Marilyn Maye

Music Instrument Museum (MIM) Theatre, Phoenix, AZ, May 14, 2025

Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards

Marilyn Maye celebrated her 97th birthday in April at 54 Below with a new cabaret show, an annual tradition that would be hard to believe if it wasn’t true. Recently, she took the show to Palm Springs for three nights and then made her way across the desert for her third appearance at the MIM, where Andrew Walesch, who books the room, is one of her biggest fans. The 54 Below review (Marilyn Maye – Cabaret Scenes) let us know that she had crafted this year’s show around memories drawn from the 70+ appearances she made on the Johnny  Carson show which ran from 1962 to 1992. Ed McMahon discovered her when she was playing the Living Room in New York City and invited her to the show, which at the time was filmed in New York. She made her first appearance in 1966 and appeared 76 (per Wikipedia) or 79 (Maye’s recollection) times. The Tonight Show moved from NYC to Studio City in Burbank, CA in 1972, and Maye often made regular appearances on it when she was playing Las Vegas. Carson gave his singers the option of two songs or one song and a couch chat. She said she had chosen the couch only five times over the years, which shows that her passion and priority was singing songs. The opening video clip showed Maye singing “Cabaret” (Kander and Ebb) full-force 50 years ago. She closed her MIM set the same way, bringing it full circle.

Maye took the stage in elegant black and blue sparkles, jumped into her Lincoln Time Machine (Sanderson Ford Lincoln is a MIM sponsor of the show) and transported us back to the music of those Carson glory years. She personalized lyrics to “The Way We Were” (Marvin Hamlisch/Alan & Marilyn Bergman) and sang “I Hear Music” (Burton Lane/Frank Loesser) to a creative photo collage of Carson. She followed with his favorite song, which she said showed the solemn side of Carson the comedian, “Here’s That Rainy Day” (Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke), and blended it with “Stormy Weather” (Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler). Maye and her long-time music director and pianist Tedd Firth are masters of the medley. Firth loves the MIM and says its grand piano is the best he has ever played. That is high praise coming from a man of his musical genius. They laughed as they got into her “Spring Medley” of three songs.

The entire show felt free and easy. Much was scripted but she included plenty of moments about MIM, such as when she went back to the days when commercials paid the bills and sang “Let Lincoln Mercury Lead the Way,” the parody version of “Step to the Rear” (Elmer Bernstein/Carolyn Leigh). She reminisced about having done three concerts with Doc Severinsen when he was conducting The Phoenix Symphony. She chatted with audience members from Iowa about the 68 summers she has entertained at a summer resort there. She made every song her own, including “Being Alive” (Stephen Sondheim) and said that Sondheim was older than you think because people do not believe she sang it on the Tonight Show back in the day.

She covered famous pop songs of the 1970s, from Barry Manilow (who is her friend) and The Carpenters. “It’s Gonna Take Some Time” (Carole King/Toni Stern) morphed into “Maybe This Time” (Kander & Ebb) with a darling one measure quote from the classic “Just in Time.” Carson has been dead for more than 20 years. Maye explained she had crafted the cabaret this year in celebration of his 100th birthday (October 23).  After an hour and 20 minutes she bid us good night and her audience stood and clapped until she made the journey back to the stage for one final musical reminder, “Here’s to Life” (Artie Butler/Phyllis Molinary). Maye seems to be heading toward her centennial still singing and kicking up a storm as she has done for decades. Here’s to her!