WHEN commentators try to characterize, in a stroke, the style of life in New York at a certain period, they are often drawn to such figures as Jimmy Walker or Alexander Woollcott. But those figures are given their resonance, as markers of a style or an age, by being placed in a circle, a cluster of people with a sharply etched character. We think, of course, of the Algonquin Roundtable, the circle containing George Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley. They are all amplified, in retrospect, by recalling the flavor of the conversation that surrounded them. If we think of Damon Runyon, it is clear that the characters who peopled his stories of Broadway were drawn from the remarkable range of types that were in fact brought together in the net of Runyon's friendships. That net would encompass people in journalism, show business, and the underworld; it would take in Walter Winchell, Al Jolson, and Frank Costello.

For some of us these characters still retain such a vivid presence that we almost feel like poseurs when we gather late at night, around the time, after the shows, when Waldo Winchester (Winchell) and Ambrose Hammer (Brooks Atkinson) would be gathering at Mindy's. And yet, that is also our homage to them: they offered the most compelling example of friendship conveyed in a crackling style. Beyond that, their wit would be drawn outside their private lives, to public things (res publicae, we might say), and they would furnish, in their meetings, the kind of conversation that would be taken, for years, as a defining mark of life in "the city."

That urbanity has largely receded from the cities. That sense of the matter struck me in an instant when a friend in New York introduced me to the work of "Hutch" (Leslie Hutchinson), who used to sing in London in the 1930s. Hutchinson was a black singer with an elegant presence, rather similar to the persona marked out today by Bobby Short. He flexed his arts in a similar setting, in tony cafes, not overly large, with a gathering of urbane listeners in evening dress. As with Bobby Short, he would show his main strength with Cole Porter and composers working in that style. His voice was firm, with many shadings; his piano strong without being showy, and it was colored to be set off precisely against his delivery of the lyrics. But it was the lyrics that made him memorable.

We cannot preserve the generation of the Thirties, but we can try to preserve the sensibility marked in their lyrics. That sensibility reflected a certain worldliness, even among people who were not burdened with a college education. These people could show rather refined discriminations in their manners. They could also retain a moral compass without much pretension, and even while making allowances, as Evelyn Waugh used to say, for people whose diaries would be much in need of editing.

That sensibility was summed up in the style of singers such as Hutch, and it can still be observed in a few, rare places, where there is a constituency for it. Those places are mainly in cities, and among the cities, mainly New York. And again, the identifying sign can be found in the lyrics. In an audience tuned to this temper, the pleasure comes in knowing the old lyrics-- but then a deeper satisfaction comes in discovering original but unfamiliar lines in old standards, in the songs we thought we knew. And so, my friend wanted me especially to hear, on a tape of Hutchinson, this passage in "These Foolish Things":

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations...

It was not simply that the lyrics were racy, though it was important, of course, that they had an edge of sex. The appeal came through allusion, or intimation, with rhymes that were fetching, but with a comic tartness. Aficionados often draw on this repertoire to pose puzzles to teach other. Fill in the lyric: "You're the top/You're the steppes of Russia ....."--what comes next? "You're the pants on a Roxy usher." At dinner a few weeks ago, a young Englishman living in New York was remarking on how powerfully he was drawn to this country, how thoroughly he liked the USA. Something in his words seemed to be struck off from Noel Coward's bantering song, "I Like America." I began fumbling, or fishing, for the precise lyric, and one of our party completed it.

I like America, I have played around Every slappy-happy hunting ground But I find America--okay.

I've roamed the Spanish Main Eaten sugar-cane But I never tasted cellophane Till I struck the USA.

THE NEW YORKER who introduced me to Hutch took it as an obligation even more pressing to show me the work of Blossom Dearie. I confess that Miss Dearie was at first only a hazy presence for me, even though she had managed to establish herself in the rank of serious musicians and singers by the mid Firties. She had come from Upstate New York, in the Catskills, but she made her way to New York City, and from there, eventually, to London and Paris. She would feed her own legend through the simple device of bearing the name she was given at birth by her Scottish father. She would let other people stoke their imaginations in trying to guess the meaning behind the name. On this side of the Atlantic, her following could be found along a circuit that stretches from San Francisco to Montreal, but it finds its base finally in New York, at the Ballroom on West 28th Street. (She is expected to return for a long stay beginning later this month.) There, she settles herself in at the piano--in that line of Henry James, she grasps her warrant--but with the ease of one who is offering, for the evening, some of her most engaging works, to friends long seasoned.

The voice is curiously, seductively high-pitched. Seductive in the sense that it draws the listener to wonder, first, about the mystery behind that voice: Is it an advertisement of innocence, or a feigning of gentleness? But there is no feigning: there is gentleness, but also a certain steeliness. The first hint is in the piano, with the evidence of a firm, sure hand, setting out the frame or design of the piece. The voice is modulated, and shaded carefully to fit the character of the composition. There is playfulness, in abundant measure, and a spirit that seems ready, at any time, to break through the constraints of the form; but it becomes plain, instantly, that there is no inadvertence here.

What, for example, could be all that new in Rodgers and Hart's classic, "Manhattan"? ("We'll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too..."). That song has become quite familiar to us over the years, as it has been rendered by our most gifted singers, such as Ella Fitzgerald, and we have come to absorb its rhythms. Miss Dearie can impart her own effect, though, by subtly altering the rhythm, or waiting an extra beat before delivering the lyrics we expect: "And tell me what street compares with Mott Street innnn July, sweet pushcarts gently... g]i-ding by." In that delicate shift, she makes us aware of a different voice, and of a work suddenly reshaped by a different hand. One might say that she tells us what we already knew, but had not been quite aware that we had known.

She produces this effect, again, mainly by slowing the rhythm, making the beat and the words linger, letting the sense of the song press itself upon us simply by opening it up to us. In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare has one of his characters describe "a man into whom nature hath so crowded humors that his valor is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with discretion." What must be grasped, I think, in Blossom Dearie is that she offers precisely the opposite state of being: she does not crowd her humors, but allows them the space to breathe, to reveal themselves more fully. The strands of these compositions become clearer, the sentiments less compressed, more distinct, more resonant. There is, altogether, more to savor. The textures are not smoothed over, but sharpened. The sardonic becomes tarter, the whimsical becomes slightly more knowing and playful. Thus her song "My Attorney, Bernie":

When I dine with my attorney,

Bernie,

He buys wine from the rare,

imported rack.

That's 'cause Bernie is a purist,

Not your polyester tourist.

Bernie waves the glass

around a while

Then takes a sip and always sends

it back.

In her own composition, "Blossom's Blues," she offers a tongue-in-cheek version of the racy blues numbers struck off in the past by black mamas:

My name is Blossom;

I was raised in a lion's den.

My nightly occupation?

Stealing other women's men.

I'm an evil, evil woman,

But I want to do a man some good.

I'm Gina Lollobrigida,

I ain't Red Riding Hood.