"4 Girls 4" Ensemble Balances Nostalgia With Modern Sounds

by Don Heckman, The Los Angeles Times, Oct 11, 1988

Gathering four headline entertainers on the same stage can be a formula for creative chaos. But 4 Girls 4, a concert ensemble that currently includes Margaret Whiting, Helen O'Connell, Kaye Ballard and Kay Starr, has been managing for nearly a decade to produce pleasantly nostalgic musical programs while avoiding (on stage, at least) the hazards of all-star ego trips.

Sunday night's program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center introduced singer-comedienne Kaye Ballard as a replacement for founding member Rose Marie, who has left the quartet due to health considerations. Despite having to read from a lyric page for the quartet's only ensemble number, Ballard filled the comedy slot with style, grace and good humor.

Her unrelentingly contemporary point of view in fact added a jolt of up-to-date spice to a program that might otherwise have become mired in its own reminiscences. Numbers like "My Son, the Stripper" and "Don't Ask a Lady" combined with Ballard's devastatingly pointed impressions (of everyone from Joan Crawford to Nancy Reagan) to give 4 Girls 4 an energy it has not always had in the past.

In contrast, singer Margaret Whiting's set had the cool and detached quality of another day at the office. She sang the obligatory "Moonlight in Vermont" and "That Old Black Magic" with the musically articulate phrasing that always has been her trademark. But she seemed far less involved in the performance than she does in her solo cabaret turns.

Helen O'Connell-the most idiosyncratic performer of the group-once again sang with the quirky accents, sliding pitch and rushed phrases that made her so unique in her salad years with the Jimmy Dorsey Band. The hits-"Amapola," "Green Eyes" and "Tangerine"-were handled nicely in a crowd-pleasing medley. Interestingly, however, O'Connell hit her musical peak with an insightful performance of the far more contemporary "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?"

Kay Starr's set was a reprise of the program she has been using in most of her performances, solo and otherwise, for the last few years. An important figure in the rock-defining music of the '50s, Starr has lost none of the bite in the gospel-tinged, rhythm-and-blues-styled phrasing that characterized her early work.

Her singing on "Side by Side," "Wheel of Fortune" and "Hallelujah, I Love Him So" was-like much of the entire evening with 4 Girls 4-vigorous testimony to the fact that some pop music styles don't just fade away.

The 4 Girls 4 performance will be repeated tonight and Wednesday at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.

"A Big-League Winner for the Betty Clooney Foundation"

by Marylouise Oates, The Los Angeles Times, Apr 11, 1986

First time up at bat, and the Betty Clooney Foundation hit a four-bagger, filling up the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the first Singers' Salute to the Songwriter. Rosemary Clooney emceed, and turned out friends-like Patti Page, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, even Bob and Dolores Hope-to do justice to the six songwriters honored. Even Jose Ferrer did a number from the musical "Little Me," and his and Rosemary's daughter-in-law Debby Boone sang-with her 1-week-old daughter backstage. Betty Clooney, who died of brain injuries, was Rosemary's sister.

Jule Styne took his award with the admonition that he credited to Samuel Goldwyn: "If you want to ad-lib, write it out." His former lyricist partner Sammy Cahn, the winner of four Oscars and one Emmy, announced: "I really am without words," then added "a word is only as great as the note it sits under." Songwriter Cy Coleman said the evening "was a present. Like every record you ever wanted." The audience seemed to agree, with no newly emptied seats after intermission.

Backstage, pandemonium, as photographers and TV cameras jockeyed for shots. "Sing the right words," Barry Manilow, who was thrilled for his first-ever honors as a songwriter, cautioned his friend, Melissa Manchester. She did, and then the balcony had its chance, as screams and yells accompanied Manilow's presentation and performance.

Marilyn and Alan Bergman were saluted in a lengthy and frequently funny telegram from appearance-shy Barbra Streisand, but throughout the evening Monday the purpose of the event was never lost. Chairperson Roz Wyman-who knows that a winning benefit is the bottom line-pointed out from the stage that every performer had donated his or her talents to the evening. (The evening grossed $350,000, with the proceeds going to the Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain Injured.) She was also effusive in her thanks for producer Alvin Sviridoff, who had put together the extraordinary evening. Thanks abounded for Dr. Sherm and Phyllis Holvey, who are the major force in the foundation, which he chairs.

