It was well past midnight. The after-dinner crowd had long gone. There had been a spirited group around the grand piano bar earlier, about eleven after the Broadway shows let out, but now there were only two quiet souls left around the grand’s gleaming top. Some suave-looking blond guy with Alan Ladd hair slicked back was billing and cooing his waif-like date. They were lost in each others’ eyes. She looked familier, a winsome, platinum blonde. I thought I’d seen her somewhere before but couldn’t place it. Whatever, they were in a world of their own. They wouldn’t work me with requests. I was just part of the furniture, the jukebox.
According to the folding sign out front, I’m Johnny Hart, “The Toast of Broadway,” The sign used to say “Playing all your Broadway Requests. Stump him and win a FREE DRINK.” It was true. I could play whatever they wanted, from every Broadway musical going back to Showboat in 1924, the beginning. I also could probably have done the whole Gilbert and Sullivan songbook before that, if the truth be known.. That’s the big advantage of playing by ear; you can’t play all that wow’s-em, maybe, but you can style a rendition of just about any tune you hear.
I thought it was a great gimmick, but But Sid, the owner, had painted over that promise when I started deliberately letting people “stump” me regularly each night and he had to pay up with gallons of free booze. What the hell, I argued with him. Let them have some fun. The customers loved it. Besides, nobody wanted to hear some of the unfamiliar tunes they had thrown at me, even though I knew them. I guess I won; Sid had the sign changed. And for my part, I was glad to play my own preferences sometimes and not have to be Mr. “Name That Tune” all the time.
I had been playing a longer set than usual, considering the thin audience—the usual lounge stuff, mostly standards, with some light jazz and the occasional film or show tune mixed in, and of course “New York, New York” every third or fourth selection. Lounge goers never could get too much of that one, like Tony Bennett’s poor heart that he left clear out there in San Francisco (sniff). And every time I began its unmistakable opening bars, the crowds joined in.
“If I can make it there,
I’ll make it any-where.
It’s up to you, New York, Newww Yorrrrrk!.” (Big ending—ta-da! Applause applause.) Thanks a lot, Frank.
But no one was really listening most of the time.. That’s why they call it background music. I don’t mind. I know people come to eat, have a few drinks, and mellow out. There’s no line around the block to hear me play “New York, New York.” I just do a single. I’m not Nelson Riddle’s orchestra. And hell, I don’t even sing. But I belt it out on the Yamaha Grand with gusto, and if they clap once in awhile, I’m okay with it.
It used to bother me when I started out thirty-some years ago, being ignored and drowned out by the clanking dishes and loud conversations, but not lately. During my last rendition of “New York, New York”, I began to get that certain ache in my rear end that urges “Break Time, Johnny.”. Piano benches—even fancy, padded ones like Sid bought me a year ago—get awfully hard when you go at it for a more than a set or two.
Stretching over an hour now, this set had been a real bladder-buster. I looked over at my two lovebirds. I thought I should say something about taking a break then, but they were still lost in each other’s eyes and I didn’t want to break the spell. I started to get up. But suddenly I heard a voice to the left.
“The Way You Look Tonight,”
I looked at the lovebirds. They hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Beg pardon?” I asked.
“Can you play, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’?” Alan Ladd repeated, without breaking his gaze into his lady’s eyes.
Finally, I exulted, someone with class. “Oh yes, Jerome Kern,” I replied. “My pleasure.”.
. The tune was one of my own favorites: an old standard. What a great way to end the set, I thought. then I’ll relax and have a couple of cups of my special coffee to chase the cobwebs away before my next, and last, set at two.
I liked my coffee with lots of cream and sugar, and I always spiked it by melting half a Hershey bar in it when it was hot, and floating a pat of butter on it for bouquet to tickle my nose.. I took a lot of kidding for it from the waitresses, but I drank such cocktails about eight times every night. They gave me energy when I needed it, late into the wee hours, and wired me enough to get through till morning, when I crashed with some fellow vagabond jazzmen over at Jake’s diner on 42nd Street, and filled up on eggs and fried potatoes, then went back to my hole-in-the-wall apartment and slept like the dead till two or three in the afternoon. What a life. I love it most of the time. Hey, it’s Broadway, right? the crossroads of the world!
