He's Still Playing Misty

By BRUCE HANDY

Singers recording albums of standards face a dilemma not unlike actors contemplating Hamlet: how to launch songs with opening lines nearly as familiar--and potentially as rote--as "To be or not to be" and still sound fresh and spontaneous and not at all like a stale peanut-scented night at the airport Sheraton's cocktail lounge. In this regard, Jeffery Smith, an American expatriate living in Paris, has set himself a real challenge on his first American CD. He has sequenced the songs Lush Life ("I used to visit all the very gay places"), Misty ("Look at me/ I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree") and Love for Sale ("Love for sale/ Advertising young love for sale") back to back to back--all that's missing is "Isn't it rich?/ Are we a pair?" But thanks to his own smart arrangements, a supple baritone and a natural way with a lyric, Smith runs these gauntlets admirably. On Misty his crooning, wordless intro finally touches down on the verse like a glider wafting back to earth--he's landed before we even know it, and that's only the start of the ride.

Full of such grace notes, A Little Sweeter (Verve) is nevertheless a curious album, and not just because it opens with an ambitious but maudlin version of Eleanor Rigby (is there such a thing as a non-maudlin Eleanor Rigby? Could one even be possible given the known laws of art?). Recorded with the pianist Kenny Barron and his regular rhythm section (Ray Drummond on bass and Ben Riley on drums), this is such a simple, straight-ahead shot of vocal jazz that it could have been made 40 years ago, and yet it couldn't sound newer. This may be the most vital album you'll hear this year, coursing with a palpable sense of musicians actually listening to one another--a cornerstone of great jazz, of course, but one that must be surprisingly hard to capture on tape given its rarity on record. As for the leader, his is a strong though uneccentric personality. As a baritone, Smith has drawn obvious comparisons to Billy Eckstine and Johnny Hartman. But whereas those singers can sometimes sound mesmerized by the sheer resonance of their own vocal cords, Smith has a more nimble sense of phrasing--he's rich yet light, the flourless chocolate cake of a Weight Watcher's dream. On the Art Blakey tune Moanin' he lets loose with a paradoxically graceful abandon that would make a silky shouter like Joe Williams proud.

A native New Yorker, Smith, 43, has lived in Paris since 1991. He had kicked around the American entertainment industry as both a singer and an actor, playing nightclubs and doing bit parts in '80s brat-pack movies, but like too many jazz musicians before him, he has found a more receptive audience in Europe, where he has starred in musicals and performed regularly with French pianist Claude Bolling's big band. Smith describes being hounded for autographs by fans as young as 12 who can rattle off jazz history, whereas "kids back home don't even know who Billie Holiday is." Still, he hopes to move back to the States, describing the European scene as ultimately limiting. "Jazz belongs to Americans," he says. "You want a real croissant, you go to Paris, but you want a real pizza, you go to New York, you go to Chicago." Sticklers and Neapolitans might take issue with his analogy, but grant Smith--a real deal himself--a pass.

--By Bruce Handy