Love Letters, Rondi Charleston (LML): The idea of using an album to trace a love affair's arc isn't new. Judy Garland may have tried it first 40 years back. But Rondi Charleston makes the approach fresh and persuasive on the songs she's cannily selected for this chronicle. It starts with the blush of new love and goes through enchantment, disillusionment, and romance's rekindling. On the quieter tunes, and they're in the majority, she's all satin and sentiment. Of course, she includes "Love Letters" (Edward Heyman-Victor Young), but she also does impeccable versions of the deservedly famous "I've Got You Under My Skin" (Cole Porter) and "P. S. I Love You" (Johnny Mercer-Gordon Jenkins), along with much less well-known beauties as Bart Howard's "My Love is a Wanderer," "Where Do I Go From Here?" (Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock, cut from "Fiorello!"), and the exquisite Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt "The Room is Filled with You" (from "Colette Collage"). The last-named has a cello solo arranged by Christopher Marlowe, whose arrangements infuse the package like exotic perfume. The only misstep is "Please Mr. Postman." It's supposed to represent joy, but is merely, and uncharacteristically, raucous.
Songs for My Father, Heather Mac Rae (Harbinger): Family memoirs are usually found between hard covers, but Heather Mac Rae's are different. She first told the story of herself and her dad, the Warner Brothers star Gordon MacRae, as a cabaret piece. Now she's recorded it, and only the hard-hearted will go dry-eyed through the reminiscence. Mac Rae is touched not only by her recollections, but also by the music her father sang in a series of '50s musicals, most notably the film versions of the Oscar Hammerstein II-Richard Rodgers classics, "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel." Her candor throughout is impressive, as is her boldness. Get this: she sings "Soliloquy," which may never have been recorded by a woman, and gives it startling new depth. Confiding that her relationship with the old man was complicated, she sings "What's the Use of Wond'rin' " and suddenly it's every child's acceptance of a parent's flawed humanity. Mark Nadler at the piano again demonstrates he's as talented an accompanist as spotlight filler. Recorded before a live audience during the final days of Erv Raible's still-lamented Eighty Eight's.
Sammy Cahn All the Way, Jeff Harnar (Jerome): Brought up by parents who played the music they loved around the house all the time, Jeff Harnar evidently ingested the songs of the '40s and '50s with his pabulum. The era's airwaves were rife with Sammy Cahn's sometimes heartfelt, sometimes offhand, always intelligent lyrics. Frank Sinatra and Doris Day are only two chart-toppers whose styles were greatly influenced by Cahn's genius. Harnar, never making a false vocal move, gives himself a workout on the Oscar-winning "All the Way," "Be My Love," and "My Kind of Town" without once thinking to imitate the original interpreters. Even though he's a Sinatra-esque crooner, he never tosses off a song as Ole Blue Eyes did, but remains sleeker and silkier. The find here is the infrequently sung "Blame My Absent-minded Heart " (to Jule Styne's music). And his medley of "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week," "I'll Walk Alone," "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," and "It's Been a Long, Long Time" is a reminder of how much Cahn and Styne contributed to the '40s war effort. The absolutely right arrangements are by longtime Harnar collaborator Alex Rybeck.
You'd Be Paradise, Mary Foster Conklin (Mock Turtle): Famous in Manhattan's music community for walking the thin line between cabaret and jazz like a confident tightrope walker, Mary Foster Conklin proves that respecting songs, no matter how they're categorized, only enhances a career. There's no questioning the debt she owes her jazz forebears, not when she rips into the jittery Stan Getz-King Pleasure "Don't Get Scared" like a one-woman Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Including four songs Bob Dorough wrote by himself or with others also underscores the profitable evenings she spends in jazz rooms. But she also does Cole Porter proud with a coolly illicit "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," and a sensually homey "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" (from whose lyric she derives the CD's title). She also does well with Tom Waits' moody "Broken Bicycles," which is having something of a vogue currently. There's an astringency to Conklin's mezzo that usually serves her well, but there are occasional instances when it leads to a lack of resonance that hasn't marked her previous work. With pianist Bill Mays, guitarist Frank Vignola, bassist Jon Burr, and drummer Joe Ascione.
When the Sun Comes Out, Karen Mason (Jerome): Often in clubs and on CDs, there are two Karen Masons, who occasionally meet in the middle. There's singing-actress Karen Mason, for whom lyrics have endlessly reverberating meanings, and there's steely-voiced Karen Mason, for whom words are merely an occasion to show off mastery of vocal dynamism. More often than not on this newest recording, she's the thinking Karen Mason. Her rendition of "It Had to Be You" (Gus Kahn-Isham Jones) ranks with the best cuts she's ever offered fans, and she does no less with "Taking a Chance on Love" (John Latouche-Ted Fetter-Vernon Duke, from "Cabin in the Sky"). She feels to her toes both "We Never Ran Out of Love (We Just Ran Out of Time)" and "Shoot for the Moon," both by producer-hubby Paul Rolnick. One time she really goes off the deep end is in her medley of "Stormy Weather" and the CD title tune, the pair of them by the fabulous Ted Koehler-Harold Arlen team. From "Mamma Mia!," in which she's currently funny as hell, she appropriates the Benny Andersson-Bjorn Ulvaeus "I Have a Dream."
The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin (Knopf, $65): "I asked a singer the other day/Who works in a cabaret/If he would sing my song." The words are Irving Berlin's and from a 1916 song called "Songwriter's Speech" written for a Friars Club dinner. They're included in this latest of Robert Kimball's invaluable collections. When singers talk about The Great American Songbook, they could be referring to painstakingly put together volumes like this one. It's generally conceded that one thing cabaret accomplishes is illustrating the undying relevance of 20th-century standards to contemporary entertainment. When Berlin wrote the above message, he had just reached the point where he no longer needed to ask singers to do his songs; they were beginning to crowd around. Were he alive (he died in 1989 at 101), he probably still wouldn't need to plug his 1,200 (!!!) songs, but, nevertheless, any cabaret performer devoted to evergreens will discover less frequently sung Berlin tunes here. One find is Berlin's parody of Cole Porter's "You're the Top." The entire enterprise is astonishing.