"Oooh, I love the blues, baby!" Jackie Richardson croons in her character as the adult Alberta Hunter and judging from the toe-tapping and chair dancing going on around me, it seems the audience can't help but agree. Richardson and co-star Janice Lorraine, accompanied by four incredible on-stage jazz musicians, do an outstanding job of belting out the music and times of singer Alberta Hunter in "Cookin' at The Cookery", presented by the Arts Club Theatre Company.

Alberta Hunter was a blues and jazz singer since before those terms were invented. Born in Memphis in 1895, she left for Chicago at a young age to follow her dream of singing professionally and started out on a journey more successful than she could have imagined.

Cookin' follows Hunter's life story through the dive bars of Chicago to relative prosperity on Broadway, two turns of service in World War II and the Korean War, and well finally well-deserved fame and fortune. She retired from the music business at age 59, only to go back to school and into a 20 year nursing career! And don't think she stopped there either - when she was forced to retire at 82, she re-launched her singing career and forged full steam ahead until she died 6 years later. She was apparently a woman who couldn't sit still, and that penchant for liveliness showed through her music as well. At one point in Cookin', she asks her producer if he's coming to her funeral, because at the pace the band is playing she'll "be dead before we get out of here". Accordingly, they try it again "with some hot sauce on it" and the result is a soulful, powerful sound that grabs hold and makes you wish the entertainment could go on all night. Honestly, if you aren't bobbing along to the music in this one, then you just have no soul. There are no words for the people beside me that didn't come back after intermission.

Written and Directed by Marion J. Caffey, "Cookin' at the Cookery" is billed as a "sizzling musical revue", and so I suppose it's allowable that the show touched on - and off again - Hunter's love life in a little over 2 lines. It seems she was a lesbian who never consummated her marriage of 2 weeks, and although she never discussed her love life, she never tried to hide it either. More detail on the private life of an overweight, poor, black, lesbian woman who refused to be marginalized in a time when any of those things lost you respect would have been very interesting, I think, but if it would have taken away from the music then I'll excuse it. And that is my only complaint. This is a dynamite performance from the casting to the choreography and well worth it to take everyone you know.

"Cookin' at the Cookery" is playing at the Stanley Industrial Alliance stage until October 15th. Tickets are available from the usual outlets.
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Cookin' At The Cookery
Sept. 14th - Oct. 15th
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
2750 Granville Street, Vancouver (Granville @ 12th)

Photos courtesy The Arts Club Theatre. Credits: (top) Jackie Richardson in CanStage's 2003 production of Cookin' at The Cookery. Photo by Shin Sugino. (bottom right) Alberta Hunter. Max Jones Files/Redferns/MUSICPICTURES.COM.

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