Carol O’Shaughnessy
As Long As I’m Singing: Carol’s 80th Birthday Celebration
Club Café’s Moonshine Room, Boston, MA, November 20, 2022
By John Amodeo
Photo: Bob Bond
Few cabaret performers can hold an audience in the palms of their hands like Carol O’Shaughnessy, who celebrated her 80th birthday with a show filled with one precious and delightfully zany moment after another. From the instant the curtain went up, revealing O’Shaughnessy, resplendent in a red-sequined number by award-winning dress designer David Josef, seated center stage surrounded by the Tom LaMark Quintet. She appeared to be holding court, a fitting image for a performer long ago dubbed the “Queen of Boston Cabaret.” But O’Shaughnessy is anything but an aloof matriarch. When you consider that her opening words were, “This is the loosest show you’re ever going to hear,” and later, “We can be casual here. You are all guests in my living room,” then you can imagine the genuine personal connection O’Shaughnessy made with each and every person in the sold-out room.
Cut from a vaudevillian cloth, O’Shaughnessy would have been a megastar in the Orpheum circuit of the 1930s had she been born several decades earlier. Her son Jim, in a curtain speech, claimed that “if Donna Reed and Bette Midler could have had a daughter, that would be the mother that raised me.” But as an entertainer, O’Shaughnessy is more like the love child of Judy Garland and Midler. When O’Shaughnessy first hit the scene back in the 1980s, like both Garland and Midler she exhibited a bold stage personality, a brassy voice that could belt to the rafters, and a sassy innuendo-laden delivery that could have the saltiest sailor laughing up a storm one minute and then wiping tears away the next. At 80, O’Shaughnessy’s vocal range may be a bit narrower and her vibrato a bit wider, but this entertainer is still at the top of her game.
Backed by the Tom LaMark Quintet—LaMark at the piano, Dave Landoni on bass, Mark Holovnia on drums, Dave Burdett on trumpet, and Mike Monaghan on sax—O’Shaughnessy gave us a buoyant show with a baker’s dozen of songs selected from her bottomless repertoire, all with delicious LaMark arrangements. Bookending the show by opening and closing with Bobby Darin’s “As Long As I’m Singing,” O’Shaughnessy set the show’s swinging musical tone and planted her flag in the ground, using this song as her personal anthem. She kept the pace lively with such classics as the Gershwins’ “I’ve Got Rhythm,” which she certainly has; a swinging “The Best Is Yet to Come” (Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh) in which she recovered like a pro from a slipped lyric; and a tribute to Rosemary Clooney with “Mambo Italiano,” (Bob Merrill/Frankie Laine/William S. Fischer) replete with an impeccable Italian accent. The sizzling LaMark Quintet turned the Moonshine Room into a 1950s Copacabana. Just when you thought O’Shaughnessy was only about the music, she turned to the audience after finishing a number and said, “All I had today was a half a peanut butter sandwich—and Jack Daniels!”
After we were thrown off-guard by her humor, O’Shaughnessy ambushed us with a ballad to take our breath away, the smoky “The Shadow of Your Smile,” which she introduced by saying “I always wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor.” There was a brilliant Tom LaMark pairing that began with “The Way I See It” (Coleman/Barbara Fried), sung with an apt world-weary wisdom that O’Shaughnessy then spun into the sheer optimism of “Pure Imagination” (Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley). This started gently and then became a lively bounce. The emotional highlight of the show, however, was her poignant “What a Wonderful World” (Bob Thiele/George David Weiss), sung with heartfelt sincerity against a backdrop of slides of her life that showed her with her children and grandchildren and with friends, some of whom are no longer with us. Guest artist Scott Woolweaver provided a touching viola solo that heightened the emotional punch. It was the kind of moment O’Shaughnessy creates best, one that simply left the audience breathless.
Photo: Bob Bond
Never one to wallow in sentiment, however, she quickly picked things back up with a requisite cameo appearance of her hilarious character, Mama Sgugliacci, followed by a scorching “Cornet Man” (Jule Styne/Merrill) that raised the roof, including some very sultry muted trumpet solo riffs from Burdett. She brought to the stage two of her granddaughters, Grace and Farrell, to help her with her signature “Peter Pan Medley.” O’Shaughnessy roused the audience into a singalong during “I Gotta Crow”/“I Won’t Grow Up” and then segued into “Neverland.” She brought it to a rousing finish in her strongest voice with “I’m Flying,” looking and sounding 20 years younger. As she said when she introduced the song, “It’s important to feel young and do what you love.” And as long as she is singing, this 80-year-old will be the youngest one in the room.
