A style all her own

Alex Coolman

When Leslie Uggams was an 8-year-old girl shuffling through a tap routine

at The Apollo Theater in Harlem, her fellow performers were like family

to her.

They were older musicians, professionals who taught Uggams a great deal

about show biz. They also happened to be some of the biggest artists in

the industry: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Louis Armstrong.

Uggams, who performs Thursday through Nov. 14 to open the Orange County

Performing Arts Center’s Cabaret Club Series, says she was unaware that

she was associating with such musical heavyweights; she was too busy

worrying about the famously irascible Apollo crowd.

“My parents knew who they were, but I didn’t have a clue,” Uggams said.

If Uggams failed to realize she was rubbing elbows with celebrities, she

knew she was in the company of consummate professionals, and she payed

close attention to the lessons they taught on the stage.

“I watched from the wings,” Uggams said. “I watched every show. You

absorb all of that when you watch somebody.”

Acts at the the Apollo had to put on four shows a day, with an extra show

Sunday. If the quality of performances slipped, the audience erupted in

catcalls.

“They took no prisoners. You had to do your thing, otherwise you got

booed off the stage,” Uggams recalled.

But the grueling pace of work at the Apollo had its advantages. It forced

the performers to learn to pace themselves, Uggams said, and it forced

them to develop a quality that is increasingly scarce in today’s singers:

a distinct voice.

“Nowadays, everybody’s trying to sound like somebody else,” Uggams said.

“But there was only one Dionne Warwick, one Diana Ross, one Aretha

Franklin.”

Uggams’ current show pays tribute to her musical roots, revisiting works

like “A Tisket A Tasket” -- a nod to Fitzgerald, who recorded a famous

version of the tune -- and “Sunny Side of the Street,” a song that

immediately evokes Armstrong.

“I just want [the audience] to know that I have this background, so I

talk about it a musical kind of way,” Uggams said.

Uggams’ delivery is typically spirited; critics rarely fail to comment on

the energy and professionalism she brings to her crooning. Its a sound

and an image that reflects her long years of musical education.

In Uggams’ view, this education is something the music business today

fails to give young artists. Though it’s less brutal than it was in the

heyday of the Apollo, it’s also less nurturing to the voices and

personalities of performers.

“A lot of people coming up, they get a hit record and they’re just thrown

right out there,” Uggams said. “They don’t have a chance to go someplace

[like the Apollo.]”

For that matter, even performers like Uggams, who did have the good

fortune to grow up in a musically rich environment, have to struggle to

meet the demands of today’s lean-and-mean entertainment business.

“Very few clubs exist,” compared to the early days, Uggams said. “There’s

very few rooms left here in New York except for the Carlyle and the

Algonquin.”

A recent trip to Las Vegas, once a sort of smokey paradise for a cabaret

musician, proved particularly illuminating for Uggams.

“Look at what Vegas is like now. It’s like a big DisneyWorld,” she said.

Children scamper across the floor of hotels that were once wonderfully

seedy, and clubs that used to feature high-class entertainment at low

prices now seem more concerned with extorting cover charges from patrons

than with the quality of the performers on stage.

“Everything has to make money,” Uggams said.

The trade-off, of course, is that the audiences who come to Uggams’ shows

tend to be more sophisticated than they once were. “They’re the ones who

can afford to pay that kind of money,” Uggams snapped.

It’s a far cry from the early days at the Apollo, but Uggams’ musical

family taught her at an early age the importance of perseverance.

“Who knows what you’ll be doing next? But as long as you can, you stay in

the game,” she said.

WHAT: Leslie Uggams

WHERE: Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall, 600 Town

Center Drive, Costa Mesa

WHEN: Thursday through Nov. 14. Show times are today through Saturday at

7:30 p.m., Saturday at 9:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.

HOW MUCH: $42

PHONE: (714) 740-7878