Lynda D’Amour
Only When I Laugh
Club Café’s Napoleon Room, Boston, MA, November 19, 2024
By John Amodeo
You would be lucky to attend a cabaret show that had at least one “pin-drop” moment, but it is rare indeed when you could hear a pin drop throughout an entire show. Yet that is what happened when Lynda D’Amour held the Napoleon Room audience happily mesmerized during her recent show Only When I Laugh.
She dedicated the show to her dear friend, jazz singer and recording artist John Minnock, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 64 earlier this year. D’Amour paid him the ultimate tribute by singing many of the songs from his last recording project, nearly half of which she performed using his charts or lead sheets. In cases where those didn’t exist, she had her music director/pianist Andy Lantz transcribe them from the recording.
D’Amour started with the jazzy and fun opener “I Love Being Here with You” (Peggy Lee/Bill Schluger) and followed it with a quiet and sincere “Starting Here, Starting Now” (Richard Maltby Jr./David Shire). This was one of Minnock’s staples, and in it D’Amour displayed her signature versatility and vocal prowess. The spellbound audience was laser-focused on her exquisite performance, and it never left her until her final bow. This was for good reason: D’Amour knew how to get to the heart of a song, and she imbued the lyrics with meaning as though she had written them herself. She has an incomparable vocal instrument that she can dial down to a whisper and dial up to a high belt, but she does that only in service to the song rather than to showboat. This was cabaret at its best.
D’Amour’s song selections and patter were clearly inspired; she told stories of her friendship with Minnock that went back some 25 years or more when she was hosting open mics at the old Encore Lounge in Boston’s theater district and Minnock would come in and sing. Minnock, as she explained, went on to have regular gigs in Boston and then in Manhattan, where he scored a residency at the Metropolitan Room that lasted until its closing. That was followed by a regular gig at 54 Below, and he was about to take up residency at Birdland before he passed away.
The 10 songs D’Amour handpicked were chosen from Minnock’s extensive repertoire and were all gems, and that attested to her and Minnock’s superb taste. Minnock was known for slowing songs down to wring out as much sentiment and melodic inflection from them as possible. D’Amour honored that practice with her slow and steady “Starting Here, Starting Now” and in the lovely “Manhattan” (Sara Bareilles), a torchy ballad she sang with requisite gravity. Likewise, she sang the first verse of the usually rapid-fire “I Don’t Remember Christmas” (Maltby & Shire) slowly as Minnock had done, thereby giving the lyrics the breathing room they needed to hit their mark.
During his time singing in Manhattan boîtes, Minnock had struck up a friendship with lyricist David Shire. Minnock’s final recording, A Different Riff—Minnock Sings Shire, posthumously released in April 2024, was a tribute to Shire. D’Amour recognized that by including a fair number of Shire’s songs in her set. These included a sizzling “Back on Base,” from one of Minnock’s favorite shows, Closer Than Ever, and the bluesy R&B Maltby and Shire torch song “Only When I Laugh,” which she introduced with nostalgic patter about the many laughter-filled dinners she and Minnock once shared. The arrangement was the one Minnock had commissioned from Boston-area pianist/arranger Bill Duffy, and Lantz sunk into it with a rousing stride-piano musical interlude that D’Amour picked up on as she built to a big finish that drew cheers.
Lantz had his own relationship with Minnock that went back even longer than D’Amour’s to 1991, when he performed with Minnock at the old Kendall Café in East Cambridge. When the pianist spoke about their professional partnership turned friendship, he opened a three-ring binder full of Minnock’s charts that he had recently found and he reverently read some of Minnock’s meticulously hand-scribbled directions to himself. These included which leg crossed over which, or which elbow leaned on the piano, and when and where that happened. That created a pin-drop moment.
D’Amour, who is normally at home in the pop, cabaret, and swing genres, showed she can be a jazzer as well. She had some fun scat interludes in “Back on Base” (Maltby & Shire) and in “Only Jazz” (Shire). That one was arranged for Minnock by Duffy, and D’Amour sang it with a festive air. She and Lantz did a bit of their own arranging with a mash-up of “Angel Eyes” (Earl Brent/Matt Dennis) and “You Don’t Know What Love Is” (Don Ray/Gene de Paul). They were both written in 4/4, but D’Amour, who conceived of the pairing, honored Minnock’s 3/4 time version of “Angel Eyes” by singing it in waltz time, which created an exciting and unexpected dynamic for the audience as Lantz and D’Amour toggled easily between 3/4 and 4/4 between songs.
Her mention of Minnock’s obsession with Maureen McGovern, which D’Amour quipped may have bordered on stalking, made a smooth lead-in to “The Morning After” (Al Kasha/Joel Hirschhorn), and she sang it with perfect pop gusto. For sheer vocal pyrotechnics, her version of the Minnock staple, “Walking in Memphis” (Marc Cohn) buoyed by Lantz’s gorgeous piano accompaniment, was off the charts and closed the show with a bang. As if that wasn’t enough, her encore, a heart-wrenching “Alfie” (Burt Bacharach/Hal David) built to a climax in the bridge, but finished in a whisper—yes, you could hear a pin drop. Minnock’s spirit, which never left the room, surely must have been smiling right then.
