Review: Singer SHEILA JORDAN Shimmers (With a Little Sass) at Birdland

Valiant veteran jazz singer Sheila Jordan performed at Birdland on West 44th Street on the evening of Sunday, November 19th, and told us it was her birthday!  Well, a little checking up on this determines that her birthday was actually the day before.  Maybe she was just extending the celebration over the full weekend.  Or maybe fudging the date to make it feel a little more dramatic or that we were her party invitees seemed like a harmless show biz touch. It was a nice night for nostalgia and reflecting on time gone by.  One of her selections, “The Touch of Your Hand,” was first presented in the musical Roberta which opened on Broadway two blocks south — coincidentally on another November 18th, exactly 90 years ago. Another choice, “When the World Was Young” (“Ah, the Apple Trees”), gave us two reasons to think about the past.  First, she was reprising a number from her very first album, recorded decades ago.  Second, the lyric is all about recalling the simpler, sweeter days of youth. Its English words, which she painted so tenderly, were written by Johnny Mercer, who was born — coincidentally on another November 18th, more than a century ago. The lady, in fine voice and very good spirits, mentioned her exact age several times---  95.  That is not a typo; it’s a marvel and a reason for joy, pride, appreciation, and applause and for the final song of the night to come from the audience’s lips and hearts: “Happy birthday to you…..”  

But Sheila Jordan, smiling and merrily scat-singing, eyes a-twinkle, tossing off quips, grooving with her two sterling musicians – bassist Harvie S and guitarist Roni Ben-Hur (pictured below)

— seems like an ageless sprite. She expressed her thanks to the audience for being at this birthday show several times and, as if checking herself for getting overly sentimental, looked out at the cheering crowd and said, “I thank you — and I mean that, from the bottom of my…feet.”  One could see various feet tapping during an amiable swing through the Gershwins’ classic “I Got Rhythm,” adapting the words in a salute to her musicians: “They got rhythm/  They got music/ They got be-bop…”  In a couple of other moments, she cutely had mischievous spoken asides on love songs, after establishing the requisite romantic earnestness.  On the aforementioned lyric that addresses a lover, longing for “The Touch of Your Hand,” she surprises us with the more down-to-earth mood-breaking little addition, “But don’t mess my hair up.”  And then she was able to return to the sweet tone.  Likewise, with Irving Berlin’s song that “answers” one rhetorical question with another one, “How Deep Is the Ocean (How High Is the Sky),” she irreverently replied: “Beats the hell out of me.”  

It was a night for happiness, so the declarations of eternal love could afford to be leavened and the blues could be casual.  As expected, Sheila Jordan made reference to her idol, Charlie “Bird” Parker, the musician for whom Birdland was named, telling us she’d played the club in its old location when Parker himself was in the house.  And, with grace, she sang “Bird Alone,” written by another major female jazz vocalist, the late Abbey Lincoln, with kind words about both figures.  There was easy chemistry with the two musicians, who got strong solo time themselves in addition to anchoring the musical architectures of the night, with cozy comfort zones rather than any showboating.  

Another item from that first LP, Portrait of Sheila, was Oscar Brown, Jr.’s “Hum Drum Blues,” but there is nothing humdrum, then or now, about Sheila Jordan’s style and performance.  

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Larger color photo of Miss Jordan, the night she was given the Nightlife Award, by Genevieve Rafter Keddy 

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