‘Jeff Harnar Sings Sammy Cahn: The Second Time Around’
PS Classics

One of the most entertaining moments of Jeff Harnar’s Sammy Cahn songbook project didn’t make it onto the album but is part of his live show. Speaking of the songwriter’s status as “the Ratpack poet,” the go-to wordsmith for Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin, Mr. Harnar offers a few very brief and very bawdy parodies that Cahn wrote for the threesome. I won’t quote it directly here because, well, let’s just say it works best in live performance, not on a studio album, and even less so in a family newspaper

As Mr. Harnar notes, Sammy Cahn (1913-93) even relished spoofing his own songs, such as one of his first hits, “Please Be Kind.” The one I remember Sammy singing to me was one he saved for himself: It was too personal, and wouldn’t have been funny as performed by anyone else. He would prop himself up, puffing his chest out like an opera singer — after all, this was an aria written for Mario Lanza, the no. 1 tenor in Hollywood in the 1950s — and he would start to bellow, “Be my love…. For no one else can stand my singing!”

There was kind of an inherent paradox here: Sammy loved to sing, and he loved to point out how he would coach Sinatra in the whys and wherefores of what could be brought out in certain lyrics. Yet at the same time, he was all too aware that he actually couldn’t sing. 

He frequently told the tale of showing up at Sinatra’s house to demonstrate a few new songs early one morning before the chairman has recovered after a night of drinking and general dissipation. Sammy starts to sing, and Sinatra interrupts, “The way I feel this morning, don’t tell me I also have to listen to you sing.” Sammy counters, “Frank, I have to look at you, so we’re even.”  

What’s great about both the album “Jeff Harnar Sings Sammy Cahn: The Second Time Around” and his show at 54 Below is how Mr. Harnar captures both sides of Sammy Cahn, the incurable romantic and the unrepentant wisenheimer. 

Showing Cahn’s ballad side, Mr. Harnar and his longtime musical director, Alex Rybeck, offer a medley of three songs that helped get us through World War II, “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week),” admittedly more of a swinger, albeit a very poignant one; “I’ll Walk Alone,” the ultimate wartime song of separation; and “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” with which he invites the audience to sing along — we probably would even if he didn’t invite us.  

The CD ends with “Time After Time,” which, unbelievably, is not one of the 30 or so Cahn songs to receive an Academy Award nomination; alas, in 1946, the world was in a “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” kind of a mood.

“Jeff Harnar Sings Sammy Cahn: The Second Time Around” on PS Classics is a new edition of a 2001 CD titled “Sammy Cahn: All the Way”; essentially it adds six new tracks that are all duets. It’s especially groovy to hear Mr. Harnar cross cadenzas with hard-swinging crooner Clint Holmes on a pair of Cahn and Van Heusen dance duets written for Sinatra, “Come Dance with Me” and “I Like to Lead When I Dance.” 

Likewise, his teaming with a 2024 Grammy winner, Nicole Zuraitis, on “Come Fly With Me” — introduced by a few bars of “You Can Fly” from Cahn’s lesser-known score to Disney’s “Peter Pan” — suggests that Mr. Harnar should play jazz festivals as well as cabaret rooms. Actually, my favorite duet is one of the earlier tracks, Mr. Harnar sweetly singing “Blame My Absent-Minded Heart” – a 1949 gem written for Doris Day that even composers Cahn and Jule Styne had both forgotten – with guitarist Sean Harkness.

The ironic thing — or maybe not — is that little on the new album is as good as Mr. Harnar is in person. Not only has he improved significantly over the last 23 years, and he was already one of the best in 2001, but unfortunately the mixes on the CD are way over-processed, to the point where it hurts rather than helps Mr. Harnar’s fine voice.  

In fact, the audio was considerably better on the original release. Too many singers fall victim to overzealous engineers these days, and much of this album simply fails to capture the vitality in Mr. Harnar’s singing that was so obvious to everyone at 54 Below.  

Still, there’s much to enjoy — “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” is one case where the excessive production works in its favor: Mr. Harnar reimagines the swing era classic, which already exists in both Yiddish and English, and adds the Kenya-based vocal trio, the MOIPEI triplets, to work in touches of baroque classical music and key phrases in Swahili.  

For a second I pondered if it might be a nod to the Jews of Ethiopia, but ultimately I chalked it up to the diversity and universality of the Sammy Cahn songbook. There are other excellent songbook shows out there, but I haven’t seen one this good since, well, let’s just say that it’s been a long, long time.