Many cabaret artists appropriate all sorts of songs to illustrate their life stories. But judging from her very winning recent show (a reprise from 2011-2012) at 54 Below, Marin Mazzie may be the only singer who chronicles her first two decades of musical influences in such specific fashion, employing the decidedly non-rock pop songs—including a bit of bubblegum—from her formative years. Although Mazzie is best known now as a Broadway musical star, there was only a single show tune among the 15 songs she offered up in a breezy, beautifully produced 55 minutes. (And that one number, Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine," had surfaced some 25 years before Mazzie was born. It's just that her parents were still dancing to it in their living room when she was ten, the age at which her onstage story begins, in 1970.) Her early musical teachers were mostly radio station WROK in her native Rockford, Illinois, the television variety shows of the 1960s and 70s, and the Columbia Record Club (13 albums when you join for a penny).
"Come On-a My House" (Ross Bagdasarian, William Saroyan), one of her parents' favorite dance tunes, opened the set. Mazzie, in a form-fitting, sleeveless white-sequined cocktail dress, sang it in much sultrier fashion than Rosemary Clooney did on her Number-One recording from 1952, or than her ten-year-old self would likely have done. The number served as a literal welcome to the Mazzie household in Rockford. A metaphorical stack of records, played either on the family console in their living room or upstairs in Marin's room, were sung in roughly chronological order. The senior Mazzies' four-number dance music mini-set continued with "That's All" (Bob Haymes, Alan Brandt), sung slower than Nat King Cole's original, and "Tenderly" (Walter Gross, Jack Lawrence), about on a par with Clooney's version. Both songs featured bass player Peter Donovan, who also arranged them. They were followed by the aforementioned "Begin the Beguine," which Mazzie sang (and danced a bit) accompanied only by the highly effective Latin-flavored percussion of drummer Larry Lelli.
The act's other arrangements, some inventive, others deliberately close to the originals, were provided by Mazzie's musical director and pianist Joseph Thalken, and by Dan Lipton and Tedd Firth. Guitarist Nate Brown completed the solidly in-sync quartet of musicians on stage. The show's director was Scott Brickell.
"Make Your Own Kind of Music" (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil) aptly introduced Mazzie's own branching-out to the hits of her early days. In her purple-hairbrush phase, when that hair-care implement doubled as a faux microphone, she was convinced she was the missing Partridge Family sister and temporarily absorbed much of her performance style from that TV-spawned group's Number-One hit, "I Think I Love You" (Tony Romeo). She soon grew out of it and gravitated to such ballads as "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) and "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" (Carly Simon, Jacob Brackman). Mazzie hewed closely to Maria Muldaur's treatment of "Midnight at the Oasis" (David Nichtern)—is there really any other way to do it? On "Evergreen" (Barbra Streisand, Paul Williams), absorbed from endless replaying of the 1977 "A Star is Born" soundtrack album, Mazzie delivered a deliciously credible Streisand parody. Celebrating her first serious and steady boyfriend, she sang "Weekend in New England" (Randy Edelman) far more fiercely and far less cheesily than Barry Manilow had done.
A lovely "Our House" (Graham Nash) was the closer that marked Mazzie's graduation from high school and her moving out of Rockford, and underscored her belief that her first two decades of pop music had provided "the foundation of all that was to come." Her four musicians—Thalken, Donovan, Brown, and Lelli—all sang backup on "Our House," channeling their own inner Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Mazzie's encore was another pre-teen TV favorite, the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" (Neil Diamond), energetically replete with her late 1960s dance moves (The Swim, anyone?). In under an hour, she made vinyl-era believers of us all.
54 Below – February 4-7
