Carolyn Montgomery
girlSINGER: A Celebration of Rosemary Clooney
54 Below, NYC, March 25, 2025
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
Photo by Bill Westmoreland
Tribute shows dedicated to iconic singers are a very tricky genre. They need to balance biographical information with the personal impact on the performer. Songs must be carefully chosen from a long and often varied catalog that reflect the icon’s entire career. The performer needs to negotiate the narrow divide between imitating the icon and being oneself, while living up to the talent being honored. Also, it’s important to avoid one’s fascination with the subject’s lifestyle rather than the songs she sang. So, when the warm, elegant Carolyn Montgomery presented a pitch-perfect (no pun intended) salute to the ultimate girl who sang with the band, Rosemary Clooney, praise indeed must be heaped.
She was greatly assisted by her music director and pianist, the indispensable Tedd Firth, by Matt Scharfglass on bass, Mark McLean on drums, and the legendary Warren Vaché, who performed with Clooney, on trumpet. Artistic director Sally Mayes prodded Montgomery to create this show, and her deft touch was present throughout That touch was reflected in the show’s second number with the verse of “I Wish It So” (Marc Blitzstein), which slid effortlessly into “Hey There” (Richard Adler/Jerry Ross). Montgomery repeated “I Wish It So” in its entirety as her last number, and it was beautifully rendered with all its moody restlessness intact. In between, there were many other delights.
Among those were “I Can’t Get Started with You” (Ira Gershwin/Vernon Duke), complete with its verse, in which Montgomery dug into the wit of the lyrics. It also included a thrilling interlude for Vaché’s trumpet solo. A smart medley to reflect Clooney’s sexuality included “Straighten Up and Fly Right” (Nat King Cole/Irving Mills), “Nice and Easy Does It” (Lew Spence/Alan & Marilyn Bergman), and “Oh You Beautiful Doll” (Nat D. Ayer/A. Seymour Brown). All these allowed Montgomery to demonstrate her ease with various musical styles. Later on, Clooney’s joy with songs that used foreign accents, including “Come on-a My House” (William Saroyan/Ross Bagdasarian), “Mangos” (Dee Libby/Sid Wayne), “Mambo Italiano” (Bob Merrill), “Sway” (Pablo Beltran Luis/Norman Gimbel) and “Bacciame” or “Batcha-a-Me” (R. Morbelli/L. Astore) was a showstopper. Also included was her fine delivery of “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me” (Irving Berlin), complete with some suggestions of the original choreography used in the film White Christmas that happily slid through the line between sincerity and camp.
Montgomery wisely chose to concentrate on Clooney’s professional career rather than her stormy personal life, which has been told elsewhere. That didn’t stop her from another medley, a wonderful playlet that charted Clooney’s path from despair to rebirth: a wonderfully torchy “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” (George & Ira Gershwin) that moved into a rueful “Still Crazy After All These Years” (Paul Simon) and then into renewal with the discovery of a new love with “The Second Time Around” (Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn). This was smart cabaret, as was so much of the show. Montgomery took the audience on the journey of Clooney’s life, and what a wonderful trip it was.
