"More" Than The Greatest...

It was a little smug, a little jaded, a little insensitive. I caught myself a few seconds after I said it, don't know how much offense was taken. He would have been well within his rights to put me in my place, but he didn't.

"More than the greatest love the world has known,

This is the love I give to you alone"

It was a recent Sunday afternoon at the restaurant, and a 70-ish fellow came up and asked me to play "More".

I said "Let me guess--it's your 50th anniversary, and 'More' was your wedding song back in 1964."

"49th anniversary" he replied, adding that he wanted it for his wife, who was at a table just 40 feet away.

Now trying to recover from my original snotty response, I offered hearty congratulations to the anniversary couple, and did my damnedest to play a nice rendition of the tune.

Fortunately it's a beautifully crafted song, and a solo pianoman has plenty to work with. There's a great and irresistible 5-note counter-melody at one point, moving simultaneously to the main melody's "more than you'll ever know, my arms long to hold you so...", and it's impossible to exclude it from any arrangement, whether piano, band, or 60-piece orchestra.

"More" - from a forgotten movie called Mondo Caine, was one of the defining songs of summer 1963, with two different versions being played everywhere.

The instrumental version was a curiosity, featuring a weird instrument called an "ondioline" -- a very high-pitched forerunner of the synthesizer, sounded something like a cheesy electric organ, but better. America had never heard this instrument prior to this recording.

Concurrently there was a vocal version by Vic Dana, also a hit. "More" quickly became required learning for anyone in a wedding band. It was easy and satisfying to play, and wafted through catering halls all over America. It became the most popular "first song" for newlyweds in the mid-1960s, unaffected by Beatlemania and other huge musical trends of the time.

I know a couple who married in 1974, using "More" as their first song. By that time it was falling out of favor. I was working my first wedding receptions at the time, and the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and Chicago's "Colour My World" were the tunes to know. I expect that these two tunes will be frequently requested a few years from now as anniversary remembrances.

But at the present time in my little corner of the musical universe, "More" has risen to prominence again. Anniversary prominence that is -- thus my ill-considered first response to Mr. and Mrs. 49th Anniversary.

I took note of them finishing their meal and getting up to depart. I then played the song a second time -- this time adding a vocal, with a few nearby friends joining in.

Hopefully it relieved me of my guilt for having been so smug earlier on. If I was the writer of "More", I'd be awfully proud of its place in American culture, and its deep meaning to so many people throughout the years. Hopefully I'll see that couple next year on their 50th.
　

Christmas Piano Man

Another "Most  Wonderful Time of the Year" has come and gone,  and once again I banged out my extensive Christmas repertoire at the restaurant.    So much has been already said about the use and misuse of this music,  but my own perspective is fairly unique.

Absorbing Christmas tunes came quite natural to me when I was an Irish Catholic kid, as I managed a "dual" secular/religious enjoyment of the whole thing.  After decades of attitude adjustment perhaps I've settled into a stable philosophy,  loving some tunes and hating others, with the great majority of them falling between the two extremes.  So here is a list of my Most Notable Christmas Tunes,  that I know all too well on piano, have "relationships" with, and are food (whether candy canes or fruitcake) for thought.

WHITE CHRISTMAS -- One of the easiest tunes to sing. A simple lilting  melody, with a total of only 54 words, with pretty-sounding things like "treetops glisten",  "sleighbells in the snow", "dreaming", and "may your days be merry and bright".  It only takes about a minute to play it, half that time if it's an impatient jazz band.  In the words of the author (Irving Berlin) it "passes the whistle test"

Honorable mention must go to the The Drifters' wacky R&B arrangement  of White Christmas from 1955, which gets airplay every year, with a marvelous lead vocal from Clyde McPhatter. Of all the Drifters' hit songs, their first one just happened to be a Christmas song.

