When most fans think of Molly Ringwald and music, it’s in connection with songs from the John Hughes movies that made her famous: “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” by Simple Minds; “If You Leave,” by O.M.D.; “If You Were Here,” by the Thompson Twins; or, while I’m reminiscing, the great “Pretty in Pink” night-club scenes involving the Rave-Ups. But, as anyone familiar with early “Facts of Life” episodes knows, Molly sings, too. Last year, she released an album of standards called “Except Sometimes,” and on Saturday she concluded a two-week run at the Café Carlyle, where she sang songs from that album, accompanied by a three-piece jazz combo. The legendary stars of the room—Bobby Short, Elaine Stritch—are gone, but their crowd remains, eating salmon and risotto, drinking Old-Fashioneds. One night, the audience included elegant older couples in dresses and dinner jackets; a middle-aged man in a sport coat, a turtleneck, and wire-rimmed glasses; and a pair of exotic dressers with spangles, feathers, fascinators, and va-va-va-voom décolletage. The two of them appeared to be having the time of their lives.
Molly Ringwald the jazz singer had a dramatic appearance, melding our concept of vintage Ringwald with our concept of a cabaret singer: short reddish-blond hair, with a swoop of long bangs in front; long black eyelashes and blue eye shadow; shimmery violet halter-top gown; bold pink lipstick and nail polish; high heels. As the first song began, the band played a little intro, and Ringwald picked up the mic, looking serious.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to be mine,” she sang, intensely. “Baby, you’re mine on a platter.” Her expression had a kind of stunned intensity. When the pianist did a solo, she turned toward him, dancing from the pelvis up. The last line felt menacing: “This time I'm not only getting—I'm holding my man.”
“Hello, New York!” she said. “In this beautiful room! God, do I want to live here. Elaine Stritch had the right idea!” Too soon, Molly. Now that she was speaking, sounding as she does in movies, she seemed more like the Molly Ringwald we all knew. She held up her CD, said that she was “incredibly proud,” and suggested a drinking game: drink every time she mentioned it. “These will be sold in the coat room,” she said, rather naughtily. “Stephen Sondheim wrote that song for a movie called ‘Dick Tracy,’ starring Warren Beatty, who also lived at this hotel.” She didn’t mention its singer, Madonna.
She sang “Exactly Like You,” making me nostalgic for various other versions—Nina Simone, Benny Goodman. This is the double edge of performing standards: they’re wonderful songs that invite comparison with multiple geniuses. Ringwald has a fine voice, and her band—Peter Smith, on piano; Trevor Ware, on bass; and Tony Jefferson, on drums—was excellent. Ringwald seems to enjoy singing, but she doesn’t bring the instinctive relish for music and the confidence in performing it that makes a concert thrilling. The main impression that she makes is visual, of being herself; you end up contemplating the nature of performing, maturing, and celebrity, while listening to familiar tunes played well. At the end of “Exactly Like You,” she told a story about bringing her son, Roman, to the studio, hooking him up to a mic, and recording his “great glorious gut laugh,” credited as the “Roman Ringwald-Gianopoulos outro giggle.” She smiled, pleased.
She said that “Except Sometimes” wasn’t technically her first album. “I did record a jazz album when I was six years old, with my dad, Bob Ringwald, a traditional jazz musician. It was called ‘I Want to Be Loved by You: Molly Sings.’ ”
She sang a Hoagy Carmichael song, “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” After the last line, a dramatic “For that would surely break my heart in two,” a man in the audience called out, “Lovely!” Ringwald was open to this kind of heckling.
She introduced the next song, “I Thought About You,” by saying that she has been travelling a lot, touring her album in the past year, and that she sings it to her kids before they go to bed. At the mention of her album, she said, “Drink!”
“Cheers, Molly, thank you,” a man with a British accent said. A moth flew above his table.
“I took a trip on a train, I thought about you,” Ringwald sang. At one point, she bit her lip, and reminded me of Samantha in “Sixteen Candles.”
When the song ended, a man near the exotic dressers called out, “You look mahvellous!,” Billy Crystal-style.
Ringwald thanked him and announced a song by Oscar Hammerstein. “Is it Hammersteen or Hammerstine?” she said. People shouted answers.