Then Rosemary Clooney took the stage to announce that next year's performance was set for April 6. And that's a mark of success.

POP BENEFIT CONCERT SINGERS SALUTE SIX STAR SONGWRITERS

by A. James Liska, The Los Angeles Times, Apr 9, 1986

In an industry in which honors and awards are handed out like business cards, it was gratifying to see the first Singers' Salute to the Songwriter at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Monday night. The heartfelt salute to six of this country's most-sung songwriters by a parade of America's foremost pop singers was hosted by Rosemary Clooney for the benefit of the Betty Clooney Foundation for the brain injured.

On hand to hear their words and music performed and their individual crafts lauded during the three-hour extravaganza were Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, Cy Coleman, Barry Manilow and Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

The format for the show was simple: Name the songwriter and bring on any of the singing stars that included Beverly D'Angelo, Michael Feinstein, Patti Austin, Maureen McGovern, Debby Boone, Jose Ferrer and Tony Bennett.

Though the highlights were many, some of the brightest moments included Austin's emotive renditions of Styne's "The Party's Over" and the Bergmans' "Summer Me, Winter Me"; Jose Ferrer's splendid reading of Coleman's "A Real Live Girl" in just the right dramatic monotone; Manchester's version of Manilow's "Magic" and the Bergmans' "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"; and Boone's emotional, perfectly intoned "How Could I Ever Say Goodby?"-also penned by the Bergmans.

D'Angelo, a terrifically gifted young songstress, showed great style in her singing of Sammy Cahn's "Teach Me Tonight"; Dolores Hope, introduced by her husband, Bob Hope, offered a sweet "Day by Day," also from the Cahn songbook.

Clooney's several contributions included swinging steadfastly on Styne's "Everything's Comin' Up Roses." Her ballad chops were showcased marvelously on Coleman's "Witchcraft" and Manilow's beautifully penned "I Hate to See October Go."

While Manilow drew the loudest screams from the back of the packed house, his music was given a great disservice by Suzanne Somers' tawdry version of "I Was a Fool to Let You Go." Manilow accepted his award from Dionne Warwick and proceeded to perform a stirring version of "I Made It Through the Night."

Jack Jones' reading of Styne's "People" was effective, but he later stumbled through Cahn's "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)" in 3/4 time. His reading of the Bergmans' "Windmills of Your Mind" was flat and ineffective.

Tony Bennett's heart-wrenching interpretation of "The Music Never Ends" was an appropriate ending to an evening that reveled in the glory of classic pop music.

Kudos are due musical arranger John Oddo and conductor Jack Elliott, who unfailingly led an abbreviated edition of the New American Orchestra.

ROSEMARY CLOONEY'S SURPRISE SUCCESS

by Leonard Feather, The Los Angeles Times, Apr 6, 1986

Walking into the handsome Beverly Hills mansion, you are imbued with a sense of pop music history, and not only because Rosemary Clooney moved in 33 years ago.

George Gershwin lived here. Russ Columbo died here. Columbo (who preceded Bing Crosby as vocalist with the Gus Arnheim orchestra) could have been bigger than Bing, if that gun hadn't gone off accidentally in the den of this house and wiped him out at 26.

In the living room Gershwin sat at the piano in 1937 and composed "A Foggy Day" and his last song, "Love Is Here to Stay." Later, the house was owned by Ginny Simms, one of the great radio and TV singers of the '40s and '50s. During Clooney's residency, Ira Gershwin was her next-door neighbor and good friend until his death in 1983.

The house, in short, has a history as remarkable as that of its present owner. Rosemary Clooney has had an extraordinary life, told in an autobiography ("This for Remembrance") and later made into a TV melodrama. But right now she neither needs nor wants to rely on the old stories about her stormy relationship with Jose Ferrer (two marriages, two divorces), her fight against pill addiction, nervous breakdown and all the other checkout-counter-magazine gossip. Clooney today is high only on success, and it's a success of a kind she never expected.

