Press and Reviews

New York, NY – March 4, 2010

New York Times

Music Review: Optimism to Pierce Any and All Winter Blues

By Stephen Holden

Marilyn Maye in her show at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency.
Photo by Mathew Murphy, New York Times

Kapow! Marilyn Maye’s new show, “In Love Again,” at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, is a blast of pre-springtime energy that defies the laws of nature in the happiest way. Ms. Maye may be over 80, but to borrow the argot of grizzled show business pundits on a talent search, “this thrush is going places.”

For the last several years Ms. Maye has been a top-drawing act at the Metropolitan Room on 22nd Street off Fifth Avenue, where her shows have packed the house with a frenziedly adoring claque. On Tuesday evening she made her move uptown to Feinstein’s, where she began a two-week engagement with a program whose opening string of assertively upbeat anthems includes “Today I Love Everybody” and “You’re Gonna Hear From Me.”

Ms. Maye has seemingly inexhaustible stamina, and her trio (Tedd Firth on piano, Tom Hubbard on bass and Jim Eklof on drums) swings hard. Her warm, rich voice is as strong and supple as it was during the years she appeared (76 times) on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

Her program at Feinstein’s might be described as a suite in three movements. The first, the allegro, if you will, is a sock-it-to-’em sequence that ends with a two-song mini-tribute to Steve Allen (“This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and “I Love You Today”). Without the support of Allen and Carson, she said, she wouldn’t be there.

The second movement, or adagio, is in two sections. The first revolves around “Bye-Bye Country Boy,” a wistful jazz ballad by Blossom Dearie and Jack Segal, in which a singer on the road with her band reluctantly ends her idyll with a star-struck hayseed she meets at a county fair.

You’ve been a joy

A shiny toy

I’ve got to pack

I can’t look back

she tells him, holding back tears. An inserted fragment of “Hit the Road, Jack” adds a note of tough punctuation. In the second half a dramatically matter-of-fact version of Murray Grand’s “Guess Who I Saw Today?,” a song she said is probably her most requested number, ends the movement.

A passel of Cole Porter songs forms the center of the last part, which revives the show’s optimistic spirit but in much more sophisticated terms. Ms. Maye is not one to dawdle or to mope. She stands at elbow’s length from a song, taking its full measure, projecting empathy while never getting lost in it. Her philosophy: Tell the truth, but stay in charge.

New York, NY – March 2, 2010

The Wall Street Journal

Marilyn Maye: In Love Again

By Will Friedwald

Marilyn and Rex Reed

Going to hear Marilyn Maye—who begins a two-week stay at Feinstein's at the Regency March 2—is a bit like attending a wedding where the bride's family and the groom's family have never met. On one side of the room are the Broadway and cabaret people, who tend to like their singing big and theatrical, with a lot of drama and stage presence. On the other side is the jazz crowd, who want everything hip and cool and understated, and will split the scene if anything doesn't swing. Ms. Maye is the only pop-song diva working today who can satisfy both crowds at once, combining the projection and personality of Ethel Merman with the musicality and virtuosity of Ella Fitzgerald.

It's all a matter of timing. Ms. Maye's singing has such relentless drive that she literally rocks your world; so many feet start patting in time that you immediately fear for the building's foundation. In the Maye musical universe, everything swings—even the ballads. She's so hip that basic scat singing is too square for her; she would much rather take a lyric phrase and stretch it into a run of syncopated, chromatic syllables. Even 4/4 swing itself is old hat; instead she likes to convert a familiar song like “Come Rain or Come Shine” into a high-powered 3/4. “I've always loved jazz waltzes,” said Ms. Maye in a phone interview from her home in Kansas City, Mo. The time signature “lends itself to too many songs. It's swinging and yet it doesn't go so fast that you can't deliver the lyric.” One of Ms. Maye's signature showpieces is a tongue-twisting vocal take on Paul Desmond's iconic “Take Five,” which she swings, rather unbelievably, at five quarter-notes per bar—even harder than Dave Brubeck and Desmond (who wrote it).

Harvey Evans, Marilyn Maye and Barbara Cook

Unfortunately, her professional timing has never been the equal of her musical timing. By the time Ms. Maye—who celebrated her 80th birthday at the Metropolitan Room two years ago—made it to the big leagues, it was already very late in the day for the traditional American songbook. She cut her first album for RCA Records, “Meet Marvelous Marilyn Maye,” in 1965, on the eve of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Age of Aquarius. “I keep thinking that if I could have recorded earlier, my life might have been very different,” she said. RCA had enough faith in her to release seven albums of mostly standard-style songs in an era of diminishing returns. So did Johnny Carson, who had her on “The Tonight Show” a record-breaking 76 times and famously (on the notes to her 1968 album “The Happiest Sound in Town”) dubbed her the “Super Singer.”

