JAZZ REVIEW : DOLLY DAWN AT VINE ST. BAR & GRILL

The Vine St. Bar & Grill has expanded its policy to include music at the cocktail hour, provided by Dolly Dawn.

Dolly who?

Granted the name will be unfamiliar to anyone who neither lived in New York during the Swing Era nor listened to the radio remotes by George Hall and his orchestra, with vocals by the same Dolly Dawn. She also recorded under the billing Dolly Dawn and her Dawn Patrol.

Except that Dawn’s career began almost a decade earlier, it has paralleled that of Rosemary Clooney, in the sense that Dawn started as a dance-band vocalist, stepped out as a pop singer, disappeared for a long while, then returned in a new, musically improved model with a distinct hint of jazz in her performance and accompaniment.

Dawn, who appears in the room Tuesdays through Saturdays from 6 to 7:30 p.m., draws almost exclusively on popular hits and show tunes of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Like Clooney, she stays in close touch with the melody, but her affecting timbre and easy phrasing, with the help of sympathetic accompaniment by her pianist, Don Beamsley, may remind you that ad-libbing and scatting are not necessary to establish a gentle jazz mood.

She negotiates the rangy “Memories of You,” on which most singers tend to cheat, with no trouble at all. Her only problem, in fact, is that she sets up each tune with a sometimes overlong announcement addressed to an audience of talking heads. When she sings, the noise usually dies down somewhat. A table (or a seat by the bar) near the bandstand is recommended to those who care to investigate the Dawn of a new era. Her engagement continues indefinitely.