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Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross

by Alan Greenblatt

Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross began and ended their concert Friday night at the Kennedy Center in triumph. They walked onto the stage with their arms lifted out wide in a gesture of welcome mixed with pride in survival. That set the tone for most of the show, which was a highly nostalgic reunion. But by the time they got cooking in the show's second half, they had given the audience real reason to applaud with some nimble, expert singing.

They are the two surviving members of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, a vocal trio that was the most popular group performing "vocalese" prior to Manhattan Transfer. Vocalese refers to jazz vocals in which words have been added not to a straight melody but to a tune as performed by a particular artist, so that the words follow every swoop of a solo by, say, Charlie Parker.

Hendricks and Ross haven't sung together for more than 35 years, and age has taken a toll on both their voices. Hendricks, wearing a captain's hat and starting the show in a long white overcoat, was old-fashioned in his stage manner. He sat down on a stool for bossa nova ballads, as if worn out by his own sensitivity, and had patter comprised of old jokes: "Now we'd like to do a medley of our hit.... I was only serious." It's not every concert nowadays where you hear

jokes made at Mitch Miller's expense. Hendricks' voice, always raspy, was nearly papery at times and on high notes he sang in a Jim Nabors nasal falsetto.

Annie Ross was the star of the old trio, hitting unbelievably high notes in imitation of instruments, and in her heyday recorded several wonderful albums of straight ballad singing on the old Pacific Jazz label, a couple of which are available on CD.

In Robert Altman's movie "Short Cuts," she played a worn out blues singer, and despite her wild red hair and orange-red dress to match, her defiant I'm-gonna-knock-you-out with arms swinging vocal stance, time has not been so kind to Ross. On her first solo spot she was more speaking than singing the words, and she sounded flat as she added occasional punctuations to Hendrick's vocals. But she seemed to summon up more will when the crowd was clearly ready for her signature tune, "Twisted."

Together, the two romped like mad at the end through some of their more familiar material, "Tickletoe" and "Sermonette" and "Gimme That Wine." Hendricks had a particular success with the rapid-fire "Cloudburst," and finally the crowd could applaud out of admiration and pleasure, not just from nostalgia and love for what was.

They were nicely backed by four younger musicians, who didn't get many chances to show off. Peter Mihelich has the worst posture of any piano player I can remember seeing. He stares at the keys with his head bent down about four inches above them, and keeps his left foot sprawled out perpendicular to the keyboard. His spare style was particularly well-suited to the many Count Basie numbers. Neal Miner was effortlessly charming and rhythmic on the bass.

It truly was an old-fashioned concert, in the sense that it made you want to go listen to the records.