Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...changing keys so often that they become confused." - Ernie Swann, at Detroit's Salamandre room, prides himself on living up to the motto "You're a Stranger Here Once." Between gulps of Liebfraumilch, he listens sympathetically to the troubles of the drinkers who huddle around his piano bar, treats each individually with an appropriate number drawn from a repertory of 2,000 songs. "I've always had a feeling for the other side of the piano," he says. Looking like a walrus in repose, he plays for three hours at a clip, occasionally breaks out his "polished...
...Matty Cortes, at Miami Beach's Yacht South Seas, a 171-ft. ship formerly owned by the Woolworth family, is a 38-year veteran of the cocktail circuit, specializes in the sophisticated songs of the 1930s and '40s. Hunched over his piano in the ship's dimly lit, couch-lined salon, he plays with a rolling, lilting style that is guaranteed not to rock the patrons or the boat, which is moored at the 79th Street causeway. The son of a New York Philharmonic percussionist, he says that the chatter of the customers does not bother...
...Combining elegance and brash good humor, she bounces freely from Latin to folk, Hawaiian to Dixieland, but is most effective in numbers with a hint of country twang. An attractive divorcee, she has a large following among the men, to whom she plays as deftly as she plays the piano. She can be either nursemaid or sedup-tress, gauging her attack by "the different stages of drink." Says she: "If they're looking at me, I try to entertain. If they're occupied with themselves, I just sit back and sort of mess around." - Nappy Gagno, at Boston...
Thurber assembled the piece several years before his death. In a humble, un-self conscious and altogether pleasant way, it is an experiment in total media. Dramatic readings, with more acting and less reading, depending on the piece, are accompanied by a quiet jazz piano; his cartoons and illustrations are projected above the set, sometimes as asides to the stage work and sometimes as the center of attention...
Doug Levinson composed the incidental jazz and plays it on the piano. His work is professional, if somewhat pedestrian, and interesting enough to hold you listening between lines...