Sherman, Sloan, Byrne and Lea at the Corcoran Gallery of Art 10/7/01

by Alan Greenblatt

The more I read the papers, the less I comprehend: Last night, at a jazz and cabaret concert at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Daryl Sherman was talking about life at the Waldorf, where she sings and plays piano. It's been so empty, but she was cheered this week when a troop of 900 Oregonians came in force to New York to hear music and spend money.

We don't ignore these things, but quiet interpretations of the Great American Songbook have always been a kind of escape from the world, a little airing out of the heart's private yearnings and disappointments. Sherman is an effervescent sort and gave some of the most gleeful interpretations last night.

It was an event put on by Songbirds, an online list service "community" dedicated to chatting about songwriters such as Cole Porter and the Gershwins and their interpreters, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Ethel Merman. Last year they met in New York for their first in-person conference and this year they were here in D.C. and two concerts were their public face. Many famous tunes were performed yet again, including "You Make Me Feel So Young," "In the Still of the Night" and "For All We Know." But most of the two dozen or so others were relatively obscure; when, for instance, was the last time you heard Una Mae Carlisle's "I See a Million People"?

That one was done with exquisite balance by Carol Sloane, a personal favorite. She has a lovely velvety voice and her relaxed conversational style masks how much she's playing around with time and melodic line and all that stuff. Other highlights: an excellent singer named Donna Byrne, who I had never heard of, with that small Peggy Lee approach, offering a luscious, slow rendition of "I'll Be Seeing You." Barbara Lea, a singer a little too straight with the material for my taste -- she has the air of a gentle grande dame -- doing a wonderfully poignant version of Billy Strayhorn's "My Little Brown Book."

One songwriter performed, a fellow named Lew Spence who wrote "Nice and Easy." He had no voice at all but was absolutely charming and funny as he ran through some of his little thoughts about sexual mores, set to music. He talked about how going to a Bobby Short concert and regretting how nobody writes songs like the great ones from the 1920s and 1930s, because nobody wants them. "'I've got a crush on you, sweetie pie -- kids don't want to hear something that mild," he said.

But Spence made a less tired and more important point about art. He said he never imagined he could write songs, having been weaned on the likes of Jerome Kern and the Gershwins. But then, he said, he met Bobby Troupe. "He was good, but not from another planet." It was like Mike Royko recalling how startled he was reading Nelson Algren, realizing that writing didn't have to be about presidents and kings but could be made out of lives familiar to him from his neighborhood.

Sherman and Spence accompanied themselves on piano, while Lea was joined by D.C.'s Larry Eanet. They were all adequate but seemed dull in retrospect compared with Byrne's and Sloane's man at the keyboards, Ted Furth. He was brilliantly swinging and played wonderful, fluid jazz solos. He took it down on Ellington's "All Too Soon," playing just the song's written chords. It was a great musical joke, if you heard it.

Like every concert with multiple performers, the Songbirds show went on much longer than scheduled. So, too has this column. But that won't stop me from changing subjects now. It's been an odd preparation to war these last few weeks, with President Bush advising Americans to fly to Disney World and stories headlined "Shoppers Splurge for Their Country." In response to the column where I quoted various literary passages perhaps appropriate to the moment, some of you sent in quotes from Dante and Milan Kundera and so on. The best round-up I've seen, though, of poetry people have turned to for context and consolation, notably Auden's "September 1, 1939," was in the New York Times: