Seth Sikes and Nicolas King With Billy Stritch: ‘The New Belters Sing MGM’
54 Below
September 6

There’s a lot to unpack even just in the full title and billing for this Friday performance at 54 Below. Nicolas King is a marvelous young jazz singer who has made no secret that his hero and role model is the great Mel Tormé, while Seth Sikes is an exuberant young cabaret singer and entertainer who first came to my attention while doing a Judy Garland songbook.

They have a precedent for working together not least because Garland and Tormé famously joined forces for one of the greatest programs in the history of television, CBS’s “Judy Garland Show” of 1963-’64. Tormé not only appeared regularly, singing solos and duets with the star, but he wrote very hip and swinging special vocal arrangements for her.

Messrs. King and Sikes make for a powerful, high-energy duo. In their white tuxedo jackets with black lapels, it looks like they just walked off a wedding cake. The duet becomes a trio when they’re joined by Billy Stritch, the ace pianist and frequent vocalist. 

Accurately dubbed as the “accompanist du jour” by the Times’s Stephen Holden, Mr. Stritch has long since expanded upon that moniker by establishing himself as one of the best musical directors any singer ever had.

There’s also a historical precedent for the duo/trio nature of the act, in a famous episode of Garland’s show where the host is interacting with a relative newcomer, Barbra Streisand. Then, unexpectedly — to the surprise of the audience, at least — Ethel Merman barges in and describes the two younger women as “The New Belters.” Now, it must be said that Garland, a star for at least 25 years at that point, was hardly “new” in 1963, and the term “belters” is affectionate but reductive, since Garland, in particular, was much more than that. Still, the term sticks, and Mr. Sikes has adopted it as a brand name for his ongoing duo with Mr. King.

“The New Belters Sing MGM” is a catchy title, though a more accurate one would be “King and Sikes Sing Numbers From Movies Produced by Arthur Freed,” which is admittedly less catchy. To a great extent, the initials MGM have come to stand for the greatest movie musicals ever made, and, as historian Steve Smith has pointed out, this is largely in spite of the founders of the studio and the moguls who guided it throughout the prime years of the Hollywood system.  

Before Freed set up shop in 1939 — with the secret weapon known as Garland the Great and the double whammy of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Babes in Arms” — the studio was simply not interested in musicals. The guiding light of Metro up to his tragically early death in 1936 was Irving Thalberg, a cinema visionary to be sure but not a man with a song in his soul.  

It’s telling that virtually every number in this MGM songbook comes from a film produced by Freed, with only a few exceptions, such as “Broadway Rhythm,” a song that Freed actually wrote himself. 

“The New Belters Sing MGM” is a fast and snappy production, in the tradition of Marilyn Maye: It’s mostly a series of medleys, with the tunes flying at you fast and furious, and just enough time for the warm glow of recognition of an old favorite to set in before the next one arrives. As with Ms. Maye, the medleys are interrupted by extended individual songs rather than, as with most singers, the other way around.

There are so many songs and so many moments of that warm glow that, early in the evening, you start to feel like you’ve been handed the greatest possible Easter egg for movie musical buffs. While virtually every Garland-influenced singer does a version of “Get Happy,” this show marks the only time I’ve heard any live performer render unto us “Madame Crematante,” formally known in the 1945 “Ziegfeld Follies” as “A Great Lady Has An Interview.” It is described somewhat ironically by Mr. King as one of the “first rap numbers.” This is true enough, and it’s energetically delivered by him a capella, with the others clapping their hands on the beat. Likewise, “Stereophonic Sound,” Cole Porter’s 1954 take-off on cinematic technology, now with up-to-date new lyrics comparing the past and present of cinema. 

There’s a particularly rewarding pair of tunes by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane from “Royal Wedding,” in which Mr. King — like Tormé, a superb balladeer as well as a swinger — gives us “Too Late Now” followed by Mr. Stritch’s featured number, “You’re All the World To Me.” Then Messrs. King, Sikes, and Stritch go into their major trio number, “Triplets,” repurposed from the 1937 Broadway musical “Between the Devil” for the classic 1953 MGM musical “The Band Wagon.” 

I wish there had been a “Band Wagon” medley, but we do get some of “New Sun in the Sky” and quite a lot, not surprisingly, of “That’s Entertainment.” The entire production builds to an extended collage of tunes from the most acclaimed of all movie musicals, 1952’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” not only produced by Freed but spotlighting his own first-rate lyrics. 

It’s particularly rewarding to hear them do Betty Comden and Adolf Green’s “Moses” — the only song in “Singin’ in the Rain” not by Freed — as well as “Fit as a Fiddle” and Mr. Stritch’s vocal solo on “You Were Meant For Me.” Let’s face it, one would be disappointed if the twosome didn’t break out umbrellas and invite the crowd to sing along on the title song, “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Mr. Sikes quotes Rex Reed’s warning that “I hope you’re not going to do a bunch of medleys” — at which point Messrs. King and Stritch both acknowledge that the highly sagacious veteran critic does indeed have a point. Still, the trio reinforces Ms. Maye’s teachings — and the late Tormé was a master of this as well — that medleys can be so well put together, especially when Mr. Stritch is involved, that you never feel like you’re being short-changed or that too many songs are being crammed down your throat.  

In fact, “The New Belters Sing MGM” makes me feel that I could exist happily for the rest of my life on a steady diet of Easter eggs.