WILLIE DE VILLE AND BAND
WILLIE DeVILLE launched his band, Mink DeVille, at downtown rock clubs like CBGB in the mid-70's, but unlike the other performers who found their initial audience on that circuit -the Talking Heads, Television, Blondie - Mr. DeVille was a New York classicist. This city's most distinctive popular music has often been a mixture of street-wise realism and sheer romantic invention, and Mr. DeVille's songs and the personality he projected had both.
He knew some of Manhattan's tougher neighborhoods, including the blocks east of Tompkins Square Park, which are the setting for some of his most arresting songs. But he had also learned from the pop music cranked out by professional songwriters in Broadway's Brill Building in the l960's, and especially from the Drifters and Ben E. King disks that populated New York's side streets and back alleys with Romeos and Juliets who wore leather jackets but were pure in heart.
In his three-piece suits, which were street-corner sharp, and his pencil-thin mustache and pompadour, Mr. DeVille could have been a character from ''Spanish Harlem'' or ''Save the Last Dance for Me.'' And perhaps he was. Certainly his music had an authenticity, a kind of New York soul, that few of his fellow travelers on the punk-rock circuit even aspired to.
Mr. DeVille's career never quite took off, despite the impressive breadth and depth of his talent. He is recording a new album for Atlantic records, having departed from his previous recording commitment under less than amicable circumstances. And on Friday night he was at the Savoy, where he demonstrated with an almost insolent ease that he is still ready for the recognition that should have been his several years ago. He has the songs, he has the voice, and he has the band. And he has expanded the scope of his music by adding elements of French cafe songs and Louisiana zydeco to the mixture of rock, blues, Latin and Brill Building soul that was already there.
Now is the time for Mr. DeVille to finally make good on his exceptional promise. One hopes he will be able to make a new album that captures at least some of the feline grace and casual mastery of shows like his performance at the Savoy.