A Tribute to the Black Crooners

Some big-band swing, a little from-the-gut belting and a hell of a lot of crooning: A Tribute to the Black Crooners (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) offers an almost-overwhelming helping of tunes, each one so smooth, it’s schmoove. Complaining that the narrative pieces holding this jukebox musical together are weak is like criticizing the plot of a porno: If that’s your concern, you’re missing the point.

The point, of course, is the music. With six male singers, each stronger than the next, and a so-tight-they’re-loose seven-piece backing band, this show delivers the goods. Tunes span from Louis Armstrong right up to Babyface (with the weight of the songs mercifully tipped toward the Armstrong era). The strongest numbers are staged as flashbacks to a 1940s-era nightclub, where “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” inspired a full-blown audience sway-along, and a version of Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E” gives the original a run for the money. A few off notes sometimes distract—the inexplicable inclusion of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel comes to mind—but for the most part, you can expect to snap your fingers and nod to the beat well past curtain call and all through the ride home.

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