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EXPERIENCED
Ron Gill’s "Duke & Strays"
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Audiences for veteran Boston singer Ron Gill know what to expect: a jazz musician with a warm, supple, light baritone and sure rhythmic control, whose literate approach to a song guarantees that you’ll hear every word and that those words will mean something. At Scullers a week ago Wednesday, Gill, with his long-time accompanists the Manny Williams Trio and guitarist John Stein, presented "Duke & Strays," an Ellington-and-Strayhorn program that’s a follow-up to Gill’s 1997 The Songs of Billy Strayhorn (WGBH). It’s not that every lyric set to a Ellington or Strayhorn tune is profound. The set opener, "Duke’s Place," is just a trifling lyric set after the fact to Ellington’s "C Jam Blues," but Gill swung it as the perfect mood setter: "Take your tootsies into Duke’s place/Love that piano sound in Duke’s place!" When he shouted the lyric "Hey waiter!" and pointed into the crowd, he could have been ordering a drink. And he established his authority for the more somber, melancholy, or even bitter songs that followed, with their subtle internal rhymes. In "Something To Live For," he sang, "Someone to make my life gay/As they say it ought to be." In "It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dream," it was "The bubble will break/And then I’ll wake up." The latter also showed how hard Gill and the band could swing at a slow tempo. Those who know Gill as a jazz announcer on WGBH 89.7 FM or as a tireless activist on the jazz scene also know him for his sanguine charm, and his two-hour show was propelled not only by his introductions but by his good-natured squabbling with Stein. But Gill, Stein, Williams, tenor-saxophonist Philippe Crettien, bassist Keala Kaumeheiwa, and drummer Reid Jorgensen weren’t fooling around. In "I Want To Make You Mine," Gill sang, "Let me live for a while/Won’t you give me just a smile," beginning the line as confident come-on and delivering the last word as a poignant whisper.
BY JON GARELICK
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