Some jazz and blues singers project the idea of love as an unfathomable and irresistible force: like gravity, say, or the weather. Ernestine Anderson is much more practical about the whole thing. For her, love might best be described as a negotiation between two interested parties, with good times (and sure, a few bad ones) as part of the deal.
On Tuesday, the eve of Valentine’s Day, Ms. Anderson began an engagement at the Jazz Standard with songs that reflected that clear-eyed view. The most fizzy of the bunch was “I Love Being Here With You,” by Peggy Lee and William Schluger. Appropriately, Ms. Anderson breezed through it, adding light lyrical embellishments. (During a catalog of her beau’s attributes, she got a small chuckle with “Yul Brynner’s hair.”)
But that’s a riff on well-established romance, at least in Ms. Anderson’s telling, and far less interesting than the subject of love’s first bloom. Singing “Wonder Why,” the Sammy Cahn-Nicholas Brodszky tune that opens her most recent album, Ms. Anderson coolly observed that she was “feeling strangely great.” She struck a related chord with Rodgers and Hart’s “This Can’t Be Love,” affirming that her head was not in the skies. One had the sense that long-stem roses wouldn’t make a difference.
Still in strong voice at 78, Ms. Anderson knows how to make stoicism feel expressive. She interpreted another Rodgers and Hart tune, “Falling in Love With Love,” almost in her no-nonsense speaking voice, which could double as the voice of experience. “Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy,” she scoffed, making the line sound like good advice. When she got to the kicker — “But love fell out with me” — she managed it without a shred of self-pity.
Ms. Anderson’s eminently comfortable style had a perfect corollary in the playing of the tenor saxophonist Frank Wess, who is now in his mid-80s. Along with the pianist Lafayette Harris, the bassist Chip Jackson and the drummer Rodney Green, the venerable and courtly Mr. Wess created a musical accompaniment every bit as steady as Ms. Anderson. It was modest and soulful, and it swung, in a laid-back fashion.
The group sounded perfunctory only on themes by Benny Carter and Billy Strayhorn, and even then, Ms. Anderson soldiered on. Her version of Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train” concluded with an “all aboard” conductor’s call, with the last syllable playfully stretching out for eight bars.
For playfulness, though, nothing could top Ms. Anderson’s trademark set closer, a blues by Stix Hooper and Will Jennings called “Never Make Your Move Too Soon.” Over a toe-tapping shuffle, Ms. Anderson spun a tale of good fortune and bad behavior, advancing the story with spoken interludes.
The song was no less riveting for being so clearly shopworn. With her steely yet saucy delivery, Ms. Anderson made it seem fresh. More strikingly, she made it seem real. Among her quotable phrases in the song was this one: “The older you get, the more you know how to spend your time.”
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