Ms. Maye's first professional experience was as a singing emcee in a kiddie revue every Saturday morning for several years, beginning around 1939, in the Jayhawk Theater of Topeka, Kan. “I introduced all the other little acts, as well as the cartoons and 'The Lone Ranger.' I sang 'God Bless America' more times than Kate Smith.” It was the first of many long runs in her career.

Unlike most singers of her generation, she didn't hone her craft singing with a big band. Instead, she had an extended engagement at a nightclub called the Colony in Kansas City. For 11 years, 10 months a year, she sang there five nights a week. And it was there that she and her pianist and husband, Sammy Tucker (whom she describes as both “brilliant” and an alcoholic), worked out many of her classic routines. Most of the standards on her RCA albums were based on the arrangements she and Tucker fine-tuned in Kansas City.

Mark Sendroff, Marilyn Maye, and Michael Feinstein

They also cut an album together titled “Marilyn . . . The Most,” which was distributed mainly in Missouri. It was essentially a demo; they were hoping some label would pick it up, but instead it was heard by Steve Allen. He scheduled her for repeated appearances on his prime-time variety show, and the association with Allen led to the RCA contract and eventually to “The Tonight Show” with Carson. Today, Ms. Maye regularly dedicates concerts to both Allen and Carson: “They're both here tonight—they just have better seats.”

Alas, that was precisely the wrong time to launch a career singing jazz and standards; she dented the “Billboard” charts a few times, but never enjoyed a blockbuster hit. (She'll tell you how she turned down RCA's request to do “Strangers in the Night.”) As the support network for her kind of music dried up—the major big-city hotel-based nightclubs folded their tents and silently stole away—she did more and more regional theater (one of her later albums is a one-woman cast recording of Jerry Herman's score to “Hello, Dolly”). Except for a gig at Michael's Pub in 1991 (how did I miss that?), she was barely seen in New York for more than 30 years.

Her current Manhattan renaissance is due to Donald Smith, of the Mabel Mercer Foundation, who booked her in his annual Cabaret Convention, in 2005, and to the Metropolitan Room. “I thought, 'Who's going to show up, eight people?' Then when I got there, they were lined up down to the corner.”

Over the course of seven Metro runs since then, Ms. Maye has become a New York institution for the 21st century. With her powers virtually undiminished at age 82, she reminds me of the charge I used to get when Rosemary Clooney and Mel Tormé were with us (or when I get to hear Tony Bennett live). On her '60s albums, RCA kept prodding her to do vocal versions of instrumental hits—from “Petite Fleur” to “Mr. Lucky” to “Washington Square” and even to “Java”—things that no one else would or could sing. There's no one remotely like Ms. Maye: Her arrangements are generally killer fast—constantly changing tempo and key, and sometimes even taking side trips through other songs before coming back again—yet she makes them sound as natural and easy as “Jingle Bells.” On any given night, at the Metro (and surely at Feinstein's) the room is packed, not least with dozens of singers. Ms. Maye always thanks them for being supportive, but clearly they're there for their own benefit— to learn how it's done.

Mr. Friedwald writes about jazz for the Journal.

(Photographs courtesy of Mark Rupp)

Minneapolis, MN – February 17, 2010

Star Tribune

It's the divine Miss M, cabaret's Marilyn Maye

By Jon Bream

Photo by Tom Wallace, Star Tribune

Cabaret star Marilyn Maye, 81, finally lit up a Minneapolis stage after winning New York praise for the past four years. Working with Liza Minnelli’s pianist, her own drummer of 48 years and a pickup Minneapolis bassist, she interpreted standards her own way.

In her overdue Minneapolis debut, the Kansas City songbird turned on her Midwestern charm and class.

If the Catskills were in the Midwest instead of upstate New York, Marilyn Maye would be the queen of the Catskills.

The Kansas City songbird is lovably old-school, a cabaret singer's cabaret singer, all brassy, belting and Borscht Belt jokes. And she sings standards like she's lived them.

Making her entrance Wednesday night from the audience, Maye hit the stage at the Dakota Jazz Club like a Kansas tornado. She was Bea Arthur, Ella Fitzgerald and Liza Minnelli poured into spectacular sequined pants and a stylish satin blouse, topped with her Angela Lansbury hairdo with all its Aquanet. And she had the crowd before she even sang a note.

“That's my eulogy,” she said of Dakota proprietor Lowell Pickett's effusively glowing introduction. “Thank you, sweetheart. All those compliments and a check.” No rim shot was necessary. She just broke into “This Song Is You.”

Her Twin Cities debut was overdue considering that Maye has lived in the Midwest for eight decades, appeared on “The Tonight Show” 76 times (with Johnny Carson) and earned riotously rave reviews for the past four years for her regular gigs in New York City. Her most spectacular review, though, may have come from Ella Fitzgerald who once called Maye “the best white female singer in the world.”

