Daryl Sherman at The Crazy Coqs
A cabaret of songs by Duke Ellington, Vernon Duke, Sammy Cahn, Carroll Coates, Henri Woode, Bill Byrd, Teddy McRae, Daryl Sherman, Henry Mancini, Paul Francis Webster, Eric Maschwitz, George Posford, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Blossom Dearie, Mike Stoller, Jerry Lieber, Irene Higginbotham, Manning Sherwin, and Billy Reid
Daryl Sherman (voice & piano) with Andrew Cleyndert (bass)
Reviewed by: Tom Vallance
Reviewed: 1 July, 2014
Venue: The Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zédel, Piccadilly Circus, London
A warm welcome to Daryl Sherman, one of the era’s finest jazz performers, who has appeared at several London venues, including Pizza on the Park and Ronnie Scott’s, and is now making her debut at The Crazy Coqs. Sherman says her programme was originally to be a salute to London and New York, but she has recently enjoyed a highly successful season in Tokyo – wait till you hear her Japanese version of ‘That old black magic’! She tells of the shopping venue, The Hundred Yen Store, from whose doors she heard the heavy pumping of the orchestral introduction for Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber’s ‘Love potion number 9’, a hit for The Searchers though introduced in 1959 by The Clovers whose recording was then used in the 1973 film American Graffiti.
Most of Sherman’s material comes from further back (and one has no argument with that), though she includes ‘Lovers in New York’, a little-known and lilting setting by Paul Francis Webster of Henry Mancini’s buoyant music for the sequence in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) when Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard spend a day doing things in Manhattan that they have never done before. Other numbers with which Sherman evokes New York include the jazz standard ‘Broadway’ and also ‘Penthouse Serenade’ together with a number by Sherman herself, ‘Welcome to Manhattan’.
A skilled and imaginative pianist as well as a distinctive vocalist, Sherman opens her act with ‘Love you madly’ by Duke Ellington, whose work she favours. Another rarity, Vernon Duke and Sammy Cahn’s ‘London in July’, is coupled with ‘London by night’ by Carroll Coates. Tributes to London invariably include the romantic perennial, ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’, here lovingly interpreted. Less well known is the rapturously nostalgic ballad, ‘Room 504’. A wartime hit, and a highlight for Sherman, it was recorded by Binnie Hale and Vera Lynn among others, and featured in a memorable episode of Coronation Street when Hilda Ogden went on a second honeymoon and was taken aback (and overjoyed) when the hotel clerk gave her the key for room 504!
Throughout, Sherman captivates with her piano-playing and vocals, and perhaps the greatest pleasure comes with Ellington’s ‘I’m checkin’ out, Goom Bye’, when we can delight in the joyous rapport between Sherman and Andrew Cleyndert, as they swing the night away.
- Daryl Sherman is at The Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, Piccadilly Circus, London W1 until Saturday 5 July 2014
- Bookings 020 7734 4888
- www.crazycoqs.com