Pop Music Reviews : Cramer at Ambassador: Lull in an Elevator

Listening to Floyd Cramer’s music at the Ambassador Auditorium on Wednesday was a bit like getting stuck in an elevator with a Muzak sound system.

How about a medley consisting of “Yesterday,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “The Way We Were”? Or a collection of such piano-oriented pop masterpieces as “Near You,” “Maple Leaf Rag” and “Boogie Woogie” (the Tommy Dorsey version)? Still, you had to give Cramer credit for knowing his audience, which reveled in every minute of a collection of pieces that lacked only an 800 number to order “Piano Versions of the World’s Greatest Country Songs.”

Occasionally, traces of the Cramer who was Nashville’s first-call studio piano player for years burst through the laundry list of standard songs. “Georgia on My Mind” received a thoughtful interpretation and “Last Date,” Cramer’s 1960 chart-topper, was one of the evening’s most appealing numbers.