CHIPMUNK SONG -- the 1950s also produced this silly thing, which is even shorter than White Christmas, clocking in at about 35 seconds.  The "sped-up voices'' idea was quite novel in 1957,  so people were happy to sit through the remaining two minutes of the record,  with the comedy and a second run-through of the song.   The song is fading into obscurity, and deservedly so.  I managed to avoid the tune completely this year.

JINGLE BELL ROCK  and  ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE -- Ah, perfection.  Owen Bradley, record producer and architect of the "Countrypolitan" sound that attracted NON-country listeners in the late 50s.

He was a "Nashville" guy, not a producer of "Rock" records per se,  but ironically it was he who was responsible for these two timeless Christmas "Rock" tunes.  It was actually rockabilly, the historians would say, tasty and irresistible.  Listen for Hank Garland's great guitar fills on both records.

OK OK the lead vocalists on each record -- Bobby Helms and Brenda Lee -- were perfect too.

Not to play down the songwriters!!  Separate from the hit records, the both tunes are joyful and totally sing-able around any piano, as the years have proven to this pianoman. These two tunes will be sung 5000 years from now.

THE CHRISTMAS SONG  -- once again -- Ah, perfection.  That is, the original 1946 Nat King  Cole version, utterly warm and Christmasy,  a little touch of soft romantic jazz,  just makes you want to sit at the fireplace with your most favorite person.

Other versions have flooded the airwaves in recent years.  Overblown production and VERY overblown vocal performances,  that don't hold a candle to the original.

This Mel Torme composition is rich in melody and chord changes, works beautifully as solo piano or just about any other instumentation.  Once again -- they'll be playing this 5000  years from now.

GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER -- no 5000 years for this meanspirited novelty tune, which after 30 years now has gotten annoying to almost everyone.

MARSHMALLOW WORLD -- It's so hard to picture Dino walking around in the snow and enjoying it.  He was such a tanned, Vegas-y kinda guy, but he makes the tune work. Comparing snow to marshmallows is odd too.  I just learned it two years ago, and now I have to wait another eleven months to try it again.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (WAR IS OVER) -- This tune has slowly grown on me over the years, a rather unconventional "Christmas" song which barely mentions Christmas.  What John Lennon does mention, however,  is a World At Peace.  The Bible speaks of "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men" on the occasion of the Nativity---so this song, much more than most others,  seems to be getting to the original heart of the matter.

The tune has an anthemic quality, evoking images of many, many people, the world over, chanting "War Is Over If You Want It".  It's not about family, it's not about community, it's about all humanity. It's absurdly idealistic,  demonstrates why some people thought Lennon was a saint.

Which he wasn't of course.  But he had a dreamy idealistic side which is captured perfectly on this record. And it caught on.  Not too easy to make a piano arrangement of this, but I'll keep trying.

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS -- like The Christmas Song, a beautiful song, which is being "modernized/stylized" by far too many "soulful" and "jazzy" singers. OK OK, maybe I'm being an old fuddy-duddy about this -- the Taking Too Much Liberties Debate can go on forever.

LINUS AND LUCY -- Schroeder sits at his little piano playing this jazzy little ditty, and the "Peanuts" cartoon kids all dance around.  We've been seeing it since 1968.  The title makes little sense because the wrong characters are named, and there is no lyric.  I can get away with playing this one in late November, a subtle announcement that the poinsettias will arrive soon.

SLEIGH RIDE -- year after year, the original version keeps getting played -- an orchestral piece that runs a full five minutes,  perfectly recorded over fifty years ago by the Boston Pops.  Images of Sometime Long Ago when people actually moved around on a One-Horse Open Sleigh.

Lyrics were added to the piece a few years after the original composition,  and the Johnny Mathis version seems to get as much airplay as the instrumental.  There are many, many lyrics whizzing by like a toboggan, and Johnny made a noble effort.  But Johnny did not drop in on my gig this year, so I settled for playing that terrific instrumental.

