Gunhild Carling, Family and Friends
Birdland, Through February 11

There’s a line in a 2014 detective novel, “The Black-Eyed Blonde” (the movie version, titled “Marlowe,” opens this weekend), that makes me think of the Swedish jazz star Gunhild Carling. The titular black-eyed blonde is describing a movie star, and says, “Think Jean Harlow without the talent.”  Philip Marlowe answers, “Jean Harlow had talent?”

The iconic private dick got in a dig at Harlow, but one hopes that his opinions don’t necessarily reflect those of the author John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black). Most classic movie buffs — who are pretty much the target audience of this novel — would disagree: Like Marilyn Monroe a generation later, Harlow was a luminescent cinematic presence who greatly illuminated the few films she appeared in.

Yet if you could imagine Jean Harlow with a more obvious kind of talent — let’s just say an avalanche of musical ability — then you would have Ms. Carling, who is playing Birdland all this week. Physically, Harlow is a pretty close match: Ms. Carling is a petite, platinum blonde, consistently attired in vintage deco costumery that would be perfectly suited to a revival of “Dinner at Eight.” 

Where Harlow had mostly charm, Ms. Carling is pure energy — what they would have called “pep” in Harlow’s day — and personality. She explodes onto the stage, almost as if she were shot out of a cannon, and within moments is playing multiple instruments, starting with trumpet and trombone. The specific implements themselves don’t matter: Over the course of a single set she’ll play at least five or six different horns. More importantly, her personality comes through in all of them.

Ms. Carling’s current lineup starts with two other horn players. Her daughter, Idun Carling, also plays various horns and sings but this week is mostly on trombone. Saxophonist Nanna Carling, Gunhild’s niece, plays the curved soprano, which looks like a toy but produces vivid exciting sounds out of the French school of traditional jazz soprano sax players founded by Sidney Bechet. The rhythm section is pianist Logan Evan Thomas, bassist Adam Kubota, and drummer Daniel Glass.

Over the course of the evening, the senior Ms. Carling, who’s all of 47, also sings on almost every number, working in what we loosely call classic or pre-modern jazz: New Orleans, Roaring ‘20s Hot Jazz, and the Swing Era. The band’s style might also be called dixieland on steroids: Even those tunes that could be classified as ballads, by comparison at least, are loud and raucous.  

For starters, she formed the three Carlings into a female vocal trio, and followed by singing the 1931 “Heartaches” by herself. Although this was the only prominent big band record (Ted Weems and his Orchestra) to feature a whistling solo, whistling was about the only thing she didn’t do. She played harmonica over an R&B-style riff, then a slide whistle in a variation on “Tiger Rag,” a recorder solo on Jobim’s “Wave,” and she even blew bagpipes over blues changes.

Among her few comparatively “serious” pieces were the New Orleans dirge “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” played as it would be at a Crescent City funeral, first slow and then upbeat as a wildly swinging march, and her daughter (introduced as “Idun from Sweden” — yes, it rhymes) singing, “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.”  

The biggest, most crowd-pleasing stunt, which she does on every show, is playing three trumpets at once, and, fittingly, she plays them on a very familiar blues lick that has been given at least three titles over the years, (“D’ Natural Blues,” “Now’s the Time,” and “The Hucklebuck”). Yet she tops even that with her finale, in which she produces a wooden platform, sheds her period heels for a pair of tap shoes, and winds up with a big dance number. As the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk taught us, there’s nothing wrong with a good gimmick when actual musical values — and Ms. Carling has them in abundance — are at its core.

Ms. Carling has more than a dozen albums out, mostly with her “Carling Big Band,” including the 2015 “Harlem Joys.” This is mostly a collection of original, pastiche-style tunes, such as “Bix Radio Rhythm,” which loosely but thoughtfully reproduces the general sound of the Bix Beiderbecke- Frank Trumbauer ensembles, with echoes of “Loved One.”  

Still, Gunhild Carling is best known from her videos with pianist/entrepreneur Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox franchise. The vast majority of the PMJ output unfortunately merely underscores the depressing notion that 21st century pop songs are so dismal that not even imaginative arrangements can make them worth hearing.  

Still, Mr. Bradlee’s work with a few standout guest stars (Puddles Pity Party, Kate Davis, Sweet Megg) proves that there are exceptions to every rule. Only Ms. Carling could make me actually like Abba’s “Dancing Queen” or even want to listen to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy,” upon which she plays so many instruments — 10 in all — that the song itself gets buried under all the shenanigans. In this case, that’s a good thing.

Somehow, Ms. Carling and company are doing this two times a night for five evenings in a row. Most of us in the crowd were exhausted just from watching her for 80 minutes or so, applauding, and trying to guess what she’d do next. To say Gunhild Carling is unique is putting it mildly, and I know that both Harlow and Marlowe would agree. At the very least, I can’t think of anyone else who can so thoroughly rock both a recorder and a ball gown.