Paul Anka is at his best walking among his fans.

As he jogged triumphantly into the Congress Centre, through the crowd of smiling Ottawans welcoming him home after more than 20 years away, Anka was in his element last night.

He drew some 2,500 fans to the dinner concert benefit for the Canadian Liver Foundation.

It was called "A Night to Remember," and although a few young faces in the crowd might have been drawn to his music, most of the fans were remembering as much as they were listening.

Vegas, Ottawa, it doesn't really matter, all Anka needs is the big band, the fans, the flashing spotlights, the cameras and the strains of Diana swelling in the background to transport us all back to the early days with his beautiful voice.

He sounds a little older, a little more like Tony Bennett now than he did when he was a kid in New York hanging out with Bobby Darrin and making all the girls swoon.

But he's still making the girls swoon.

A fan named Evelyn looked as though Anka had made all her dreams come true as he sang Put Your Head On My Shoulder to her and invited her to dance.

"Evelyn, please don't get too crazy on me, Evelyn," he sang as she latched on to him and looked like she might never let go. Anka seems to have that effect.

Deputy Prime Minister John Manley was at a loss for lyrics as Anka stood next to him and passed him the microphone for a few bars of Puppy Love.

But humour also came in the form of a stream of piano-side jokes about Clinton, a Cosbyesque schtick about life as a father and grandfather and about other great entertainers.

SEAMLESS BLEND

Before his grand entrance, a mini-documentary of footage from the '50s and new footage of Anka showed hundreds of girls screaming for their super star. Sure, all those years might seem kind of hard to bridge, but as Anka said between his first few numbers, "We're going to be covering a lot of material here."

In fact, it was odd how seamlessly Anka sewed the golden oldies together with his later work. Dropping names of other crooners he'd written music for, he hop-scotched from work he had made famous himself to songs that had boosted the careers of such greats as Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra. A kind of lynch pin in that genre of music, Anka did the songs his way, and last night he proved he could do it every bit as good as Old Blue Eyes.

PAUL ANKA

The Congress Centre

'In his element!'

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