“Dear friends, good evening! And welcome to this, the second show of the fourth night of the seventh week of the second season of our 10th year here at the Café Carlyle …”
The baritone voice is clear tonight. But when it breaks, as it often does, it sounds—somebody said—like a strangled ostrich. All that urgent energy forcing all that sound through that throat for all those years—fortissimo is his working decibel range—with laryngitis a frequent companion. But no matter, they still come, the swells from New York and their kith from the hinterlands. “We have tickets to Chorus Line, and we’ll take the kids to the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, and, naturally, we’ll see Bobby Short.”