MERRY CHRISTMAS DARLING -- absolutely my favorite, as a gorgeous piano piece....but even more so when I hear the heavenly Karen Carpenter version.  Not about religion, not about winter, not about "good cheer",  simply about love and missing someone at Christmas.  Karen's brother Richard wrote the tune.  Little did he know....

O HOLY NIGHT --  potentially the most moving of the purely religious songs.  It's a challenging vocal piece, and  only a great singer should try it.  With luck, such a singer will show up at the restaurant,  and it will be late in the evening when things have quieted down, and everyone will be listening in rapt attention, and it will be transcendent,  and you just might go to church on Christmas.

However it's not remarkable as a piano solo, and I'd just as soon not play it that way.  There are a few recorded versions making the rounds each year,  and the Josh Grobin version is stunning.

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR -- This tune seems to capture the "happy and magic" feeling that makes you want to immerse yourself in decorating, shopping, partying, and other Wonderful American Christmas stuff.  Andy Williams had a wholesome family Christmas Special on TV for many many years, so I think his voice is perfect for this tune.

As it turns out, Christmas at the Irish Coffee Pub has indeed been a most wonderful time for me the past few years, a warm and fuzzy family restaurant, with a piano player who feels right at home there.   May your days be merry and bright, all year 'round.

Whither the Zither Man

The internet is great for digging up people and memories of the past,  but it has thus far failed to locate the Zither Man.  A few years ago someone gave me the impression that the Zither Man was still up there in Westchester County,  perhaps still zithering in some restaurant.

I don't know his name,  in fact I encountered him only once,  over fifty years ago at a Mother's Day family gathering at a German restaurant in White Plains, now defunct, called Maxl's.  Germany and the zither go back a long way together, so this clean and simple music wafting through Maxl's was perfect ambience for sauerbraten and ale.

Eventually I got away from the table to get a closer look at the Zither Man.  I was a mesmerized ten year-old kid, watching his right hand pluck the strings. while the left hand did its mysterious fretting work.  No drama,  no applause,  just one contented fellow playing what he felt like playing, and presumably being paid for it.  Nice deal,  I thought.  

So I immediately began my zither lessons.  Nah,  just kidding.  In the pre-Beatles early sixties, most kids took piano lessons.  By the time guitar lessons became fashionable I was already a few years into piano,  and not inclined to switch to anything, including the zither.

Abracadabra, over fifty years zip by,  and every weekend now I'm  playing ambient dining music at a Long Island restaurant, keeping it as clean and simple as possible.   On Sundays especially there's guaranteed to be kids stopping by to check it out,  mesmerized by what a pair of knowledgeable hands can do with the instrument.

Surely this scenario goes back many centuries,  to whenever "restaurants with live music" got started,  be it zither,  piano,  or medieval lute.  It always has and hopefully always will provide ten-year old kids with their first close look at a pro musician at work.

Maybe the Grim Reaper has by now crooked his finger, saying Come Hither Mr. Zither.  But I remember him being fairly young at the time -- 20s or 30s? -- so I still imagine that I can track him down,  talk about Maxl's, music, ten-year old kids,  maybe even a zither lesson.

Middle Aged Friends

The Baldwin Acrosonic is back. After a demeaning 3-year stay at a ramshackle college frat house, my parents' old upright piano was rolled into these new digs in Patchogue yesterday.

Prior to its exile to the frat house, it had been in my care at my old house in Central Islip for a dozen years, after my parents' house had been sold. My four-year jaunt on the high seas shook things up quite a bit. The piano might have stayed there with those University knuckleheads forever, except that I changed my mind about a) the cruise ship life and b) Poconos life.

Here in Patchogue I already have the baby grand piano, which serves all my playing needs. However a new itch has developed -- that of being a piano tuner -- and that itch will be scratched with the help of this 1968 Baldwin Acrosonic. I'm unable to get an exact meaning for the word "acrosonic" -- it's simply a cool model name which tries to say "this piano sounds really good".

