With its walnut paneling and subdued lighting, Scullers Jazz Club is the perfect setting for a chanteuse. When Wesla Whitfield wheeled herself into the limelight there last Tuesday night , many patrons who knew of her only by reputation rubbed their eyes in wonder. Wheelchair?
Ten seconds after Whitfield began singing, the chair and the puzzle about how and why she needed it all but vanished from consciousness. The woman’s voice has the range of an IBM missile and the precision diction that characterizes vocalists who like to sing big. That’s exactly what’s called for when singing pages out of the Great American Songbook. Whitfield owns the territory.
Her opening numbers, up-tempo versions of “I woke up singing this morning” and “It’s a most unusual day” sparkled with pace and pitch. She confessed to having battled pneumonia last February after her voice slightly cracked and betrayed a frayed pitch in her second song. Oddly enough, subsequent small imperfections in the timbre of her voice made listeners realize the extent of the talent they were witnessing.
Whitfield sang the opening verses to several songs a capella, her piano and bass accompanists listening carefully and chiming in right on time. Such was the case on “Let there be you”, which she introduced by blurting out “I love this song…” During one of Whitfield’s sustained high notes, I wondered how many wine glasses those notes would shatter when she was at full vocal capacity.
Pianist Mike Greensill and bassist John Wiitala, who traded elegant and spare solos all night, were perfect foils to her singing style. Greensill, her husband of twenty years, arranged many of Whitfield’s songs.
Wesla’s been around. A boomer from California, she’s performed at places as diverse as The Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, Garrison Keillor’s 'Prairie Home Companion', and been featured on Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air.” She and Mike Greensill were recently guests with Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz” radio show (I would love to have heard that).
“Once in a while (will you try to give one little thought of me…)” was one of many of the songs reprised from her sixteenth recording, “Livin’ on Love.” (High Note records, 2006)
The mystery of how a singer can melodically interpret the simple words of one song and evoke such a range of hope, reverie, pain, joy, and wistfulness is a rare experience. As her final notes to "Once in a while" faded, many in the audience could be heard sighing in dreamy silence before an escalation of applause and cheers erupted. The Great American Songbook isn’t much without great singers to interpret it.
“The gentleman is a dope” is an upbeat tongue in cheek refutation of a man whose main acclaim to dopeyness is not realizing that his current girlfriend “will never understand him half as well as me.”
“East of the sun, west of the moon,” and a Johnny Mercer-Henry Mancini song “Whistling away in the dark” were followed by a tune introduced in theatric deadpan that went thusly: “Alright, we have to do a Cole Porter so here it is.”
And here came a zippy version of ‘Get out of town”, punctuated by solo gems by Greensill and Wiitala, who were models of how to be so damn good that their seamless playing was almost unobtrusive. Whitfield added a catty little reprise of “Get out of town” to the Bush administration that had every Democrat in the room roaring with laughter.
There are reasons the Great American Songbook has survived. One is the archived performances of legends like Ella Fitzgerald. Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae. (two of Whitfield’s favorites are Rosemary Clooney and Dean Martin).Another reason is that singers like Whitfield who were brought up with the music, understand it, and are passing it on to the next generation.
And of course there’s love. When simple lyrics like “In this world of overstated pleasures and underrated treasures, I’m glad there is you…” are transmitted to live audiences through the vocal pipes of performers like Wesla Whitfield, you are convinced that the Great American Songbook won’t be out of print anytime soon.
For more about Wesla Whitfield, and to find out about that wheel chair, visit http://www.weslawhitfield.com/index.html
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