That's a billing that's nearly impossible to live up to at any age — let alone 81. Maye's voice has deepened (from what I remember seeing her with Johnny). Her instincts, taste and style were always right during Wednesday's 85-minute opening set, whether belting, scatting or reaching for high notes -- but her notes weren't always true. That's a cavil because Maye — a beloved blend of show-bizzy vivaciousness and Midwestern friendliness — can really sell a song.

Cherry-picking from the catalogs of Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Ray Charles and Steve Allen (who discovered her on a songwriter's demo), she sang about love, loneliness and heartbreak. Even though these standards were overly familiar, Maye did them her way. Unlike Frank Sinatra, she didn't cry in her bourbon on the pre-Breathalyzer classic “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” but rather approached last call with a shot of fortitude and a fire chaser. She reworked a Charles classic as a swingin' “Hallelujah, I Am Loving Him So,” complete with a new intro (“I wanna sound like Ray but I'm too white”), a little dance and a big leg kick. “Just for a Thrill” became a delightful duet with pianist Billy Stritch, as they harmonized on the “shoo-ba-doos” and nailed the ending.

Stritch, who often works with Minnelli, headed Maye's terrific trio, which included Jim Eklof, her drummer of 48 years (from Des Moines), and Gary Raynor, her bassist for the night (from Minneapolis) who was so impressive that she complemented him almost as effusively as Pickett had done for her. In both cases, the high praise was warranted.

San Francisco, CA - September 17, 2009

San Francisco Examiner

Marilyn Maye swings and sings a musical master class

By Robert Sokol

Singer Marilyn Maye
Photo: Pat Johnson Photography

Looking like the best possible combination of Elaine Stritch grit and Mitzi Gaynor glam, Marilyn Maye is back in town doing the thing she has done so fabulously well for over 70 years for the rest of this week at The Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko.

Taking the stage in a flash of scarlet satin and diamond clusters, there is no warm-up. She just hits the opening out of the park with an aptly chosen pair of tunes - the Kern/Hammerstein “The Song Is You” and Dory and André Previn's “You're Gonna Hear From Me” - which sets her message of the evening.

“I've been doing this a few years,” Maye, 81, jokes early in the set, noting nostalgically that her last major San Francisco appearance was at the long-shuttered Venetian Room as part of a Fairmont Hotels tour.

She then kicks off a tribute to Steve Allen by remembering the break he gave her early in her career and notes not his well known television credits, but the fact that he wrote over 8,000 songs in his lifetime. Maye then offers one of the best (“This Could Be The Start Of Something Big”) and one of her favorites (“I Love You Today” from the extremely short-lived Broadway musical Sophie, as in Tucker).

Working the nightclub circuit of clubs large and small from the '60s to the '80s, Maye played a lot of what she jokingly referred to as “upholstered sewers.” Frank Sinatra, leader of the pack for her kind of entertainer, would have called the next movement “broads in bars” as Maye moves expertly through a series of wounded woman classics. In her superb notes, Murray Grand and Elysse Boyd's “Guess Who I Saw Today?” becomes a piercing, clear-eyed and elegantly-phrased deposition of betrayal and Billy Strayhorn's “Lush Life” is a wise and passionate testimony, whose only flaw is a seemingly lily-gilding vocal coda that diminished the well-paced impact of the song.

It is evident that Maye has a healthy respect for lyrics and her crisp, clear delivery - whether a belt or a whisper - lets the listener savor the story a songwriter wants to tell. A triplet of Johnny Mercer lyrics told the arc of a relationship gone wrong, starting with the romantic “Summer Wind” and ending with “One For My Baby” and showing Maye has considerable acting chops to back up the still powerful voice. More of this skillful delivery was in evidence in a series of songs associated with Ray Charles, including a wonderfully clear reading of Eddy Arnold's 1955 hit “You Don't Know Me.”

A fantastic Cole Porter medley benefits greatly from a brilliant arrangement that allows Maye to playfully interact with each of her three musicians without bogging down into the ubiquitous and sometimes interminable instrumental solo spots that are part of the nightclub jazz set standard. A chestnut like “I Get A Kick” feels fresh and new and Maye gets masterful support from New York-based pianist Tedd Firth, the Bay Area's Dan Feiszli on bass, and drummer Jim Eklof who has been with Maye for 47 years.

The evening has other gems and Maye saves the best for last. James Taylor's “The Secret Of Life” is a lovely learn-this-lesson ballad that takes on a special poignancy when delivered as simply and artfully as Maye does, more potent still when informed by the unspoken history evident in her very being.

Overall, the evening is a fresh and breezy ride, a cozy chat with your best new friend (or, of you're very lucky, an "Old Friend” like those referenced in the Stephen Sondheim song that is part of the show). It's a party really, which is what Maye wants it to be. At the same time it's a master class in vocal performance and required viewing for any aspiring singer. It's been over a decade since the lady has graced a local stage. Grab this chance while you can and let's hope she does not make us wait too long for her next offering.