Tonight, though, looked like it was going to be a slow one. Snow had been falling on midtown Manhattan since mid-afternoon. Pretty rare for it to accumulate before New Year, I mused. It would probably keep the late crowds away.
I struck a few chords and began the melody, warming to the song’s charm. They didn’t write them like this anymore, I thought. The caressing melody was a balm to my jangled sing-along nerves from earlier in the evening. I loved to play this song.
Then I faintly heard the outer lobby’s heavy outer doors swing open—the ones with the big brass handles and Tiffany beveled panes in red, gold, and cobalt blue It was the one accoutrement Sid hadn’t stinted on in the whole place. “A high-class front door’s important,” Sid said.
People were laughing, and soon several hearty revelers tumbled into the lounge, full of cheer and ready for more good times. Several young ladies shivered and huddled to warm themselves, dusting the fresh-fallen snow from their furs, giggling and prancing about like reindeer to shake small clumps of matted white powder from their open-toed heels. A couple smiled coyly my way; others looked around for the hostess to seat them.
Open toes, I thought, in this weather? that’s nuts! New Yorkers don’t dress for snow, and women would rather look good than almost anything, even if it meant risking frostbite. But Sid’s isn’t this group’s first stop tonight. They’re already feeling no pain. I’ll bet they’re with some Homers from Podunk, in town for a convention and looking for a good time. Sid, the owner, continued to greet them at the front desk like old friends, his eyes alight with dollar signs. There must have been close to a dozen altogether. Allegra, the hostess, hustled to organize the seating, directing three busboys impatiently.
These girls— the first party--weren’t bad-looking. Great legs! I noted--showgirls, perhaps. From the looks of their pricey too-light dresses and elegant accessories, even in the dim glow of the art deco sconces Sid got from a condemned theatre down the street, they were uptown types. Some could have been models. Or these days--who knew?--maybe high-powered executives themselves in some multinational corporation. Times have changed.
Their obviously affluent escorts were close behind but had taken the time to check their dark coats and white scarves before entering. One rubbed his hands vigorously. A second, rotund fellow paused to light a cigar. It was wet from the snow, and he was having problems. Probably been chewing on it for blocks, I thought. The guy looked for all the world like Jackie Gleason. A third groomed his glistening few strands of dark hair, carefully pulling them over the crown of his otherwise bald pate. There, that’s got it, I thought. Now no one will notice you’re bald as a billiard ball. And I thought women were vain! One waved cheerfully, and I waved back.
Well, there goes my break, I thought. I should have taken it before this song. If I leave now, Sid, will have a fit. Sid Trainor—Mister Sid to the hired help—didn’t like a quiet bar when cash came in, and it came in now. “Big bucks mean big tips” he always said to motivate the waitresses. That was one of his business mottos. The other was “Kiss their ass and take their money.” These pearls of business acumen had made Sid Trainor’s Skyroom Lounge—the third in ten years after the first two got foreclosed—a fabled success.
By the time Jackie Gleason finally got his cigar lit, Allegra somehow seated them all at table five. There were only five tables out in the open, framed by two rows of high-backed booths along the walls where people could be alone, so table five was the best seat in the house for the big “Floor Show”: me. Johnny Hart, “The Toast of Broadway,” just like the sign out front said. I wasn’t going to get away anytime soon.
Annoyed by this rowdy interruption, I tried to return to my mood and bore down at the keys, determined at least to finish the Kern tune then hop to my break before somebody shouted out for some stupid sing-along tune or yelled for “New York, New York.” Table five looked likely to do just that. If you play piano bar for thirty-six years as I have, you know what some people are going to request even before they know themselves.
I don’t sing, and I don’t usually know the words to songs I play. But I instantly recognized the words this time as I heard them:
“Love-ly, With your smile so warm. And your cheek so soft….”
The voice seemed so faint at first that it seemed remote, even piped in through the ceiling speakers. But how could that be, synchronized with my playing? Not likely. Then I thought it was coming from table five. It was pretty good singing, though--professional. Maybe an actor. But table five was busy ordering. Someone in the lobby? Or was I just hearing things? I started to get concerned.
