Karin Allyson: “Nancy (With the Laughing Face)”
Yoshi’s, Jack London Square, Berkeley
The best, most noted, jazz club in San Francisco was and is Yoshi’s. The first time we went there, we heard Dee Dee Bridgewater. (She released an album later of songs recorded there that week.) Jon and Lisa, Esther’s nephew and his wife, went with us.
Esther loved singers and musicals and I loved jazz so we compromised and heard jazz singers
Shirley Horn was magnificent.
As was Abbey Lincoln. It was our second time for her. We’d seen her at Fat Tuesday’s three years previously in New York.
A young Blossom Dearie
Somewhere in there, we saw Maureen McGovern on a trip to New York –phenomenal!
Esther, not I, saw Blossom Dearie, a favorite of ours.
Esther, again not I, saw Susannah McCorkle, who she said was wonderful! wonderful!
We went with our friends George and Kath to hear Karin Allyson at Yoshi’s. It was a mixed bag. The first half of the set, she sang with a piano trio –adequate, but muted. The second half of the set, she sat alone at the piano and sang with no accompaniment other than her own and she was phenomenal. I was reminded of how good she was on Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane.
We heard Weslya Whitfield (who recently died) at the Fairmount, an upscale night club located on Nob Hill in SF. Her husband-pianist accompanist Mike Greensill backed her in a pleasant but not memorable evening.
One time only, they held a cabaret festival in SF, seven nights, with eighty or ninety acts in different venues. We had dinner on Friday at a club where Barbara Carroll played piano and sang. Tasty. Good, but not life changing. Saturday, we went to a concert –ten or twelve acts sang in succession, twenty minutes each. No particular act sticks in my mind but the overall effect was positive. We left with four or five CDs and had a wonderful evening.
What else? A night of tango. A musical based on Isaac Bashevis Singer stories. Bill Irwin starred in that. (In the late 2000s, we saw Irwin again in New York, acting Vladimir in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Estrogen was Nathan Lane, Pozzi John Goodman, and John Glover played Lucky. It was a killer night.)
Another night at Yoshi’s, we heard bop trombonist J. J. Johnson with Renee Rosnes on piano. (Johnson committed suicide not long after.) Still another night, vibist Milt Jackson reunited with younger vibes star Bobby Hutchinson.
On campus, I heard the Blasters’ Dave Alvin in duet with X member, John Doe. Nancy Wilson performed there one time, as did Ray Charles. Willie Nelson and Vince Gill each had a concert on campus but I didn’t go to them.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Dave Alvin: “Harlan County Line”, from the soundtrack for one of our favorite series, Justified