And it certainly did sound good to me when I first played it, in its birth year, in a Baldwin showroom.  I'd already been playing for six years, but I'd come to hate the tone of the Knabe Grand which had served as my starter piano. Its hammers were very worn-down and tired, and the sound was rather dull compared to that of many other pianos I'd tried.

For their part, mom and dad were happy to get rid of the 7-foot grand because it took up way too much space in the already-small living room. Couch space had suffered over the six years. Even worse - we were forced to get a little four-foot Christmas tree in December and stick it on top of the grand piano. All those unused Christmas tree ornaments because of Steve and his damn piano.

I have no fantasy or desire to make a living tuning pianos, especially in this high-tech musical century. Nonetheless the craft of it has become increasingly fascinating in recent years. I saw a lot of pianos tuned on the ships, one guy tuning five pianos in one afternoon while the ship is docked in some big city. Based on some conversations with my long-time piano tuner Jerry "The Piano Doctor" Gravina, I may be well suited for this, and I'm looking forward to this new adventure.

Benny was already familiar with this piano from the Central Islip years, and he quickly placed himself on the bench, within a few minutes of the delivery, like a reunion with an old friend. In deference to both of my "old friends", I placed a towel on the bench -- so right now it's Benny's favorite sleeping (and flopping) spot around here.

As it happens, Benny's habits were changing with the cooling of the weather. Instead of disappearing into the balmy summer night until morning, he's recently inclined to be more of an "indoor cat", staying home in the evening, usually on the Benny Bench.

An internet "Cat Years Calculator" has declared Benny's twelve years to be the equivalent of 64 human years. So Benny and I are -- for the first and only time -- in the same phase of life, a pair of late-middle-agers ready for retirement, or something like it.

I guess that means he'll be racing toward old age before I do. But you'd never know it to look at him. He's svelte and agile, and one would never know he's twelve years old. I'd like to think that the fun and adventurous "outdoor cat life" has been beneficial for him, and every mouse kill was a visit to the Fountain of Cat Youth.

Also in middle age is the Baldwin Acrosonic. A recent NY Times article said that the life expectancy of a piano was 90 years. The article spoke of the Golden Age of the American Home Piano (1900-1930) before radio and TV, when buying some piano sheet music for a new popular tune was a major event in a family. There were a plethora of pianomakers in those years, almost all of whom are gone now. The great majority of pianos manufactured then are now in hopeless disrepair, and being dumped by the thousands in landfills. Perhaps that old Knabe grand has gone that route.

But not the Baldwin Acrosonic. After it serves me as a practice-tuning piano, it should have many good years left, and I'll give it a decent home.  I feel that it was born under a lucky star, as was Benny, as was me.

Good Old Days

There is a very unofficial brotherhood of baby boomers, whose minds and hearts are forever married to Spanky, Alfalfa, Stymie, Wheezer, and the other legendary child actors of the 1930's who starred in the Little Rascals Comedies. When two people discover each other to be "Little Rascals Freaks", there is an exhuberant exchange of quotes from the series, such as -- "Don't call me Norman, just call me Chubbsy-Ubbsy" "We want the Florry Dorry, we want the Florry-Dorry..." "Just an Echo.....Yoo Hoo..." "He-Man Woman-Haters Club" "Come on Algebra, this is no place for you" "Aw now I gotta grease Wheezer" "Otay"

Underlying these films, especially during the peak years of 1931-34, was some of the catchiest, happiest music one could ask for. It was all written and scored by one Leroy Shield, a composer-orchestrator who would otherwise be relegated to relative obscurity in American Music History.

He arrived at his 2-year stint at Hal Roach Studios having spent the entire Roaring Twenties absorbing and perfecting the happy razz-matazz orchestral style of that time. The Little Rascals films, which had originated in the Silent Movie Era, were making the conversion to Talkies in 1930. Shield was given the green light to put his musical stamp on every new episode, and he made the most of the opportunity.

