photo courtesy of Lincoln Center
Leslie Uggams
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On February 20, at the Allen Room, Leslie Uggams, charismatic and award-winning star of, as the saying goes, stage, screen and television, offered what she called, "My first official New York soirée-I love that word soirée-in 18 years," entitled "Uptown Downtown," referring to the local stages on which she has sung and conquered, as part of the Lincoln Center American Songbook. Music director and pianist Don Rebic, woodwind player Walt Weiskopf, guitarist Steve Bargonetti, bassist Ray Kilday, and percussionist Buddy Williams assisted and Michael Bush was responsible for concept and direction.

The lady of the hour entered to sultry strains of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and, her delivery dynamic and a sheen on her voice, opened by blending "There's a Boat that's Leaving Soon for New York," from the Gershwins' "Porgy and Bess," and "New York, New York," from Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green's "On the Town," triumphantly capping the pairing with a long-sustained note. Uggams remembered Billie Holiday with a seductive "Them There Eyes," of Maceo Pinkard, Doris Tauber and William Tracey, with a slow verse ("I was a humdrum person,/Leading a life apart") and unhurried pacing for the start of the familiar chorus ("I fell in love with you first time I looked into/Them there eyes") before unleashing her up-tempo, ornamental variations.

In songs from Jule Styne and Comden and Green's "Hallelujah, Baby!", the musical in which Uggams made her Tony Award-winning Broadway debut, after Lena Horne turned down the role of Georgina, Uggams, in an intimate "My Own Morning," yearned for security in a place all her own, to share someday with a loved one, and in "Being Good (isn't good enough)," earnestly strove toward self-improvement.

Sharing a look at her roots and her idols, Uggams began by adapting lines of Leonard Gershe's "Born in a Trunk" to reflect her own origins "in Harlem, New York City, at a theater known as the Apollo," and with a bright and winning "On the Sunny Side of the Street," by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, recreated the feeling of singing in 29 shows a week at the Apollo, starting at the age of nine. "When you do 29 shows a week at the Apollo, eight shows a week [on Broadway] ain't nothin'!" Uggams observed. She performed on 125th Street with Louis Armstrong and recalled the smells of his favorite foods-and some mysterious herb-issuing from his dressing room whenever his relatives from New Orleans visited. One of the songs she sang, when on the bill with Satchmo, or "Pops," was Hoagy Carmichael and Sidney Arodin's "(Up a) Lazy River," which, here, included Weiskopf's hot clarinet solo and, at the end, Uggams' dead-on Armstrong impression.

Singing a propulsive "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," with the band on backup vocals, Uggams reflected on working with "the great Ella Fitzgerald," who wrote the song's music, to Al Feldman's lyrics. Concerning Dinah Washington, Uggams commented, "She had about seven or eight husbands ... she was elegant and she was eloquent but, honey, she had a mouth on her!" whereupon our singer put a two-timing lover in his place with Johnny Mercer and Sadie Vimmerstedt's "I Wanna Be Around (to pick up the pieces/When somebody breaks your heart)." She dedicated James V. Monaco and Joseph McCarthy's "You Made Me Love You" to the aforementioned trio of icons, singing,"You made me love you, Louis, Ella, Dinah."

Uptown, Uggams' later worked up with doo-wop groups, including the Drifters, which led into her rendition of Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Up on the Roof" ("When this old world starts getting me down"), which she sang with feeling and hints of a "legit" soprano, with guitarist Bargonetti. Turning back downtown, she paid tribute to the Great White Way, with drive and verve, and a notable bass solo from Kilday, in Bill Byrd, Teddy McRae and Henry Woode's "Broadway," where "Everybody's happy and gay." Here, Uggams proffered a jazzy take on "Hello, Young Lovers," from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I," with drummer Williams turning in a full orchestra's worth of sound. Our diva reminisced about seeing her aunt, Eloise Uggams, in "Porgy and Bess" on Broadway, in the company of Leontyne Price, William Warfield and Cab Calloway, when she was a child, and proceeded to an ethereal "Summertime," in that legit soprano, and a buoyant "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'."

Uggams and director Bush have been working on a musical called "Stormy Weather," in which Uggams portrays Lena Horne, and for a grand finale, Uggams delivered a lacerating account of that grandparent of all torch songs, Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Stormy Weather," complete with its rarely heard verse and a scatting cadenza. Staying with Horne's repertory, for an encore, Uggams, with ferocity and velocity, probed, in Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane's song, the many and diverse splendors of "Love," which "can be a moment's madness,/Love can be insane."

The Songbook season ends on March 6 with two shows by Chita Rivera.