Jackie Ryan Honors Six Jazz Divas at Sold-Out Oakland Sound Room

Jazz vocalist Jackie Ryan sold out Oakland's Sound Room on Saturday, Nov. 7, with a program celebrating six of her jazz foremothers: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan.

Each diva got her own three-song section, introduced by brief accounts of her career. Ryan detailed the six women's shared early struggles and triumphs, giving the audience a compact lesson in jazz history between numbers. A tribute to any one of them could fill an entire thematic show on its own — Ryan compressed all six into a single set.

How did Ryan make familiar songs her own?

She avoided deep cuts and stuck to standards, but reshaped them through arrangements and phrasing. She channeled Fitzgerald's rhythmic ebullience with a rip-snorting gallop through Juan Tizol's "Caravan." She interpreted Holiday's "God Bless the Child" — described as the singer's trenchant distillation of the human condition — as a simmering soul ballad.

One moment stood out for specialists: in the Simone section, Ryan sang the rarely performed verse of "I Loves You, Porgy" that Simone herself dropped on the 1958 hit version that introduced her to the public.

Who backed her?

Ryan worked with a quartet of veteran Bay Area players:

• John R. Burr on piano, whose effortless swing and bright harmonic palette made an ideal foil for Ryan's smoky tone
• Doug Miller on bass, providing a forceful pulse
• Leon Joyce Jr. on drums, caressing the snare with brushes or, in the reviewer's phrase, "giving a clinic on dynamic modulation"
• Erik Jekabson on trumpet and flugelhorn, deploying various mutes (devices inserted into a horn's bell to alter its tone) and contributing countermelodies, piquant commentary and coloristic fills

Ryan left Jekabson considerable space, and she sounded stronger and stronger as the night progressed.

What were the highlights?

Celebrating Peggy Lee, she wrung every drop of innuendo out of "Some Cats Know." For Dinah Washington, she alternated between English and Spanish on "What A Difference A Day Makes" — Washington's massive hit, adapted from Mexican composer María Grever's original version — offering a peek at her lustrous repertoire of boleros (Latin American sentimental songs).

She closed with Vaughan, the diva who left the biggest imprint on her. A bossa-inflected arrangement added a sensuous thrum to "The Lamp Is Low," and her take on Dori Caymmi and Nelson Motta's "Like a Lover" conveyed an intensity of erotic longing the reviewer found almost overwhelming. (Alan Bergman credited his wife and songwriting partner Marilyn Bergman with the English lyric, according to Patti Austin, who popularized that version.)

Offstage, the review notes, Ryan is the antithesis of a diva: modest, self-deprecating and generous toward bandmates and audiences, despite outsized talent.

Where can audiences catch her next?

Ryan performs at Meyhouse Palo Alto with pianist Larry Vuckovich on Nov. 20, then joins Vuckovich's 90th birthday celebrations at Sonoma's and Yoshi's on Dec. 28. She returns to Meyhouse Palo Alto on Jan. 29 and Meyhouse San Ramon on Jan. 30 with Los Angeles pianist Tamir Hendelman, fresh off a sold-out SFJAZZ run with vocalist Tierney Sutton.