It's Tuesday night at Brandy's, a sleepy little piano bar on Manhattan's Upper Fast Side. Natalie Douglas, a droll, dark, amply proportioned diva, sets down her bar tray and sidles up to the piano. Tuesday is supposed to be a night when nothing much is going on in the Big Apple, but try telling that to the cadre of New Yorkers who have wandered in from the street to raise a snifter and bask in the warm glow of a cabaret.
Microphone in hand, Natalie surveys the room and says "I'm talking. Now sshhhh." The barroom chatter barely fades. "This song is for my friend Ron, and I mean that loosely."
"You mean you're loose?" calls a heckler from the bar.
"No, I'm tight, but this is for Ron," she says with a glint of evil in her eye. Natalie nods to the pianist, lifts the mike to her lips and sings:
"I got a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head / there lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know / You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed. / You fascinate me so."
All conversation in the room stops. Natalie's voice is warm and rich, like chocolate dripping on a clarinet, but it's her lyrical delivery that takes their collective breath away. She's got a style that's touching and confidential; she's your best friend and she's telling you all her secrets.
"I feel I'm dealin' with a powder keg that's just about to...blow."
"Hey Miss. Hey...you!" A pearl-draped woman waves her bar tab and a gold American Express card at Natalie. "Can you take this?"
With perfect equanimity Natalie says into the microphone, "We don't take plastic, honey. Get up and pay it at the bar."
"You fascinate me so...."
No one knows better than Natalie Douglas about the frustrations of showcasing herself in such a room. But the rewards make it all worthwhile.
"Every once in a while," says Douglas, "I have moments when I really feel myself revealing as much of my humanity as I can, and then getting that back from the audience. This is why I do what I do. The performance is so soul-to-soul."
Unlike the reverential atmosphere of a concert hall or the be-bop-a-roonie histrionics of a jazz bôite, there's almost no psychological distance between entertainer and audience in a cabaret. The intimate nature of cabaret performance creates a space where disconnected New Yorkers can come together to feel a little bit more human. Despite what the song says, life isn't a cabaret. To those of us bitten by the nightclub bug, though, cabaret is a lot like life.
"What makes cabaret interesting is that the audience is part of the show," says Ann Hampton Callaway, a Chicago-born singer-pianist currently at the pinnacle of New York cabaret stardom. "It's so exciting because you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes the waiters will go by at the most inopportune moments or the blender is going or someone's having a fight. It's part of the story of what's going on in that moment, and you can't get that on television or in films."
"For me, cabaret has been incredible," says Natalie Douglas. "But unless you're one of the people at the top, it is not a money-making proposition."
Douglas may soon be joining Ann Hampton Callaway at the top and in the money. A two-time winner of Manhattan cabaret's prestigious MAC Awards, Douglas has recently released her first CD and packed the house at the chic FireBird on West 46th Street. Callaway, a stunning six-foot-tall brunette with a silky, three-octave voice also has a new CD out. Currently starring in the musical Swing at the St. James Theatre, she has made the short leap from cabaret to Broadway.
Like most of New York's cabaret entertainers, the genre itself was born somewhere else. The first cabaret, the Chat Noir, opened in Paris in 1881. It was originally intended to be a private club for the outspoken artists, poets and composers who frequented the slums of Montmartre. Young talent (composer Eric Satie, for example) performed there for such regulars as Guy de Maupassant, Claude Debussy and the Prince of Wales. One night the owner decided to serve drinks -- and voila! Cabaret.
Around the turn of the century, the young artists and intellectuals of Berlin took the cabaret concept and indelibly made it their own. Responding to generations of artistic, religious and political repression, the Germans developed that steamy, scathing style of club performance we now pay homage to in the Broadway musical, Cabaret.
On this side of the Atlantic, Prohibition was the force that forever linked the nightlife of Manhattan to cabaret. The law forbidding alcohol sales all but devastated New York's farnous cafes and restaurants, leaving chefs at Delmonico's, Maxim's and Bustanoby's little choice but to ply their trade in speakeasies. To circumvent Prohibition regulations, these new drinking and dining establishments issued membership cards and called themselves "nightclubs."
Club owners also tried to make nightclubs ap-pear more legitimate by hiring performers. Helen Morgan became the first star of this new world of Manhattan cabaret. Morgan, a former Montreal beauty queen, was a glamorous torch singer who lived an unhappy life and drank a lot. According to legend, Miss Morgan was so inebriated one evening that a nightclub patron, author Ring Lard-ner, lifted Morgan up onto the piano to keep her from falling over. There she sat atop the grand piano, pouring the pain of her misfortunes into her singing - and in the process created the en during image of the New York cabaret singer.
