By Dale King
During summer in the Palm Beaches, hot entertainment in cool locations is de rigueur.
The Colony Hotel has again picked up that vibe and is offering a season-long set of cabaret shows in the hotel’s celebrated Royal Room — a short hop from the famous “Avenue” in downtown Palm Beach.
Performing Fridays and Saturdays through July 20 is Carole J. Bufford, a Georgia peach with a fantastic voice, stylish manner and plenty of stage savvy. A petite firecracker with a face to match a thousand moods, she syncs her vocals with her facial expressions to complete the show. She offers up a variety of winks, puckers, high tones, hot jazzy notes and soft, growly low notes; her hour of songs passes in a flash.
Her voice is often childlike, offered up like Eartha Kitt and Peggy Lee used to do. But with her brunette hair cut short, she seems to resemble actress Carey Lowell — not in her James Bond days, but as the assistant district attorney in Law and Order.
Her cabaret show is called Body and Soul, which is also the finale song of the night. She comes back for an encore, performing a tune in French. It’s particularly notable because her voice suddenly takes on the nasally tone of Edith Piaf.
Frocked in a strapless gown with a crazed black and white pattern, Bufford performs with just piano accompaniment from Russ Patterson, who matches her voice every step of the way. The show takes place in a semi-circular white- curtained alcove illuminated by soft blue lights. Out front is an old-style microphone, looking like the one Frank Sinatra crooned into. She occasionally uses a wireless mike as she belts out some top-notch jazz and blues songs.
Bufford opens with a down-home definition of Cabaret. In her Georgia hometown of Lincolnton, cabaret “meant live nude girls,” she says. “A man asked me tonight if I would be stripping, and I said, ‘Only figuratively.’”
She does strip some tunes down to the core. She tears into the pith of I Love the Way You’re Breaking My Heart and moves quickly to Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home, the oldest song in the evening’s set, written in 1919.
Next is the newest song, written only a year ago, Fade into You. The lyrics offer an engaging message in this jazz-on-New Age rendition. She follows up her soft songs with some rippers, like, Right Key, Wrong Keyhole, a scream-aloud number that raises specters of Billie Holiday. After a set of songs Showboat, she segues into a comic tune cut from the same cloth as Tom Lehrer’s rollicking Masochism Tango.
Next on the roster is a mixture of tunes — from an up-tempo offering of Goody, Goody to Suzanne, a song by Randy Newman (“The guy creeps me out.”) She finishes the set with a rousing song called Low, Short and Squatty. Her tear-jerking, torchy touch on Cry Me a River is just superb — as are most of her others.
Carole J. Bufford performs Fridays and Saturdays, July 12-13 and July 19-20 at The Colony Hotel, 155 Hammon Ave., Palm Beach. Tickets are $100 for the prix fixe dinner and show. To make reservations, call the hotel box office at 561-659-8100.