Whatever sheet music was used by Shield and his musicians is long lost. But in the early 1990's a group of Dutchmen called the Beau Hunks embarked on a labor of love that forever endeared me to them, as they transcribed by ear every note of this music, and then re-recorded it all.

They only had the original 1931-34 Little Rascals episodes to go by. Recording techniques back then were very primitive; as great as the music was, the sound quality was very dull by today's standards, full of hiss and pops, not to mention the interference of dialogue and other noise. In 1995 the CD "The Beau Hunks Play the Music of the Little Rascals" was released. As soon as I heard of its existence, I ran to the store for a copy. Over the years I've delighted in the clean, beautifully reproduced arrangements. The clarinets, violins, muted trumpets, saxes, and banjos were so much more clearly mixed and defined, as a purely listening experience, a long-overdue tribute to these gems from 65 years ago.

And now it's over 80 years ago. Not only did Leroy Shield pass away a long time ago -- at this point just about all of the Little Rascals themselves are gone. Having been shelved after their initial runs in the movie theaters of the 1930's, the 20-mimute films had a Renaissance starting in the late 1950's, fitting perfectly into the half-hour formats of TV. Over and over again, day after day, year in, year out, baby boomer kids like me watched the antics of these kids from a generation before, from a time my parents called the Depression Era, whatever that was. As old as these films were, they entertained this boomer more than any other childhood TV fare.

My recent return to Long Island, and the regularity of the piano work at the Irish Coffee Pub, has resulted in some new and different piano projects. Among them is a Little Rascal Medley -- "Leroy Shield for Solo Piano", so to speak. Piano was Shield's instrument, and it's easy to picture the original melodic ideas being born at a piano. Granted, the great majority of my audience does not recognize the music, having been either too old or too young to tune into the hugely successful Little Rascals TV run. The music -- certainly the way I'm playing it -- is clearly ancient-sounding, as ancient as "Putting On the Ritz" or "Makin Whoopee", which were fresh new tunes in 1930.

On a recent Sunday, Fathers Day June 17 to be exact, during my last set I jumped into the Little Rascals Medley, for my own edification, not expecting any applause or recognition. After about a minute, a middle-aged couple appeared to my right, singing the some of the catchy Shield melodies, with huge smiles on their faces. Chatting immediately afterward, we felt like kindred spirits -- they too were very familiar with the Beau Hunks, and appreciated their musical accomplishment, as well as Shield's creative genius. And they appreciated my own effort. It wasn't exactly easy putting the medley together, converting the band arrangements to solo piano.

In fact it's still an ongoing project, as I continually tweak it, adding, subtracting, re-shuffling. It's a labor of love, as was the efforts of the Beau Hunks, and as are -- hopefully, somewhere out there -- the efforts of some other musicians, doing what they can to keep this great music alive.

The Music in Your Head

When asked to sing a piano note that he or she has just heard, a reasonably musical person will do so effortlessly.

We're hardly aware of the complexity of the process. The ear hears the piano note, and the brain establishes some kind of electrochemical "picture" of the note. It then sends a neural instruction to the vocal cords, which instinctively adjust to re-create the note out of the air passing through.

Even without the help of a piano or any other immediate musical source, we can spontaneously sing London Bridge or some other simple familiar tune, with all the notes perfectly delivered, in the correct rhythmic setting.

I recently found out that this long-established singing skill can still exist -- neurally -- in a person who has lost his voicebox.

At the piano last week I was approached by a such a person. At the start he was attempting to request a tune, with what seemed like the the worst case of laryngitis I'd ever encountered, so I thought.

After a few futile attempts to make himself understood, he went back to his place at the bar, and returned with his "electrolarynx". According to a dictionary I consulted later, this "handheld device is placed under the lower jaw, producing vibration to allow speech". I'd seen people speaking this way a few times before, but I'd never "conversed" with such a person.