Today there are many places to hear live music in Manhattan, from high-toned Carnegie Hall to jazz clubs such as the Blue Note and Birdland, to alternative spaces such as the Knitting Factory. But the thing that sets a New York cabaret performance apart from other music recitals is the attention the artist gives to words. "In cabaret, the concentration is on the lyrics," says cabaret main stay Blossom Dearie. "With jazz, it's mostly about the music, but a cabaret audience doesn't really care much about the rhythmic structure of a song. When you go to a cabaret performance, it's definitely for the lyrics."
In New York City, cabarets and piano bars go hand in hand, often sharing the same space, with a rollicking piano bar in the front of the house and a sequestered cabaret space in the back. In both rooms, the entertainer's approach to the material is essentially the same and it's not unusual to see an up-and-coming performer appear in a piano bar one night and a cabaret the next. Nevertheless, there are differences between the two concepts. In a cabaret you see one performer in a show that lasts about an hour. There's a cover charge, a two-drink minimum and a no-talking policy. When the show's over, you leave. The atmosphere at a piano bar is more relaxed. Here customers arrive when they feel like it, drink, talk, hear some great performances, sing along if they want to, and stay until the wee hours. A piano bar is cabaret lite.
Nevertheless, don't confuse the piano in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel with a piano bar. The elegant nightspot at the Plaza is merely a bar with a piano -- definitely a cabaret-free atmoshere. If you want to see what top-of-the-line Manhattan cabaret is all about, you have to go to that other famous Oak Room a few blocks south -- the Oak Room at the Algonquin.
On West 44th Street, the stately old Algonquin Hotel, made famous by Dorothy Parker and her wise-cracking circle of literary pals, is home to an intimate space New York Magazine calls "New York's best cabaret venue." The Algonquin's dark, oak-panelled room ringed with oxblood leather banquettes features only the A-list of the cabaret world and has served as a launching pad for such stellar talents as Andrea Marcovicci, Harry Connick, Jr. and Michael Feinstein.
The recent closing of the opulent Rainbow and Stars at Rockefeller Center spurred Algonquin alumnus Michael Feinstein into opening up his own glamorous nightclub, Feinstein's At The Regency. With 150 tables attended by a staff of 30 waiters, this new cabaret space located in the posh Regency Hotel on Park Avenue is one of the largest in town. So far, Feinstein and Rosemary Clooney have headlined the bill, with more big names to follow Feinstein's is expensive but it preserves the sparkle and sophistication of the New York cabaret tradition, so it's welcome.
For sheer elegance, Feinstein's will have a tough time beating the Café Carlyle. Tucked into the fashionable Hotel Carlyle on Madison Avenue and 76th Street, this elegantly appointed cabaret is enveloped in sprightly, music-themed wall murals by French painter Marcel Vertes. Bobby Short and Barbara Cook regularly hold court here and occasionally the older society crowd gets treated to tigress Eartha Kitt purring and undulating in front of all that French art.
Not all cabaret legends play the toniest rooms, however. Blossom Deane, the eternal pixie, packs them in during her extended runs in the Skylight Room of Danny's Grand Sea Palace on West 46th Street. Danny's is known more for its taste in booking talent than for its attention to decor or service, but an hour spent listening to Miss Dearie sing her sophisticated tales of love and life in her little girl's voice is worth any amount of discomfort.
After worshipping at Blossom's feet, it's imperative that you nip directly across the street to catch the next generation of cabaret stars at one of New York's best piano bars, Don't Tell Mama.
Every night at Don't Tell Mama feels like New Year's Eve. Nathan Lane and Dawson's Creek creator, Kevin Williamson, are regulars here, as is Rosie O'Donnell who drops by to join in the singing and to pull talent for her TV show. At Don't Tell Mama, the madcap George Sanders (who doubles as your cocktail waiter) is the reigning King of Fools. George's signature piece is a tour-de-farce version of "I Love Paris," complete with rubber poulet, rubber poisson and a brief trip down Rue Paul, Rue MacClanahan, and Rue La-Lenska. Then, just when you think you've got him pegged as simply a comic, he turns around and delivers a drop-dead gorgeous version of "My Foolish Heart" better than any recording you'll hear.
When the bartender, Jenifer Kruskamp, gets called to the front to sing a couple of songs, she knocks the crowd flat with a powerhouse voice reminiscent of Streisand and Celine. (And she's the bartender!) Even doorman Shawn Curran gets into the act, joining George in a number called "Sneaky Snake" featuring a large green snake puppet appearing out of Shawn's trousers. Most evenings, the merriment at Don't Tell Mama goes until 2 a.m., but on Fridays and Saturdays the party continues until four in the morning.
Whether shabby or soignee, madcap or sedate, the sexy, sophisticated feeling you get in New York's cabarets and piano bars makes you thankful you live here -- or downright jealous you don't.
CLICK:
Cabaret.org: Cabaret news and information
Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs
Cabaret Hotline Online
Natalie Douglas
Ann Hampton Callaway
Blossom Dearie
Danny's Skylight Room
Don't Tell Mama