Ben Vereen at The Dakota Jazz Club

BEN VEREEN HAS ENOUGH PERSONALITY to fill Radio City Music Hall. So when he took the stage at the relatively diminutive Dakota Jazz Club in Downtown Minneapolis on August 31, 2009, it felt like the walls were positively going to burst.

The man himself even seemed as if he were going to burst; every song he sang became shows on their own. They were like mini-plays with entire story arcs, accompanied by piano, upright bass, and drums.

Before he came on stage though, actress Tina Fabrique, currently starring as ELLA at the Guthrie (or Gut-tree as Vereen pronounced it) sang a couple of songs. She's a great singer with impressive (necessarily!) scat skills. But I was most impressed by the fact that she was introduced to the stage as "The woman who also sings the Reading Rainbow theme song."

There were a couple of standout moments from the evening's 7pm show. Vereen's version of Misty was spooky, like something from "one of those space channels," a phrase he used to describe the radio channels that only come in at odd moments in the middle of the night. He used the description in a story prior to singing this version of Misty. It was just his voice, a breathy quiet version of an otherwise booming instrument, accompanied only by drum set, which the player tapped with his hands instead of sticks. I expected to see satellites floating by during such a lonely, weightless song.

Vereen spoke often of Sammy Davis, Jr. during the evening's performance. After all, he was Davis's protégé. "I'm not going to do Sammy Davis," Vereen said. He put his hand up to the middle of his torso and continued. "He was this big -- I couldn't fit into his suits. Big shoes, though."

At one point in the evening, they showed a clip from the Jack Paar show in which Davis and Vereen sang a duet, then sat for an interview with Paar. Davis said, "It's like I've been running a marathon and now I'm passing the baton [to Vereen]. Just go! Go! Go with it!" Then Paar suggests the two sing a little more. And as they sang on the tv screen, the lights slowly transitioned to Vereen, nearby at the piano. He had begun singing the same song. It was a stunning bit of staging -- like he had come out of the television itself.

Dressed in a light gray pinstripe suit, accented with an ankle-length top coat and bright red silk scarf, Vereen thanked the Dakota for inviting him out at the end of August. It turns out his very first visit to Minnesota was in January. "I got off the plane and I had tears in my eyes," he said. "I wondered what did I do to you? I mean, it was so cold it hurt my feelings!"

More Ben Vereen:
• His blog
• Article in the Star Tribune
• He's currently writing a book. Be on the lookout for it!