“The Jewish pronunciation!” a man at the bar called out. I turned toward the man and saw that it was Ira Glass. Ringwald had been on “This American Life” this spring, talking about watching “The Breakfast Club” with her daughter. That night, Ringwald wasn’t talking about her movies, but the eighties were poking out everywhere—in her “Dick Tracy” song, the ghost of Madonna, the Billy Crystal reference, and even in a joke by the pianist. After “I’ll Take Romance,” Ringwald asked him, “Where should we go now?”
“Where should we go now?” he sang, like a genteel Axl Rose, to the tune of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
“People always ask me why I sing songs from the Great American Songbook,” Ringwald said. (This seemed an unfair question for them to ask, since everyone from Tony Danza to Cyndi Lauper has done it.) “Besides the fact that it’s one of our national treasures,” Ringwald said, its songs had everything she could want to express. “This song is particularly apt now across the country. Not necessarily in this room.” She sang an up-tempo “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”—a bit rattling, shrill, but the band was really cooking. Whenever anybody had a solo, Ringwald would turn and face him, dancing with emphasis. She snapped her fingers. “Once I built a railroad, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?” she sang. Now she really let it rip: arm in the air, stamping her foot, laughing. She got a big cheer.
“That’s how I get my cardio!” she said. “I’m serious!”
They played “It Never Entered My Mind,” and I thought wistfully of the gorgeous, heartbreaking version by Miles Davis.
“A lot of people wonder how I came to this jazz thing,” Ringwald said. “It’s something I did early on, from three years old. I was raised on a steady diet of Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith. I actually thought I’d grow up and be black! I admired them, and thought it was going to happen to me! It didn’t.” She took off her shoes and sang a Fats Waller song, “Mean to Me.”
Her large diamond stud earrings glinted in the lights. It gave me a jolt—they looked just like the earrings that Claire wears in “The Breakfast Club.”
“I began with Stephen Sondheim and I’ll end with Stephen Sondheim,” she said. “This is not including the encore that I’m going to make you give me.” People laughed. “This is called ‘I Feel Pretty,’ ” she said. Her version was jazzy and aggressive. “I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight!” She sang about how alarming it was, how charming she felt. Smith did a ripping piano solo. It was a great little band.
“We have discussed this thing called an encore,” she said.
“Is this a workshop?” the British man asked.
“Sort of!” Ringwald said. “I can do my encore now, or I can finish my set and you can hear my encore after.”
No one knew how to respond. A young woman called out, “We want to clap loudly and beg you to come back!”
Ringwald sang “The Street Where You Live,” bowed, went to the bar, said hello to Ira Glass, allowed some cheers and screaming, and returned to the stage.
“Really? I’m so thrilled!” she said.
“We love you!” a woman called out.
“This is the one song I sing that’s not from the Great American Songbook. But it is from an American movie, so.” The band played a slow intro, full of brushes on cymbals and plinking keys.
“Won’t you come see about me,” she sang. Applause, an excited murmur. “I’ll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby.” This was “Don’t You Forget About Me,” from “The Breakfast Club,” done Molly-style. “Don't! Don't! Don't! Don't! Don’t you.” I had a dim memory of a bit of trivia I’d heard in the eighties, possibly on Casey Kasem’s show, about how the song hadn’t been written by Simple Minds, and that Jim Kerr, the front man, didn’t want to sing lyrics like “vanity, insecurity.” Here, Ringwald sang "vanity, and security," with relish. She rocked and danced to a piano solo. “As you walk on by!” she sang, in a high voice. “I said, La la la la la.” I was glad that she was owning the John Hughes experience, if coyly—but hearing the essence of this song just made me want to watch Bender, young and triumphant and vindicated at last, pumping his fist as he walked across the football field in a good old-fashioned eighties overcoat, his new diamond stud in his ear.
“I’m Molly Ringwald, thank you!” Ringwald said. She thanked the band again. “See you in the coat check!”
A Brooklyn man in his late thirties, wearing a sports coat and looking debonair, gazed around the room with satisfaction. He was enjoying the experience of being at the Carlyle, watching a star of his youth. “When you come to these shows, you’re listening, but you’re mostly watching someone’s story,” he said. Being there, he said, gave him an idea of what it would be like when we were the older people in the room. “I feel like I’m looking into a cardboard tube and seeing the future,” he said.
