GREGG CULLING'S REVIEW OF MARY FOSTER CONKLIN AT THE METROPOLITAN ROOM

You could tell it's Spring in New York when you came out of the subway on 42nd Street and 3rd Avenue. As you reach the street, instead of bus fumes and garbage, you smell hyacinths! Yes, all last week long, the huge planters along 42nd Street were filled with perfuming hyacinths, and their scent wafted down the street and put smiles on faces (but perhaps also caused some sneezes, too).

 

More than any other season, Spring to some singers seems to demand they haul out as many songs of the season that they can dig out of their trunks. Mary Foster Conklin was no exception, but then she's from North Carolina and this New York winter, she felt, was one of the worst ever and she is glad it's over. Some of us enjoyed it actually, but her song choices in her engaging new show "Up Jumped Spring" at the Metropolitan Room this week nonetheless were most welcome and appreciated.

 

Opening with a propulsive  (Rodgers/Hammerstein), you knew immediately that you were at a jazzy dive with her crackerjack band (Janice Friedman,, piano, Marco Panascia, bass and Todd Isler, drums) driving this tuner to an exciting fever.  Conklin is truly an engaging artist who knows her way around a song's lyrics and has a warm and expressive voice with a definite feel for jazz. Friedman was especially wonderful playing Bill Evans' "In April" with the lovely lyrics of Roger Schore ("Feeling the charm of Spring...with luck you'll win your Spring bouquet.") The Gershwins' "I've Got a Crush on You," in a special Jeff Klitz arrangement, brought out the sexy in Conklin, perhaps because she said this song was one of her husband's favorites.

 

In a Conklin set you can always expect to hear some historic jazz tunes, like Freddie Hubbard's title tune, a jazz waltz (with Abbey Lincoln lyrics) which was a crowd pleaser, and Ellington's "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'," singing the Peggy Lee lyrics with great sarcasm so that you knew it wasn't really trout that she was fishing for! Conklin's sense of humor is contagious, and you can't keep your eyes off her. You won't hear many wrist-slashing torch songs from her, for love is too dangerous a proposition for her, and she treats it with suspicion and mistrust she said, adding "It's complicated." Therefore, with Bob Dorough's "You're the Dangerous Type" she whipped it up to a fare-thee-well as if it were a statement that she had to make. Nobody can do it better, except maybe Dorough himself.

 

Songwriter Matt Dennis has always been dear to her heart, as she has thoroughly studied his work and put together some absolutely fascinating Dennis shows, as well as a brilliant CD "Blues for Breakfast" featuring his wonderful songs. One that particularly fit this theme, and her ideas of love, was "Spring Isn't Here Anymore," one those love-gone-wrong songs that substitute for torch songs. Sample lyric (by Dennis' wife Virginia): "How can there be flowers and sunshine when you're not around anymore." Conklin was truly in her element here.

 

Recently, Conklin was in Los Angeles doing shows, and she said it was the first time she had been back there since songwriter Lew Spence had passed, and she missed seeing him. In his honor she sang a fantastic rendition of his great bar song "A Wet Night and a Dry Martini" (lyric by Jerry Gladstone) that was suitably bluesy and simply perfect. Panascia's bass playing punctuated the story, especially as that olive hit the bottom of the martini glass. Lew would have been so very proud.

 

Another  contemporary songwriter that Conklin highlighted was Ann Hampton Callaway. "You Can't Rush Spring" was heard here with a slightly bossa nova beat, admonishing that we should not fret because "the rose will come, and the robin will appear." Spring in New York can indeed be a beautiful thing, especially when you hear Mary Foster Conklin.

 

~ Gregg Culling

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