It began, or more properly recommenced, when Clooney was on tour with Bing Crosby, whose drummer, Jake Hanna, was virtually the house drummer for Concord Jazz records.

"Jake kept telling me I should record for this company. Except for one album with Bing, I hadn't recorded in a long time. I did two tracks for the Ellington memorial album."

Hanna soon persuaded Carl Jefferson, head of Concord Jazz, to record a Clooney album. This was the start of a long association: There are now nine LPs, most of them employing small jazz groups with Scott Hamilton on sax, Warren Vache on cornet, Nat Pierce on piano and Hanna. One album teamed her with the Woody Herman orchestra.

"It's funny having an image as a jazz singer," says Clooney. "My idea of a true jazz singer is Mel Torme; he can scat and do all kinds of inventive things that I can't handle. Still, I do sound more free and jazz-influenced than when this all started."

Actually, it had started many years earlier. She eased into the major leagues by touring as half of the Clooney Sisters with a band led by Tony Pastor, the former Artie Shaw saxophonist. During that time, she recorded a few tunes on her own; in 1949, a Down Beat magazine review declared: "Rosemary Clooney has an extraordinarily good voice, perhaps the nearest thing to Ella Fitzgerald."

After three years on the road, Betty Clooney, the younger sister, opted for home and semiretirement; two weeks later, Rosemary quit and went out as a single, armed with a Columbia Records contract. Some of the hits that followed were more valuable for the financial security they brought than for any merit in the songs; she was never enamored of "Come On-a My House" but grants that it was commercially invaluable. She was grateful, though, that long-lasting success came along soon after with "Tenderly."

Married in 1953, a mother two years later, she almost never stopped working; during those years, there were movies, TV series, recordings with Harry James, Benny Goodman and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

"The album with Duke is still available, you know. In fact, it was just reissued in Japan because my Concord things are doing so well there. It was strange-I was never in the studio with Duke. He sent Billy Strayhorn out here to work on the songs; Billy went back to New York to do the charts, the band recorded there, and Billy came back here, stood in the booth and cued me while I overdubbed the vocals. That was in 1957, and that's one album I'm proud of."

Clooney today is one of a growing number of singers who can claim to have bridged the jazz-pop world, attracting a broad audience with the use of great songs in the Gershwin-Porter-Berlin-Ellington tradition. "I think Linda Ronstadt did us all a hell of a favor," she says. "I hear Dolly Dawn has an album out too. When Betty and I first joined Tony Pastor, we played a theater in Indianapolis and Dolly was the star of the show-she taught me how to put on makeup. I was about 18."

Mention of her sister, who was only 45 when she died suddenly of an aneurysm, led to an enthusiastic discussion of the event that is foremost in her mind at the moment. She has assembled an immensely impressive cast for a concert to aid the Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain Injured, to be held Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion."We're calling it the first annual singers' salute to the songwriters. I'll be hosting it, and the show will pay tribute to Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Sammy Cahn, Cy Coleman, Barry Manilow and Jule Styne, all of whom will be present."

Look at this lineup of performers and presenters: We have Bob and Dolores Hope-she really has a wonderful voice-Tony Bennett, Debby Boone (Clooney's daughter-in-law), Diahann Carroll, Jackie Cooper, Harry and Nathaniel Crosby, Beverly D'Angelo, Maureen McGovern, Melissa Manchester, Patti Page, Dionne Warwick, the L.A. Jazz Choir, Jose Ferrer. . . ."

Jose Ferrer?

"Oh, sure. We're friendly now; with five children, you eventually have to be. I'm glad, too, because he's an interesting man, and important for me to have in my life. He'll be a presenter. Oh, and we're starting a Nelson Riddle Award for arranging. This year we'll be giving it to Quincy Jones."

