But what does Rex reallllly think?

 

 

Steve Tyrell grunts and shouts at the Carlyle. (Photo by Stephen Sorokoff)

 

Con Artist: Steve Tyrrell's Rat Pack Smarm is a Natural Emetic

Music Lovers be Warned
 

by Rex Reed
 

New York Observer

December 11, 2013

Well, consider the market. Who needs singing when grunting and shouting will do just as well for an undiscerning crowd, bused in from expensive rest homes, who don’t know the difference. Mr. Tyrell, a jolly, clueless performer who resembles Forrest Tucker on F Troop, is a proud member of the finger-snapping ring-a-ding-ding school of ossified Rat Packers who think the Great American Songbook ended with “Come Fly With Me.” The old tunes are the only ones he’s comfortable with, which is fine with me, if only he could sing them. Jerome Kern did not write like George Gershwin, but Mr. Tyrell’s intonation is so drab and his phrasing so emotionless that you can’t tell the difference between the chunky tempo of “The Way You Look Tonight” and the thudding, ill-advised screaming on “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” An evening of all that groaning and yelling is like a root canal before the Novocain sets in.

Native Texan Tyrell’s current six-week engagement is called “Wordsmiths: Lyricists of the Great American Song,” which must be a printing error since what he knows about interpreting the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein, Yip Harburg, Dorothy Fields, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and Cole Porter, among others, could pass unnoticed through the eye of a needle. Musically, I’ve heard better phrasing from goatherds calling their flocks by moonlight. I shudder to think what tough, sophisticated Cole Porter would say if he came off sounding like Carole King. Mr. Tyrell is so square that he refuses to sing the word “cocaine.” The result is the first time I’ve ever heard “I Get a Kick Out of You” with a jolt of Valium. Tethered to the Rat Pack prototype, he never bothers to break out of the old mold long enough to get under the skin of the song itself. Of course, with due respect, he knows his limitations. God forbid what might happen if Mr. Tyrell ever tackles anything by Stephen Sondheim.
 
Worse still, the patter between cookie-cutter arrangements, about his grandchildren and football teams, his early employment in the days of Tin Pan Alley and his hero worship of Yogi Berra, sounds like it was written by Lum and Abner. The stories are so old they’re growing hair on their palms, and sometimes they’re not even accurate. The one about how Yogi Berra answered the question “Where do you want to be buried?” with “Surprise me!” is a Bob Hope line that Rosemary Clooney used to tell in her own nightclub act. Mr. Tyrell tells it again, and his fans roar like they’re hearing it for the first time, unaware that he’s about as hip as a petrified hamster. He phrases with his fingers. Old ladies who should be home baking oatmeal cookies actually whistle their approval like Sinatra groupies did under mob rule in Vegas. What’s the lure to being joined at the hip replacement with the Rat Pack? Mr. Tyrell emulates the old Vegas icons without shedding any light on how or why they got that way. Today, all of those vaunted reputations and massive egos seem as dated and irrelevant as linoleum. He has personal charm and admirable energy, but even with heavyweight musicians like bassist David Finck, drummer Kevin Winard, Bob Mann on guitar and trumpeter Bijon Watson, he couldn’t swing with a gun pointed at his head.

He’ll be in residence through Dec. 31, but what a depressing way to start the New Year. I hate to sound merciless, but music lovers should be warned. A night with this guy is like a week in Newark without a telephone.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HOAGY

Baltimore Oriole Here to help celebrate Hoagy's birthday (November 22, 1899 - December 27, 1981) is his son Randy from his one and only album, Carmichael Sings Carmichael

Rockin' Chair And here is the man himself with his very last recording (1981).

We Breathed the Same Air

Some people I’ve known, pressed flesh with, bumped into and knocked down, ridden in the elevator with, or. . . ?

Nico, Dusty Springfield, John F. Kennedy, Lotte Lenya, Sir Ian McKellen, Sammy Davis. Ricardo Montalban, Bette Midler, Priscilla Presley, Norman Rockwell, Salvador Dali, Frank Zappa, Brian Wilson, Chris Connor, Miles Davis, Michel Legrand, Cloris Leachman, Cybil Shepperd, Gore Vidal, Djuna Barnes, Tim Hardin, Janis Joplin, Barbara Parkins, John Philip Law, Charles Manson, Nanette Fabray, Charles Mingus, Danny Proper, Allen Ginsburg, Timothy Leary, Michael Feinstein, Elizabeth Montgomery, Anita O'Day, Santa Claus, Billy Wilder, Mieko Hirota, Grady Sutton, Charles Lane, Myrna Loy, Neal Cassady, Lily Tomlin, Chet Baker, Wavy Gravy, Helen Merrill, Jo Stafford, William Burroughs, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter, Oscar Brown, Jr., Elmer Bernstein, The Nicholas Brothers, Joan Collins, Diahann Carroll, Carl Van Vechten, Fred Katz, Fuzzy Knight, Ruta Lee, Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon, Ruth Brown, William Claxton, Tony Bennett, Anthony Quinn, Betty Carter, Blossom Dearie, Matt Dennis, Mary Ann McCall, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, Piper Laurie, Stan Freberg, Jackie Paris, Charles Laughton, Jacques Demy, Margaret Whiting, John Hammond, Betty Garrett, John Kerr, Peter Bogdanovich, Eve Arden, Sarah Vaughan, Paul Weston, Carol Channing, Cecil Taylor, Page Cavanaugh, Jean Bach, Little Richard, Donald O’Connor, Donyale Luna, Maurice Sendak, Yma Sumac, Maxine Sullivan, Dorothy Lamour, Jackie Cooper, Michael Moore, William Steig, Algier Hiss, James Baldwin, William Saroyan, Diana Sands, Peter Marshall, Fran Allison, Marsha Hunt, Lash Larue, Gene Raeburn, Soupy Sales, Big Jon Arthur, Rex Reed, Polly Bergen, Johnnie Ray, Link Wray, Connie Frances, Christine Jorgenson, James Taylor, Little Jimmy Scott, Sam Fuller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert DeNiro, Herbert Huncke, Tuesday Weld, Barbara Harris, Julia Sweeney, Barbara Stanwyck, Leslie Nielson, Jackie DeShannon, Richard Berry, Margaret Leighton, Joe Franklin. . .

A smattering appear in my memoir Early Plastic.