At 72, with hair as snowy white as your cleanest linen napkin, Jack Jones is still one of the coolest song stylists in show business.
In the middle of a three-week gig at the chic Oak Room of New York’s Algonquin Hotel, the audience, old enough to have lost their remote controls, joins in.
They treat him like an old pal. They talk back to him, finishing his stanzas. They hum along on petrified musical tree stumps like “Wives and Lovers” and “Lollipops and Roses.”
This is probably as it should be, for the Jones boy calls this part of his “Jack Jones Greatest Hits Tour.” So sophisticated listeners who know how great this guy is will just have to grit their teeth and somehow get through the 18 millionth recap of “The Impossible Dream.”
Do not despair. The talent, jazz time and intonation, and decades of hip, adept experience, are still there.
Mike Renzi, a genius accompanist who has played for Mel Torme, Sylvia Syms, Peggy Lee and Lena Horne (to name a few who knew greatness when they heard it), brings out the best in Jack.
It’s a shame for him to waste all those sublime chords on tourist-trap tunes like “Dio Como Tiamo.” But when they get serious and out comes a trenchant “What’s New?”; a blues-tinged arrangement of the Johnny Mercer-Jimmie Rowles jazz classic “Baby Don’t You Quit Now”; or the most sensitively phrased “We’ll Be Together Again” I’ve heard since Billie Holiday, then time stands still.
He still phrases conversationally, holding second halves of syllables for underscored emphasis. “Fly Me to the Moon” still sails in from the clouds with casual yet absolute self-assurance. Sometimes, he goes for unnecessary falsetto effects that slide off the Richter scale, but the crowd still roars. When he feels the words and sings the lyrics as if he really means them, something hair-raising happens.
He’s got the same youthful breath control I remember from his unforgettable Live at the Sands album on RCA Victor when he segued from the rapture of “The More I See You” into a throbbing “You Made Me Love You” without missing a beat.
Part swinging technician, part aging troubadour casting his spell on the senior citizens who raised him, everything he does is beautiful, solid and thoughtful.
Like Tony Bennett, Jack Jones is part of a vanishing breed who is still in a class by himself. But if I never suffer through “The Theme From Love Boat” again, it will be too soon.
