Legendary Hendricks caps evening of swinging singing

A living legend took the stage at The Smith Center on Thursday night, accompanied by two groups with several Grammy Awards between them who owe their many years of success to him. He is Jon Hendricks.

If you aren't old enough to remember, Hendricks took the jazz world by storm back in 1957 with a group called Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

It wasn't a jazz band, but a vocal trio who used their voices to duplicate the arrangements of the big bands of the day - Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and the like - but with a very different twist: They added words to the mostly instrumental tunes.

Most of those lyrics came from the facile mind of Jon Hendricks.

Not only were the words an interesting twist, but Dave Lambert's arrangements were so tight, so swinging, the group became a sensation.

Their style, called "vocalese," spawned a number of similar groups. The most successful of these, no doubt, is The Manhattan Transfer, now celebrating its 25th year. Another such group, though somewhat lesser known, is New York Voices, now in its 20th year. Both were on stage Thursday night, performing individually and together.

Manhattan Transfer led off the evening with "Route 66" followed by "A Study in Brown," a Basie tune that he never recorded. The two classics set the tone for a show both entertaining and musically rewarding.

Perhaps the most swinging tune of the set was Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder," which gave pianist and music director Yaron Gershevsky and the other members of the excellent accompanying trio plenty of room to demonstrate their considerable talents, both technically and creatively.

This is not music for a sing-along. Shower singers who attempt to replicate these lyrics at these tempos will very quickly find their tongues firmly tangled.

Indeed, the lyrics fly past at such a pace that it's seldom possible to grasp the meaning of what is being said. However, that may not be the point. The listener should be able to pick out key words and phrases and occasionally outrageous rhymes and conclude this is not for comprehension, it's for fun.

Manhattan Transfer's founder, Tim Hauser, introduced the second quartet, New York Voices. The group is patterned after Transfer but is a bit more relaxed in much of its repertoire. It captured the audience immediately with a version of the Goodman classic "Sing, Sing, Sing" and followed with Walter Donaldson's torch song "Love Me or Leave Me."

After a brief intermission both quartets joined forces on a rollicking version of Basie's "Tickle Toe."

Then the guy everyone had turned out to see, Jon Hendricks, came on stage. He chatted, he sang scat, he became part of the two groups, but mostly, he recalled the glory days of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. He inspired chuckles with "Gimme That Wine" and awe with the breakneck tempos of the Ellington band's "Cotton Tail" and the closer, "Birdland."

But perhaps most remarkable of all is the fact that he's still performing, teaching, writing and traveling the world at age 91. What a remarkable legacy.