The cause is very close to her heart: "There are so many people, a lot of them quite young, who are brain-injured at the peak of their career. Quincy, who had two aneurysms, survived miraculously. A cousin of mine, a registered nurse, was in a water-skiing accident and went into a coma for 12 weeks but aside from a short-term memory loss, she's OK now."

Her producer, Allen Sviridoff, came up with the idea of paying homage to songwriters. The evening is expected to raise enough funds to establish residential centers providing 24-hour supervision along with psychological and social services for adults with brain injury. Clooney and her brother, TV newscaster Nick Clooney, are co-chairs of the foundation. Instead of the small-group jazz format heard on her Concord albums, she and the other participants will have the support of a large orchestra conducted by Jack Elliott.

Clooney is thankful for the presence of John Oddo, her musical director, who will be writing most of the arrangements. "I got to know John when he was with Woody Herman and I recorded with the band in 1983. It's marvelous how many people Woody has given their start, and then he has the most wonderful relationships with them after they leave. John has been with me ever since we worked on that album."

Heavy-set nowadays, Clooney was wearing an attractive gown designed by her daughter Maria. "She's a painter, and she works on fabric. My son Gabri is a wonderful painter too-he and Debby have a son who's 5, twin daughters, and right now they're waiting for their fourth.

"Miguel, who married Josh Logan's daughter, is my oldest son, a fine actor and a good director. Moncita is married to a producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network; she was just here with my little grandson. Rafael, my youngest-he was born in 1960-is an actor; he just left for New York to see how things go there for him.

"So I have four grandchildren and another on the way. The latest is due any day-God, please, soon, because Debby's got to sing at my concert on the 7th!"

Rosemary's babies and grandbabies are a consuming source of interest. She doesn't mind the grandmotherly image, as those TV commercials for Coronet Paper Products make clear. While accepting the pleasures of the present, she cannot dismiss the one trauma of the past that remains with her constantly.

"Betty was three years younger than I, but we were more like twins than sisters. Her death was a terrible shock; we were all kind of held together by her. Betty explained me to Nick and Nick to me; she was the conduit of our best feelings about each other. Nick and I miss her to this day. I'm happy that the foundation will help to perpetuate her memory."

"Hits Just Keep On Coming at Singers, Songwriters Gala"

by Marylouise Oates, The Los Angeles Times, Apr 8, 1987

"Next year," chairman Roz Wyman said, approaching Bev and Al Zacky. "Next year it can be Zacky Chickens Present the `Betty Clooney Foundation Singers Salute the Songwriters Award.' And we'll put it on television."

None of that seems surprising, especially after the curtain fell on the three-hour spectacular that played to a full house at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Monday night. Like love, the awards got better the second time around.

Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, Sammy Fain, Henry Mancini, Jimmy Van Heusen and Stevie Wonder heard dozens of their hundreds of hits sung to them by an army of well-known stylists in a fast-paced night produced by Allen Sviridoff. It was nonstop showstoppers: Gloria Loring doing "Come in From the Rain," Michael Feinstein doing "I Can Dream, Can't I," Patti Austin singing "I'm Late" from "Alice in Wonderland" and then "That Old Feeling," Pat Boone doing "April Love."

The orchestra did the "Pink Panther" theme and "Theme From Peter Gunn," and Mancini took the stage to thank Billy May and then "my second pair of ears for 40 years, my wife, Ginny."

Songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman, among last year's honorees, presented the Arranger's Award to May.

"You can always recognize a Billy May chart," Marilyn Bergman said. "He did what few people do. He created a style."

"My cup runneth over," Wyman told the audience after the short intermission. "I'm glad you all came . . . and the date for next year is April 11." Sherman Holvey, chairman of the foundation board, said the foundation-named for Rosemary Clooney's sister, who died after suffering traumatic brain injuries-was successfully following its five-year plan.

A surprise appearance by Toots Thielemans, acknowledged as the world's greatest harmonica player, brought the audience and the orchestra to their feet, as he finished saying: "Just for you, Stevie. I love you, Stevie.

"The finale brought last year's winner, Barry Manilow, out on stage to do a medley of Jimmy Van Heusen songs.

