Take your time,
Sister D
Working woman
The
reborn Diana Krall ended her splendid but uneven show
one July night in 2004 with a romp through the blues, first wailing away
on the grand piano and then doing some shouting on the blues called “I’m
Walking.”
This kid’s got so much chops, you find yourself thirsty
every time to hear what she’ll do with them on a plain little plot like
the blues. The answer is too much. You wanted to give her the kind of
advice you used to hear when they were jamming the blues in South Central:
“Take your time, Sister D.”
Of course, when you’re filling up the Greek Theater a
couple of nights running, with almost as many stretch limos outside as
there were for Frank Sinatra, and you’ve got a hot new CD out in
collaboration with your new husband, the renowned Elvis Costello, and
you’re singing your little heart out to boot --- that’s not the sort of
advice you’re in the market for.
This
husband dude, by the way – not that one is jealous – but
is he really a bro? You wouldn’t want to say that to judge by the lyrics
he wrote that Krall was singing. “Almost Blue” is a good example. Flirting
with this disaster became me/ It named me as the fool who only aimed to
be/ Almost blue…
The new bride gave this one an intro worthy of Rachmaninoff, sang the
words by bringing them up from somewhere inside herself that one had not
been aware existed, fondled them with keyboard fingerings worthy of her
mentor, the great Jimmy Rowles, and almost made their understated or I say
bogus profundities real… almost.
That voice of hers has developed into a thing of wonder and power. But it
needs fodder like she found in the evening’s highlight, “I’ll String Along
With You.” Al Dubin (“September in the Rain”) wrote the words and they are
light as a feather.
Krall used her voice like an instrument as never before, scatting the
lyrics with a different sound color for each feeling, jump cutting from a
muted trombone-like Buster Cooper forte to a whispered Stan Getz style
pianissimo in the most unexpected but somehow appropriate places. She
nailed the lower register with just the right amount of steam and turned
feathery for the top notes. It was not almost anything, it was all there.
 She’d
brought a great little band with her: Anthony Wilson,
guitar; Robert Hurst, bass and Peter Erskine, drums. These were errand
boys for rhythm, all right, and they delivered, particularly Wilson,
though Hurst was not far behind when offered a chance. He benefited
greatly by the exemplary new Greek sound system, as they all did.
Krall would turn around on the piano bench to watch Wilson, an underrated
whiz who tore up the joint with chorus after chorus on the up-tempo
numbers she’d skedded for her all-stars, like “East of the Sun,” “Let’s
Face the Music and Dance” and “Devil May Care.” The audience ate it up,
too.
Besides the evening’s too infrequent lyrical ballad successes, Krall got
back to her boffo side on bitterly witty numbers like the latter, by Bob
Dorough, and “Stop the World” by Mose Allison. She knows no peer in such
side of the mouth, no b.s., street babe stuff. Annie Ross, maybe.
And finally, you had a feeling that nobody there will ever forget the
out-of-nowhere, utterly charming piano bagatelle she made out of “Don’t
Fence Me In,” with every fresh phrase a signpost of taste. Sister D took
her time on this one.
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