I've got a bootleg recording of a Dean Martin show at the Sands in Las Vegas. It's not the show itself that's interesting -- he'd been doing virtually the same song selection, comedy bits and boozy jokes for a couple of years, and would continue to do them for a few more. It's the date of the show that fascinates me. It took place on Friday night, February 7, 1964, the day the Beatles landed in New York for the first time, and the day Dino and his swingin' cronies went from being at the top of the entertainment heap to yesterday's news. I've always wondered if the audience at the show that night, or the star himself, realized the sea change that was taking place at that very moment.
9/9/09 found us awash in the latest wave of Beatlemania, with the release of the Beatles: Rock Band game and the Fab Four's remastered CDs making them headline news one more time. And it also saw Jack Jones, a member of the pre-Beatles old guard, opening his annual run of shows at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Both the Beatles and Jones are "old guard" now, of course, but the generational differences are still striking. There were no T-shirts or graying ponytails to be seen in the intimate, posh setting of the Oak Room, and the mood was sedate and elegant, not rockin'; a couple of the more elderly patrons could be caught catching a quick bit of shut-eye during the set.
Jack Jones is closer in age to the Beatles than to Sinatra -- in fact, he's only two years older than Ringo Starr -- and he was one of the last of the Sinatra-styled crooners to hit big before the Beatles permanently altered the pop scene. His biggest hit, "Wives And Lovers," was in the Top 20 when "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was released, and throughout the '60s, when non-rock pop music could still coexist commercially with the newer stuff, he consistently made the upper reaches of the charts with both singles and albums.
But by the '70s, it was clear that he was on the wrong side of the pop culture divide. For a while, he tried getting down with the groovy sounds the kids were digging -- a live album from 1970 features him gamely going at tunes like "Get Together" and "Spinning Wheel" -- and for a long while, his records were bogged down with bland middle-of-the-road pop that didn't entice older listeners or win over younger fans. Apart from a fluke hit with the disco-ish theme from The Love Boat, his career as a relevant pop artist was over.
In the '90s, Jones finally embraced his younger-elder statesman status, turning, for the most part (although not completely), away from Sting and Steve Perry back to Gershwin, Cy Coleman and the like. His latest stint at the Oak Room finds him paying tribute to the work of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, adult-pop songwriters who came of age in the rock era and were embraced, for better ("What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life") or worse ("The Way We Were"), by many old-guard singers during their heyday in the '70s and '80s. Jones introduced the set thusly: "You know the story. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl. And tonight, the role of the boy will be played by Jack Jones."
Looking natty, with a full head of brilliant white hair, Jones performed a set heavy on the Bergmans' sentimental slower fare.
Sweet Gingerbread Man
I Will Say Goodbye
Windmills Of Your Mind
The Way We Were/How Do You Keep The Music Playing
Nice N' Easy
I Am A Singer
That Face
It Might Be You
Follow Tony Sachs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RetroManNYC