Veteran benefit-goers such as Wendy and Leonard Goldberg, Roz and Hal Milstone, Peg Yorkin (who this week celebrates an important birthday) and the hundreds of others were clear that they were on the list to buy tickets for next year's event.

Clooney Set for Salute to Her Sister

by Jack Hawn, The Los Angeles Times, Mar 30, 1988

Family photographs-some half a century old-were scattered about the living room of the Beverly Hills mansion where Rosemary Clooney has lived for 35 years. She had been looking, as she had promised the previous day, for some of her sister.

"Here's one," the singer said, her expression suggesting a private thought, a cherished moment suddenly recaptured. "That's the old Mercury, our first car."

The photo showed two young women seated on the rear bumper of "the old" De Soto. The picture was labeled "Betty and Rosemary May 25, 1949."At the time, the Clooney sisters were singing as a duet and sharing laughs while on the road with a band led by Tony Pastor, a former saxophonist for Artie Shaw. But they had gotten their act together long before that.

Extremely close, the sisters became a musical "entry," as Rosemary put it, while Betty was still in diapers.When, in 1976, Betty Clooney died of an aneurysm at age 45, the shock was traumatic for Rosemary. In 1983, a foundation was established that bears her sister's name, and, since 1986, an annual concert has helped finance the organization's work.

Titled "The Singers' Salute to the Songwriter," the event, at 7:30 tonight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, will give a financial boost to the Betty Clooney Foundation for Persons With Brain Injury and the Betty Clooney Center, which opened last month in Long Beach.

The show will feature more than 20 entertainers (Debby Boone, Diahann Carroll, Vic Damone, Jack Jones, the Lennon Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob and Delores Hope, to name a few), who will pay tribute to songwriters Betty Comden and partner Adolph Green, Brazil's Antonio Carlos Jobim, Burton Lane, Michel Legrand and Melissa Manchester and arranger Ralph Burns.

While going through the old photos and reminiscing, Clooney occasionally wiped a tear, admitting that even now, 12 years later, "it's still difficult, very emotional."

"We always sang together," she recalled, "from the time Betty was 2 and I was 5. We sang at home, in the car. . . . We lived with my dad."

Grandfather Andrew Clooney, a jeweler twice elected mayor in their hometown of Maysville, Ky., often featured the youngsters as entertainers at political rallies.

"We would sing on street corners, anywhere we could collect a crowd," Clooney said. "Betty had a natural gift for harmony. Her voice was lower than mine."

After the family moved to Cincinnati, Betty-then in junior high school-auditioned for a local talent variety show, singing "Temptation," and was selected.

"I didn't try out," Rosemary said, "I guess, because I was afraid I wouldn't make it."

But the "entry" did make it on a Cincinnati radio station in 1945.

"My dad was a drinker," Clooney readily admitted. "He went off the wagon on V-J Day and disappeared for three weeks. So we took a streetcar downtown and auditioned. We were kind of pushed into it. We were 16 and 13 at the time."

The girls' mother and their brother Nick were living in California then, Clooney said.

After singing "Pattycake Man," "Dream" and "Hallelujah"-"those three songs, over and over, they hired us. It was an open audition. They put us with a voice coach, and we made $20 a week apiece. I think I saved more then than I do now."

After about 18 months on local radio, the teen-agers (then 18 and 15) went on the road with Pastor, but were chaperoned by their uncle and legal guardian, George Guilfoyle, a freshly discharged Army bomber pilot who traveled with them.

"Uncle George was only six years older than I was," Clooney said, "but he was tougher than anybody in the world."

The sisters sneaked smokes and tried to date members of the band, which Guilfoyle didn't permit.

"Betty loved a trumpet player and I loved a guitar player, but it was only when we played a few towns in Texas that we were able to go out with the guys," Clooney said. "That's where Uncle George had trained and where he had girlfriends." She laughed. "He was too busy to keep his eyes on us.

"Everybody adored Betty. She was engaged to so many guys. When they would break up, she would give them a St. Christopher medal."

Press releases say Betty Clooney grew weary of the one-night stands after two years on the road, quit the tour and returned home. But Rosemary gave a different version.

