JAZZ REVIEW : Warm-Up Set by Bennett, Lowe Quintet at Vine St.

The performance Sunday evening at the Vine St. Bar & Grill by the Mundell Lowe Quintet and Betty Bennett was, in effect, a rehearsal for an album they were scheduled to record Monday and today.

As rehearsals go, it went reasonably well. Lowe, a long-respected guitarist whose every solo is a model of swinging good taste, played two quartet numbers, “Seven Steps to Heaven” and an unannounced ballad, before introducing Bob Cooper, whose tenor saxophone is too often confined to section work in local big bands.

Cooper stretched out buoyantly on “Stella by Starlight” and “Limehouse Blues,” then stayed around for most of the vocal numbers that followed.

Betty Bennett, who started as a band vocalist before developing into a superior cabaret singer during her days as Mrs. Andre Previn, has emerged from retirement for occasional jobs since her marriage to Mundell Lowe. Though clearly nervous, she did not have to tell her listeners that she had laryngitis; this inevitably led them to look for minor flaws that might otherwise have gone unobserved.

Her charm, poise and musicianly style generally made up for the lapses. Bennett leans to arcane songs such as Blossom Dearie’s “Dusty Springfield,” an odd tribute by one singer to another, and the exquisite “Some Other Spring,” one of the most memorable tunes Billie Holiday ever introduced.

Less admirable were “Wonder Why,” on which she seemed to miss a cue, and “Humpty Dumpty Heart,” which she described as an obscure Burke & Van Heusen song. The obscurity is understandable, since Johnny Burke’s 50-year lyric is as inane as the title.

Bennett wound up the set in fine style--leaving room for solos by Lowe, Cooper and the admirable pianist George Cables--on “I Thought About You.” With the opportunities offered in the studio for retakes, the album should be representative of Bennett at her best.