BY JUD COST

Lesley Gore burst through the purple velvet backstage curtains at Yoshi's in San Francisco, deftly wove her way through her crack backup quartet like a shifty college halfback and began singing almost before she reached the microphone. The energetic onetime teenage diva from Tenafly, N.J. has been around long enough to know that her devotees expect reverential treatment of her many chart-busting hits (including "Judy's Turn To Cry" and "Sunshine, Lollipops and Roses"), no matter how dated the sentiments may seem to a woman now in her early 60s. Thankfully, Gore also eschewed the common practice of loading all the "oldies" into a medley, just to get them out of the way and sprinkled the vintage material throughout the set, instead.

If anyone worried whether the pop star would fit in at a jazz club that only recently loosened its booking policy to include mainstream acts, Gore proved most adaptable. Her moonlit version of the lovely jazz chestnut "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" was worthy of '50s songbirds Anita O'Day or Sarah Vaughan at their best.

But it was the pre-Beatles tunes that put Gore on the yellow brick road to stardom that people came to hear tonight. "I watched American Bandstand while having milk and cookies everyday after school-Bobby Rydell, Danny & the Juniors - and I said to myself, 'Shit, I can do that!'" Gore told the packed house. Thanks to a few well placed demos, the 16-year-old singer got a phone call from famed producer/jazz composer Quincy Jones, asking if she wanted to cut a single for Mercury Records. Mere weeks later, "It's My Party" shot straight to the top of Billboard's national listings in May of 1963, and Gore was now the one yakking with Dick Clark on Bandstand. 

By 1964, Gore had punched her ticket as the girl singer able to stand toe-to-toe with British Invasion heroes like the Rolling Stones, as well as R&B/soul legends James Brown, Marvin Gaye and the Supremes, on the glorious live-concert film The T.A.M.I. Show. As the movie's hosts, Jan & Dean, sang in "(Here They Come) From All Over The World,"  the P.F. Sloan/Steve Barri-penned theme for the flick: "The representative from New York City/Is Lesley Gore now, she sure looks pretty." By the summer of '64, Gore's career peaked with another mistreated-girlfriend song, the perfectly arranged "Maybe I Know," sweet counterpoint to the Shangri-Las' eerie tale of teenage love lost, "Remember (Walkin' In The Sand)."

With a fine ear for pacing, Gore wrapped up her Yoshi's set with a one-two knockout punch. "It's My Party," in her capable hands is a perfect teenage short story, and Gore's early 1964 smash, "You Don't Own Me," is a hackle-raising anthem of epic proportions, a song that could have been adopted as the theme of the women's liberation movement: "Don't tell me what to do/Don't tell me what to say/And please when I go out with you/Don't put me on display." In one gigantic leap, it makes up for all the teenage-girlfriend-as-punching-bag songs that came before it.