The Lighter Side of Lady Day Continues to Shine In Maryanne Reall

Frank Sinatra said Billie Holiday was his all time "greatest single musical influence," as she also has been for scores of other vocalists, in a broad range of gender and fame. Her style of singing was so unique, as if three separate components had melded together, inextricably linked- her voice, phrasing and choice of songs...as one brand of melancholy, that can make even the words "God bless the child" sound like the Blues.

It takes a steadfast commitment from a sweet, Jazz Vocalist, named Maryanne Reall, to take a Holiday and throw her some daylight, after all her shade and troubled life, as she is doing in a series of cabaret performances called, LIGHTER SIDE OF LADY DAY at the Gardenia Bar & Restaurant in Hollywood.

That it's more than a sentimental gesture, became apparent to me, in her second number,

"I Hear Music."

It is so joyous, the title sums it up, but to this rapt listener, it seemed the kind of joie de vivre someone has...only after climbing Mount Everest then making it back down safely, only then is it the lighter side...this song has every change up and down, in tempo, texture and key, that make jazz a treacherous hike for anyone...that's a lot of effort for Lady Day too. Reall tackles it in a breezy way but doesn't make it seem as if it was too easy. It was well worth the climb...from my pov.

I happen to think that Maryanne Reall IS the lighter side of Lady Day...for these specific reasons:

She first heard Billie Holiday's music through the filter of Diana Ross, who did a great job, as her own version of this iconic singer, in Lady Sings The Blues...and one diva, once removed, would seem to give her more latitude to make the music and this legendary icon whomever she is for her and still be assured Billie is cheering her on and perhaps, laughing all the way.

At the end of her set, Maryanne sings a hilarious song, written by Nellie McKay, called "I Wanna Get Married," it's tongue in "I do" cheek, with the matrimonial raison d'etre that follows the title, "That's why I was born." In the performance I saw, Maryanne remarks, "Lady Day is rolling her eyes on this one."

Aux contraire....

...Billie Holiday didn't get the man to marry, then the man she married wasn't the man she had hoped he would be...she also had flings with her musicians, not to mention Orson Welles and Tallulah Bankhead. I think she's looking down and wondering,

How did Miss Sweet Thang get none of all of what Miss Otis regrets? The stability that escaped my grasp AND a French husband? She sends him kisses like chocolate croissants, airmail or special delivery on either one of his cheeks- he never misses a show...just like me.

He is her business partner and videographer, also, and why she climbs the equivalent of the French Alps with a repertoire that includes French torch songs, always one that seems challenging and one so forbidding, it beckons as most famous torch of all, La Vie En Rose.

I think Lady Day might think...this is 'REALL' Lady progress...

...And she chooses to sing my songbook in her voice? She picked me over Diana Ross...that's a choice that would stress most any other wannabe diva into a depressed Lady of Conflicted Blues.

It would seem Reall knew exactly how to parse harmonious between these two iconic singers, by choosing to perform "Don't Explain," one of Holiday's best known torch songs, that Diana Ross took to the top of the charts in the soundtrack of Lady Sings the Blues, her first and only solo album ever to be #1, so both divas lay claim to Explain's staying power and Reall's version is as exquisite as both of her predecessors...it's a song about languishing that requires each phrase to end with a note that languishes until it disappears into an abyss. It seems to require learning a whole new way of breathing...each line seethes and simmers, neither hot nor cold... dry and lifeless, then gone.

Reall brings a synchronicity of inspiration with Lady Day, who had paved the way for so many other singers to embrace an unconventional style customized to themselves, the Gardenia was packed with aspiring jazz vocalists in training- performers at a Jazz Salon, Reall and her husband have created and coordinate.

She might be rolling with giggles over Reall's choice of an ironic closing song, as the bookend to Billie Holiday's first ever recorded song, she also wrote, "Your Mother's Son-In-Law," about a daughter's desperation to get married to please her mother.

As Special Guest Vocalist, Phillip De Leon doubled down in two songs, with a set of pipes that might make Frank Sinatra's generosity of spirit turn envious and miserly...especially since Leon has a savoir faire and debonair charm all his own.

Andy Langham was on Baby Grand; Lyman Madeiros- Acoustic Bass