Pizzarelli was literally born with a song in his heart, the son of one of the genre’s living legends, Bucky Pizzarelli, himself a recent star on the Dakota stage. As Lowell Pickett noted when introducing the band, the two greatest performers on seven-string guitar are both named Pizzarelli. And they share more than their instruments—both generously share the stage with their bandmates, both know how to charm an audience into rapt attention. Bucky is far more low key than his exuberant offspring. If John isn’t singing, he’s talking, telling tales of the songs and songwriters interspersed with a stand-up comedy routine ripe for Vegas. It’s pretty entertaining without the music, but the music is the main event. 

The Great American Songbook is John’s playground, his most recent release, With a Song in My Heart, focusing on Richard Rodgers. He covered some of that territory during Sunday night’s second set (the title tune, “I Have Dreamed,” and “Johnny One Note,” which lends it self readily to Pizzarelli’s hijinks).

From his Sinatra tribute he pulled the beautiful “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” – which it nearly was when the 90-minute set was over. The tune also served as a launching pad for his most hilarious schtick of the night, recounting the serendipitous meeting of songwriter David Mann and Sinatra that made this the title tune for one of The Chairman’s biggest hits in 1955; throughout the tale, Pizzarelli overlaid Manhattan insider taxi chatter. The lyrics alone are delightfully silly on “Rhode Island” (“Pencils come from Pennsylvania....” you get the idea) and John tipped his guitar to the songs of Bobby Troup and Nat King Cole. But the highlight of the evening came last, an encore that grew from “Polk Dots and Moonbeams” into a medley of at least six or seven fully presented love songs—I lost track, but in between “Polka Dots” and “As Time Goes By” we heard “More Than You Know,” “Misty,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” and a couple more—a fifteen minute coda to an evening that warmed the heart and fed the ear.  

I went back for more the next night. The only song John repeated was “Rhode Island.” It was worth repeating.  
 

This review was originally posted on Andrea Canter’s blog at www.jazzink.blogspot.com