Many jazzy offerings for mom’s special day

Sophisticated lady, sophisticated lady …

She is hip to politics but loves her jazz

She’s got lots of rhythm she’s got lots of class …

— “Sophisticated Lady,” by Chuck Jackson, Marvin Yancy and Natalie Cole”

Sunday is Mother’s Day, a time for husbands, sons and daughters to wonder what changes they can ring on the yearly celebration. The answer: Take the sophisticated lady out for “a little night music.” When it comes to jazz in the Washington area, the options are abundant.

From pricey supper clubs to church basements, the venues come in every stripe and hue, with cover prices from free to stratospheric.

The music, too, springs from a cornucopia of style and content, ranging from the newest funk-inflected rap-jazz to classics straight out of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s to experimental stuff for which no words seem to suffice.

The scene offers new faces as well as performers who have been around forever, part of a local artistic community driven or at least informed by the desire to make homegrown music that honors the long jazz traditions going back to native son Duke Ellington.

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Possibly the most romantic artist for moms on the town is singer Dick Smith, a Washington Redskins defensive back and running back from 1966 to 1967 who appears often at the Henley Park Hotel’s Blue Bar at 10th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW.

At 60, Mr. Smith is drop-dead gorgeous and has a voice that plays like a Stradivarius. Every phrase seems cut from glass, honeyed with a tenderness and warmth that speaks straight to the heart.

The Blue Bar is jammed whenever he plays it, as he will this weekend. The swank restaurant and bar crowd can’t seem to get enough of him and his songbook, which includes George Gershwin, Cole Porter and everything Frank Sinatra did but then takes “a cool curve,” he says, to include gospel and rhythm and blues.

“I sang all through college at Northwestern,” he says in an interview between sets at the hotel, which on most jazz nights — Thursday, Friday and Saturday — is filled to overflowing. Regular customers include former CNN superstar Bernard Shaw and drop-bys from staff at the nearby National Public Radio offices and the Cato Institute.

Northwestern University asked him to headline its annual entertainment extravaganza, a show produced by the Women’s Athletic Association and Men’s Union that gave the likes of Charlton Heston, Ann-Margret and Warren Beatty their theatrical starts.

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