Petula Clark: 'Downtown' Uptown - NYTimes.com January 30, 2012, 2:27 pm Petula Clark's cloud-breaking voice first entered my life when, as a nursery schooler, I begged my parents to buy me her big new hit single, "Downtown." So it seemed appropriate that I spent Friday night, the 47th anniversary of the song's run at No. 1, hearing her sing it at Feinstein's at Loews Regency, during her first extended New York engagement in decades. Appropriate, but also odd. As much of a pop milestone as "Downtown" was, who in 1965 would have imagined that Clark would still be singing it, at a swank Park Avenue cabaret no less, almost 50 years later? Probably not even Clark herself. Yet Clark was always age-defying. Though nominally part of the British invasion, she was already in her mid-30s when "Downtown" was released, and she found herself competing for airplay with artists mostly 10 or more years her junior. But with songs like "I Know a Place," "Don't Sleep in the Subway" and "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love," she was able to straddle pop and rock to appeal to both teenagers and adults. Her voice, as Stephen Holden noted in his Times review of her show, contained no dark shadings; instead she sang with a chin-up wisdom about overcoming romantic and other hardships, and the songs" sprightliness helped make her the queen of AM radio for a few years in the mid-"60s. Clark doesn't sound quite the way she did then, but at the same time she hardly sounds like someone whose next birthday will be her 80th. "Not a day over 62!" was the loving assessment at my table. She sang and moved nimbly onstage, offering generous versions of all the crowd-pleasing hits as well some Broadway and movie standards. She accompanied herself movingly on the piano to Gershwin and Piaf. And she poked fun at her signature song by substituting "Duane Reade" for "Downtown." Clark could have worked half as hard and still had the audience wrapped in her fuchsia sash. But she didn't take one moment or note of the show for granted. Clark's engagement runs through this Saturday. You could probably fly cross-country for what it costs for the show plus dinner, but then Petula Clark was never a cheap date. And after all these years, she's still worth every penny.