Paula West hasn't made "New York, New York" part of her repertoire yet, but the San Francisco-based jazz singer is carrying on a torrid affair with the city that never sleeps. What's gratifying for her Bay Area fans is that the passion is entirely mutual. Without the benefit of major label backing, West has become Manhattan's most visible and acclaimed jazz vocalist, one of the only singers who moves effortlessly between New York's most prestigious cabarets, jazz clubs and theaters, including Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

In May she's booked for a week long run at the Jazz Standard, and in the fall she settles into the Algonquin Hotel for her annual engagement at the storied Oak Room. Back in January, she headlined at Columbia University's Miller Theater, flew back to the Bay Area, and then returned to the Big Apple the next week to accept the New York Nightlife Award for "Outstanding Female Jazz Vocalist" at Town Hall, her third consecutive triumph (or the fourth... if you count 2004, when she shared top honors with Dianne Reeves).

"I work more than most singers in New York," says West, who performs Herbst Theater on June 15 as part of SFJAZZ's Spring Season. "But my desire to live there has nothing to do with my profession. I just love the city. I go there almost every other month, for one reason or another. If I'm not working it's just to hang out."

An Insinuating Sense of Swing

West's appeal as a performer starts with her rich, velvety contralto, excellent pitch and insinuating sense of swing. She's not the kind of jazz singer who uses her voice like an instrument, improvising long scat solos. She prefers to lavish attention on a song, sneaking around the edge of a melody, stretching a word here or clipping a phrase there so that each piece sounds as if it was written with her voice in mind.

While her stage persona is demure and self-possessed, she has a treasure trove of songs rife with come-ons and double entendres, ranging from the sly and flirty to brazen and lustful. When she brings her voice down low and throaty, she makes it clear why American Songbook lyricists didn't need to be explicit to reveal the naked truth about romance.

West is at her best when she's being naughty. From George Gershwin's "Lorelei" to Cole Porter's "Laziest Gal in Town," she has an entire bag of flirty and downright lustful tunes that she swings with an insinuating grace. When she hits the release of Porter's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," a tune that could serve as her theme song, her almost cantorial wail lends the song a lasciviousness that would have certainly pleased the author.

"Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, have the most suggestive lyrics," West says, "and that's what makes it fun, because they're still leaving everything to your imagination. I'm really not that way in person, so it's kind of fun to live that part of myself on stage. The number one thing about singing a song is being able to relate to it somehow. It doesn't mean you're going through heartbreak at that time, but it's something you've experienced."

Like the great jazz/cabaret singer Wesla Whitfield, West has honed a reputation as a song sleuth. She's put her stamp on a handful of Oscar Brown Jr. numbers (with the blessing of Brown, who made his last Bay Area appearance at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre in 2003 with West), and has mined the neglected body of tunes associated with Pearl Bailey.

In her most impressive feat of alchemy, she transforms Bob Dylan's prolix "Subterranean Homesick Blues" into a dramatic jazz vehicle.

She continues to delve into Dylan's capacious catalog. At her Plush Room run (concluding on March 4), she hit jazz paydirt with "Like A Rolling Stone," and and discovered another Pearl Bailey gem, "The Goodbye Song." Other tunes on her set list include Rodgers and Hart's "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," Hadda Brooks' "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere," and the hoary Scottish song that became a huge hit for Maxine Sullivan in 1937, "Loch Lomond."

"I want to try to make a show as interesting as I can," West says. "I want people to be pleasantly surprised. I think you can introduce unfamiliar songs if they're really clever or special. I know a lot of people had never heard Oscar Brown Jr.'s 'The Snake,' but people latched on to it and want to hear it again and again."

Keeping Company with Other Jazz Musicians

Another sign of West's stature is the company she keeps. Over the past five years she's forged strong ties with the finest jazz musicians on the scene, performing regularly with ace pianists Bill Charlap, Bruce Barth and Eric Reed. Until about 2001, West worked almost exclusively with pianist Ken Muir, a superb musician who crafted the exquisite, tightly knit arrangements featured on her three albums. As she established herself in New York, it was logical to tap into the city's cornucopia of jazz talent, which opened the door to a more freewheeling vocal style.

"It was scary," West says. "Ken had always been in charge of doing arrangements. Living a few blocks away from each other it was always convenient to get together. But I think you have to keep changing and evolving and trying things out."

Reed, one of jazz's hardest swinging players, was her primary muse at first, but it was a partnership that almost never came to pass. In looking for accompanists for her first extended Oak Room engagement in 2001 West left a message for Reed, but he had never heard of her and didn't call her back. "I was shying away from playing with singers," Reed says. "I had had so many bad experiences. But she called me again five weeks later and I felt so bad for blowing her off that I accepted."

He never had any second thoughts about the decision. "She's got the goods," says Reed, who also championed San Francisco jazz vocal queen Mary Stallings several years ago. "Paula's got a strong instrument. She had this piano player Ken Muir who did wonderful arrangements, cabaret with traces of jazz. Once you let Mulgrew Miller or me or Bill Charlap or Bruce Barth get our hands on those charts, it turns into an entirely different thing."

While the contentious question of what exactly distinguishes a jazz vocalist from a cabaret or pop singer has led to countless inconclusive arguments, West's compelling sense of swing and canny phrasing leave little room for debate about which camp she now belongs in. "When she opens her mouth and sings, the sound of her voice is the sound of a jazz singer, a beautiful, rich, resonant soulful sound," Barth says.

He notes that West performs a set program of songs, a format associated more with cabaret stages than jazz's looser bandstands. But the fact that she lavishes attention on the melody rather than using songs as launching pads for improvisation is also one of her strengths as an artist. 

Impeccable Material... But No Record Label

"The thing I really admire about Paula is not only her respect and love of American song," Barth says. "She really knows the tradition. It's amazing how much she knows about the history of a song, who interpreted them, who made them famous. She really chooses her material carefully, finding songs she can relate to emotionally. It's so important to relate to the words as if you've lived the story, and I get that from Paula."

Her latest accompanist is George Mesterhazy, best known as the pianist who toured and recorded with Shirley Horn when she was no longer able to play for herself. He stepped in last fall when Barth was hired by Tony Bennett and had to drop his gig with West at the Oak Room.

"My arrangements really complimented her, and we got glowing reviews," Mesterhazy says. "It's been very exciting. Of course, her musicianship is great, but I like that fact that she's not afraid. Her mind is wide open. She's like, 'Come on, throw something at me!' A Dylan tune, how are we going to make this work? And somehow we do."

The only thing holding West back is her dearth of recording opportunities. She produced her CDs on her own, most recently "Come What May" (Hi Horse Records), a gorgeous album featuring jazz luminaries such as Bobby Hutcherson, Frank Wess, Don Byron, and Victor Lewis and Bill Charlap. Eric Reed tapped her for two tracks on his 2003 MaxJazz holiday album "Merry Magic," but other than that, she's been inexplicably ignored by labels with the wherewithal to heighten her profile.

"I'm hoping to record with George this year," West says. "We've developed a lot of great material and have a fantastic connection, and I really want to document it."

Andrew Gilbert, a writer based in the Berkeley area, covers jazz for several outlets, including the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Boston Globe, JazzTimes, and KQED's California Report.