversations he ever enjoyed with Sinatra. “I say to him, ‘Hey, can I ask a question? What’s it like? What does it feel like to have millions, millions of women all over the world worship you?’ And he goes, ‘Nice.’” That’s the way Tony Danza celebrating Sinatra makes you feel. Nice.