"The real reason she quit," Clooney said, "was because she knew I had a (deal for a) record contract and I wouldn't be the one to make a break. She started working again in Cincinnati on a TV station."

Rosemary signed a Columbia Records contract after the split and soon hit the jackpot with "Come On-a-My House" and, later, the enduring hit "Tenderly."

Married in 1953 to actor Jose Ferrer, she had her first of five children two years later and has almost never stopped working. Even now, two months from her 60th birthday, her schedule is heavy with commitments.

The sisters remained close, especially during those dark periods of Rosemary's life-the two divorces from Ferrer, the addiction to Seconal, five years of psychoanalysis, group therapy, etc.When she was hospitalized in Santa Monica in 1968, Rosemary recalled a visit from Betty.

"I was under some very strong shots. I didn't believe anybody. I didn't trust anybody. And Betty said, `Listen, you know as long as I'm in charge, I'm not going to let anything happen to you.' "

But when Betty died, Rosemary wasn't at her side, having just returned from England, where she had been working with Bing Crosby.

Betty had suffered a massive stroke while entertaining the parents of the young man her daughter was planning to marry. She died the next morning while undergoing surgery.

"She didn't smoke, drank only occasionally, was thin, active. There was no preparation for it. She wasn't sick. You want to blame somebody, but there was no one to blame.

"Some people hang onto the grief," Clooney added, "because that's all that's left."

Betty Clooney died in Las Vegas, where she had met band leader Pupi Campo while working on Jack Paar's morning TV show. The couple married in 1954 and produced four children.Among them is Cathi Demman, who will sing one of Melissa Manchester's songs at the concert. Appropriately, she has selected a song that seems to please her aunt. It's titled "Happy Endings."

"Memorable Moments in a Musical Salute to Songwriters"

by Paul Grein, The Los Angeles Time, Apr 27, 1989

Rosemary Clooney couldn't have chosen a more appropriate song to close the fourth annual Singers' Salute to the Songwriter on Tuesday night-Jerome Kern's "Look for the Silver Lining."

It was in an effort to do something constructive after her sister Betty's death of a brain injury 11 years ago that Clooney came up with the idea of the salute. This year's event at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion raised nearly $500,000 for the Betty Clooney Foundation for Persons with Brain Injury and its offspring, the Betty Clooney Center in Long Beach.

The concert, which toasted songwriters Kern, Mitchell Parish, Johnny Mandel and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil and arranger Peter Matz, featured several other memorable moments:

- A tender duet by Clooney, one of the top female vocalists of the '50s, and contemporary pop queen Linda Ronstadt.

- Comedian Martin Short's lighthearted version of Kern's "The Song Is You."

- '60s girl-group veteran Darlene Love's soulful rendition of the Dan Hill hit "Sometimes When We Touch," which Mann co-wrote.

- Lucie Arnaz's sassy, stylish version of Mann & Weil's "Here You Come Again."

- Bob Hope and Clooney's witty exchange of lines from different songs. (Clooney: "Birds do it, bees do it. . . ." Hope: "Why then, oh why can't I? . . .")

Frequently, participants at benefit concerts appear to have met for the first time on the day of the show. But at this concert the connections seemed real-and heartfelt.

Clooney and Ronstadt, for example, are mutual admirers who have become friends in recent years. And Hope and Clooney have worked together on many occasions over the years, which made it especially appropriate when they did a wry version of Steven Sondheim's "Old Friends."

The connections between the performers and honorees also rang true. Carol Burnett presented the arranger's award to Peter Matz, who was the music supervisor of her long-running CBS-TV variety series.

And several of the participants have mined the mother lode of American popular music on recent albums. Ronstadt, who sang Kern's "All the Things You Are," released three million-selling albums of standards. Toni Tennille, who sang a sultry version of Kern's "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," and Melissa Manchester, who performed Parish's "Star Dust" and Mandel's "The Shadow of Your Smile," have also covered the classics.

