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Frieda Lee, shown in January, returned to City Winery on Monday to celebrate Sarah Vaughan and Mister Kelly's.
Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune
Frieda Lee, shown in January, returned to City Winery on Monday to celebrate Sarah Vaughan and Mister Kelly’s.
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Ella Fitzgerald played there.

So did Lenny Bruce and Mel Torme, Barbra Streisand and Muddy Waters, Anita O’Day and Billie Holiday, Curtis Mayfield and Frank D’Rone, Dick Gregory and Tom Dreesen.

Between 1953 and 1975, rising stars and established legends took the stage at Mister Kelly’s, on North Rush Street, making it a national destination for anyone who valued daring fare in music and comedy.

So it’s well past time for a documentary film to tell the story of the fabled place and the visionaries who created it, brothers Oscar and George Marienthal. “Mister Kelly’s: Wasn’t It a Time?” aims to fulfill that mission, and on Monday night the makers of the doc-in-progress held their second major event at City Winery to build interest and support.

Like the first one, which occurred in January at the same spot, the sophomore effort drew a capacity audience to hear a marathon of music-making. Picking up on the January concert, in which several Chicago singers performed music from the album “Ella Fitzgerald: Live at Mister Kelly’s,” Monday evening’s show featured several vocalists revisiting “Sarah Vaughan at Mister Kelly’s.” And though Vaughan’s reissued 1957 album doesn’t reach the artistic heights of Fitzgerald’s landmark recording (few do), it clearly inspired several of today’s Chicago artists.

The idea behind the concerts and film is to cast a spotlight on a venue that “smashed color and gender barriers,” comedian Dreesen said in a trailer for the work-in-progress.

“When you came to Mister Kelly’s, you were in rarefied air.”

Few Chicago singers have been more deeply influenced by Vaughan than Frieda Lee, who opened the evening with the album’s first song, “September in the Rain.” Lee’s gauzy tone and medium-swing tempo lovingly evoked a distant time and place.

But when Lee dug into “Willow Weep for Me,” listeners heard how much of her own story the singer has brought to Vaughan’s legacy. Taking an audaciously slow tempo, Lee reveled in long, legato phrases and delicate melodic embellishments. In “Just One of Those Things,” Lee proved that you don’t have to rush to swing.

The emerging Chicago singer Sophie Grimm approached “How High the Moon” boldly, in that she revived Vaughan’s improvised lyrics and patter – and sold them as if she had invented them herself (no small feat). When Grimm launched into scat singing, she justly drew the noisiest ovation of the night to that point. For Grimm bounded up and down the scale with a degree of freedom and assuredness one rarely encounters in young singers.

But the biggest, loudest, most raucous applause of the night went to the two least-known performers on the bill: students from ChiArts, the Chicago High School for the Arts. Performing music from Vaughan’s 1959 album “After Hours at the London House,” Caleb Smith and Joshlyn Lomax destroyed every myth and stereotype about teenagers’ indifference to jazz.

For Smith sang “Misty” with as much craft as emotional intensity, tapping the ardor of Billy Eckstine and the silken smoothness of Nat King Cole. Lomax delivered “Tenderly” with unhurried grace, her performance at once polished in execution yet spontaneous in feeling. Each singer’s voice obviously is in transition, suggesting greater accomplishments yet to come.

Above all, the poise and control of their work was a tribute to their ChiArts teachers, for no high schoolers sing like this without savvy adult instruction.

Elsewhere in the evening, Daryl Nitz, the concert’s producer and director, offered a retro, Al Jolson-inspired account of “Honeysuckle Rose”; Ellen Winter brought bell-like clarity to “Be Anything”; Lynne Jordan made a quasi-operatic aria of “Embraceable You”; Kimberly Gordon showed deepening maturity in “I Cover the Waterfront”; Jeannie Tanner conjured characteristically warm tones and poetic phrasings via voice and trumpet in “Detour Ahead”; and LaShera Moore lavished that great big alto of hers on “Like Someone in Love.”

All of which augured well for a documentary film with a new director, Theodore Bogosian, and a most determined producer, David Marienthal, a son of George and nephew of Oscar. Created in partnership with WTTW-Ch. 11, “Mister Kelly’s: Wasn’t It a Time?” will push beyond its title to explore two other Chicago rooms famously owned by the Marienthals, London House and Happy Medium.

If the film proves as effective as the first two concerts championing it, there will be welcome viewing ahead.

Eddie Shaw homage

The University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, which has been intensifying its focus on the blues, will present a salute to saxophonist Eddie Shaw, who died in January at age 80.

“Eddie Shaw Tribute: Brass in the Blues” will feature Bill McFarland and Hank Ford of the Chicago Horns, plus Rodney Brown, Michael Peavey and members of the Wolf Gang band at 8 p.m. Friday in the Logan Center Performance Penthouse, 915 E. 60th St.; admission is free. For more information, visit www.loganbluesfest.org.

Cabaret soiree

Concerts, master classes, workshops, panel discussions, multimedia presentations, open mics and other events will stretch more than a week during Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion, running Oct. 28-Nov. 4 in multiple venues.

Coordinated by Chicago cabaret performer and advocate Claudia Hommel, the extensive program will feature Broadway performer Faith Prince, music director Alex Rybeck, French artists Clotilde Rullaud and Christian Pages and others. In effect, the conference will promote the art of cabaret to the public while connecting professionals from both sides of the Atlantic to each other.

For more information, visit www.cabaretconnexion.org.

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

hreich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @howardreich