Lauren Hooker Jazzes Up Sunday Brunch

If you had to be indoors on a picture-perfect afternoon like the one mother nature treated us to this Labor Day Sunday, the place to be was listening to pitch-perfect Lauren Hooker during Hibiscus Restaurant's Sunday Jazz Brunch.
The restaurant, located inside Morristown's Best Western Hotel, has been serving up its traditional American and authentic Caribbean cusine fare for nearly three years.

The jazz brunch was started two months ago by owner and Jamaican transplant Karleen Brandon to fill a void in the local music scene for a jazz venue that catered particularly to an older, more sophisticated set, she said. Bringing in jazz musicians like Lauren Hooker to play on the cozy room's New Jersey Jazz Society-donated grand piano, Brandon is well on her way to fulfilling her restaurant's mission.

For the brunching Morristown crowd, Hooker played storyteller and musician with a solo performance singing and playing piano on standards, originals and instrumental classics reprised with her own original lyrics. She opened the show with a retelling of how watching a smoky Mal Waldron gig at the Village Vanguard in the '80s led to her recording with the former Billy Holiday pianist on his "Seagulls of Kristiansund". She explains how her childhood experience growing up on sailboats for months at a time informed the original lyrics she set to his instrumental composition. The song appears on her 2007 debut album Right Where I Belong which she made available for sale at the event.

Along with their scrambled eggs and jerk chicken, guests were treated to original cuts off Hooker's upcoming CD Life of the Music including the bouncy, uptempo shuffle blues number "Countin' on the Blues" and the ballad "I Am Doing Very Well," a love song rife with longing and heartache. She demonstrated her impressive talent for scat singing on "Love Me or Leave Me", which is filled out with bass, drums, and saxophone on the new album. Life of the Music will be released by Miles High Records on Nov. 16.

During her three-set performance, Hooker also revived Shirley Horn's "Here's To Life," a song Hooker plays live often and "At Last" by Etta James, which Hooker claimed "was good enough for our president and his wife when he was sworn in, so it's good enough for me."

Self-described Lauren Hoooker "groupies" like Micki Shilan, Helene Marshall, Thelma Springer, and Bernice Bernstein were "virgins to the jazz brunch," drawn to Hibiscus on Sunday for the entertainment. Shilan, a 76-year-old professional comedian called the "varicose vixen" and winner of New Jersey's 1998 Funniest Female contest (amateur category) regaled the brunch crowd when she accompanied Hooker on her rumba-fied version of "Night And Day" on shakers, percussion instrument and hips. When the duo finished the number, Shilan said, "Cole Porter is rolling over in his grave."

If you missed Hooker at Hibiscus, you can catch her next gig on Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. at New Milford's Garden Cafe. A list of Hooker's upcoming gigs can be found at Lauren Hooker Jazz on MySpace.