The show was hosted by Clooney's brother, Cincinnati Post columnist and one-time L.A. anchorman Nick Clooney, and featured other family members. Betty's daughter, Cathi Demman, sang Parish's "Deep Purple" and Rosemary's daughter-in-law, Debby Boone, sang a lovely version of Kern's "I'm Old-Fashioned." Boone dryly kidded her square image during an instrumental break in the dreamy ballad: "They really struggled on who should sing this-me or Madonna."

"Songwriters Get Their Due at Clooney Benefit"

by Paul Grein, The Los Angeles Times, Apr 26, 1990

Glen Campbell came right to the point in telling the audience at the fifth annual "Singers' Salute to the Songwriter" concert why he turned out to toast Jimmy Webb, one of the event's honorees.

"If it weren't for Jimmy Webb I probably wouldn't be standing up here," he said of the writer of such Campbell signature songs as "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston."

Liza Minnelli was similarly expansive in talking about John Kander and Fred Ebb, the writers of such Minnelli trademarks as "Cabaret" and "New York, New York."

The salute on Tuesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion also toasted Marvin Hamlisch and the late Ira Gershwin. Rosemary Clooney hosted the show, which is the principal fund-raiser for the Betty Clooney Foundation for Persons with Brain Injury, a Long Beach facility named after Clooney's sister, who died in 1976 of a brain aneurysm.

In addition to giving singers a chance to publicly thank the writers who supply their material, the show provided a telling overview of each songwriter's output.

Webb, for example, is often thought of as a victim of early burnout. But the concert demonstrated that he has continued to write top-grade material since his late-'60s heyday.

Linda Ronstadt sang two of the four Webb songs featured on her latest album, including the sublime "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress." And Lucie Arnaz offered a dramatic version of the philosophical "Only One Life," which Webb wrote in the mid-'80s with the late Michael Bennett.

Kander and Ebb were also well-served by the retrospective, which proved that there's more to their success than their long association with Minnelli. Indeed, some of their songs that haven't had mass exposure are wittier and more distinctive than their best-known works.

Broadway star Dorothy Loudon's bawdy, bluesy reading of "Sara Lee," a torch song about the pleasures of German chocolate, was nothing short of delicious. She was even better teaming with Marilyn Cooper on "The Grass Is Always Greener," which contrasts the joys of making a good pot roast and seeing your name in lights.

Hamlisch, however, suffered in the retrospective. Except for the timeless ballad "The Way We Were" and selections from the landmark musical "A Chorus Line," Hamlisch's songs-mostly generic movie themes-seemed tired and pedestrian. Hollywood schlock like "Looking Through the Eyes of Love" was meant to be played over end-credits, not spotlighted in a show like this.

The closing salute to Ira Gershwin yielded the concert's most captivating moment, when a frail but spirited Ginger Rogers related how "They Can't Take That Away From Me" came to be featured in the Rogers and Astaire film "The Barkleys of Broadway." Ronstadt and Clooney then sang a lovely version of the song, showing how seamlessly two great singers from different eras can mesh.

Another highlight of the Gershwin salute: Tony Bennett singing "Liza" (with a top-hatted, Garlandesque Minnelli dancing in accompaniment) and then topping himself with a simultaneously tough and tender "The Girl I Love."

The Gershwin segment also included a few clinkers. Debby Boone's polite version of the Garland torch classic "The Man That Got Away" barely flickered, and Suzanne Somers' "A Foggy Day" was colorless.

The producers of this event favor Broadway and middle-of-the-road music but should open the doors to more contemporary pop and rock songwriters. This would broaden the show's appeal and heighten its credibility and presence in the contemporary music scene.

But it would do something even more important: It would show that a great song is a great song, whatever the era or style. And it wouldn't hurt contemporary writers to be exposed to timeless standards like the Gershwins' "Our Love Is Here to Stay" and "Someone to Watch Over Me." It might even remind them that there is life beyond next week's sales chart.

While the four-hour show-which also featured Bob Hope, Bea Arthur and Michael Feinstein, among others-could have used a sterner editor, it was a splendid night of music and memories. It would have made a superb TV special. Maybe next year.