But my new friend - Artie - had a song he wanted to hear, and in that urgency, and in the urgency of the music that followed, I forgot about how and when he lost his larynx, or whatever serious thoughts he might have about it. This guy wanted to SING.

The tune - "If I Had My Way" - is a sentimental ditty written in 1913, performed a million times by barbershop singers. Luckily, I came across it in an old Mills Brothers album a long time ago, and immediately loved it -- truly an endearing old ballad, and it happened to be Artie's parents' wedding song.

He was delighted that I knew the song -- I even knew the lyric and sang it -- and he "sang" along with me. The electrolarynx produces a robotic, monotone pitch, and this is what Artie sang with. But in a truer sense, Artie's musical experience that night actually had nothing to do with this electronic gadget.

It would turn out in later conversation that Artie had spent almost his whole life singing, in small groups on street corners, in large barbershop-style choruses, and solo. The neural mechanism of his note creation is still alive and well. Unfortunately the last piece of the process - the vocal cords - is missing. Something like a stereo signal going to disconnected speakers.

Artie's electrolarynx provided a very consistent Dflat, and for a while I tried to place the various tunes in keys that favored that note. It probably wasn't necessary.

Artie smiled, wiggled, and shook to the music. Not only do I think he tuned out his Dflat electrovoice -- I found that I had tuned it out as well. I felt sure that the melodies were alive and well in his "mind's ear", that he heard himself really singing the tunes, as surely as I can hear the music in my own "mind's ear" at the present moment, as I write this.

It is part of the Beethoven legend that he wrote his Ninth Symphony while completely deaf. There are many musicians that are not too amazed by this.

Once again, the "mind's ear". Beethoven had decades of adequate hearing, during which he completely encoded the sounds of the orchestra in his head. He could close his eyes and "hear" his musical creations before he wrote them down.

I could do this too. But it would sound like junk because I'm not a creative genius like Beethoven to start with.

After running through many tunes with Artie, I took a break and heard him talk about growing up in Astoria in the early 50s, where one could walk down the street and find "a group of people singing on every corner". Surely they were the great times of Artie's youth, and he recounts them happily.

Obviously he caught a bad break later on. But so did Lou Gehrig, who subsequently declared himself the "luckiest man on the face of the earth". I'm richer for the "Artie" experience, and I hope his "mind's ear" and his joyous attitude will grace that piano again soon.

A Nice Niche

I've been working at the Irish Coffee Pub, off and on, in fits and starts, for almost three years now. The newest arrangement with the management seems to assure that I will be there on a very regular basis, at least throughout 2012.

Such regularity has brought on a new urge to blog, with the ICP gig as a theme.  The "Ship Notes" blog a few years ago was a pretty decent first blog effort, with "Cruise Ship Piano Entertainer" serving as a unique vantage point from which to write.

Pianos are remarkably different in their sound. I can sit and play at thirty different pianos at Frank & Camille's, and discern thirty different timbres, with thirty different "actions".

The "action" of the piano is the group of mechanisms -- keys, hammers, flanges, pins, and other little doodads that result in 88 hammers hitting metal strings. Some "actions" allow the key to depress easily, for more rapid playing. However there are also "hard actions", where more force is necessary to depress the key.  And there are endless variations on this idea, such that there seems to be a millon different "actions".

My point being -- I really love the piano at the Irish Coffee Pub. It's a Yamaha upright, with a terrific sound and a fairly easy action. The management keeps it tuned, without any prodding from me. I've been inspired to learn more tunes, and to stretch out and experiment with arrangements.

The dining crowd and employees at the restaurant have responded well to what I do. Later in the evening, as the diners depart, the entertainment frequently becomes boisterous and vocal, with the help of some old singalong fans who I've known for many years now, going back to the "Jolly Swagman Days" of 1997-2003. It's a distinct switch from one style of piano entertainment to another, and I love them both.

I've found a niche I like very much, and hopefully I'll get some good stories out of it, both informative and entertaining.