Then the voice sounded nearer. I looked to my left. Alan Ladd was singing to the waif, softly, beautifully. But it wasn’t Alan Ladd anymore. His hair, though still sleek and debonair, was darker. And his thinner, longer face was unmistakable. It was Fred Astaire’s face. And it was Fred Astaire’s voice, not two feet from me, and my god, Fred Astaire’s suave smile, and he was singing right into the upturned, beautiful face of none other than Ginger Rogers! No kidding, Fred and Ginger, at my piano bar! What the hell was this, some hologram? I was stunned!
Jerking back, I nearly knocked the keyboard’s heavy cover down and crushed my fingers. But I didn’t lose the song. What a shock! Did somebody slip me something in my drink?
It was all I could do to keep playing, but much to my surprise, I did. I know it sounds impossible, but lounge piano players could probably handle Armageddon itself and not lose a beat. Remember the orchestra on the Titanic? We’re just made that way. You go with the flow, and not much throws us off our game. Somehow I continued, and got to the song’s ”bridge”—the middle part, the part I like best. Great chords, great progressions; enchanting, hauntingly beautiful music. I don’t care what age you compare it to. Every jazz man knows what I’m talking about. That’s why they call these tunes “Standards,” Baby, and if you can’t play them blindfolded, even for a couple of dead hoofers two feet away, singing so close you can feel their breath, Man, you can’t do piano bar.
“With each kiss your tenderness grows—Tearing my fear apart—
“And that laugh that touches your nose—Touches my foolish heart-- .”
As he gazed into her eyes, Fred’s insistent passion was melting Ginger’s sophisticated reserve with each phrase. She was falling for every word, every tone, every nuance of the song’s magic..
Even as my left brain fairly screamed for a rational explanation, my right brain continued to control my hands, to sound every note, every chord and flourish of this familiar tune I had rendered so often before. Yet I had never played it like this, never so flawlessly and with such feeling. I was in that “zone” musicians sometimes enter, when I wasn’t consciously playing the keys at all, just listening to the music, entranced. Only other musicians know what I mean. I swear, the piano was playing itself!
Again I asked myself, had I had too much to drink? Or was my butter-and Hershey bar-spiked coffee shorting out my mind? giving me visions? Drinking and drugs lace musicians’ lives like sodas and candy in the heat of a gig. But no, the single Lowenbrau I had with my pizza at seven was hardly enough to cause this--not even allowing for bad mushrooms. Besides, the Lowenbrau was some loudmouth’s tip he insisted they bring me for playing “The Lonely Goatherd” from The Sound of Music while he stood in front of the piano and “directed” me, moving only his index fingers and grinning like a moron. Its glass still sat atop the piano half empty. I didn’t know how any of this could be happening, but there it was, as in a dream, and as insistently real.
Before I continue with what happened next, I have to say, Sid Trainor’s Skyroom Lounge is not exactly the Waldorf-Astoria. But we do have a dance floor of sorts, and have had for the past three years. At least that’s what Sid calls it—well, he really prefers to refer to it as “The Ballroom Area.” It’s a fake wood gym floor deck he got cheap from another demolition, with beveled edges so the customers don’t usually trip on it unless they get snockered. It’s only about fifteen feet square, out in front of the piano bar, but Sid likes it. He put it in so he could advertise “Drinks—Dancing—Floor Show“ on the front folding sign. And sometimes the customers do like to take a few turns when they start to get a glow on.
Mostly, though, Sid wants me to keep them drinking and doesn’t like it when I get them too worked up and they dance too much. “When they’re dancin’ they’re not drinkin’,” he says. “And when they’re not drinkin’ they’re not payin’.” Boy, that Sid—like a steel trap for business, man. But at the same time I’m supposed to keep them entertained enough that they stay and order more. Overall, he thinks the Ballroom Area is a good thing, as long as they dance off the buzz quickly and order more. I’m supposed to mix the tempo so they go back to their tables every several minutes. The waitresses are supposed to have another round waiting for them whenever they return. That’s the nuts and bolts of our little hustle, and most of the time it works pretty well.
But nobody was dancing now. They were sitting at table five frozen like zombies, their eyes bulging and their mouths hanging open in disbelief as they, too, beheld pure magic and questioned their sobriety, just like me. So it’s not just me! I thought with some relief.
I finished the bridge, and as I hit the repeat and da capo-ed to the start again, I swear Fred and Ginger literally floated from their seats onto the Ballroom Area and started moving as one, just as they had originally in Swing Time in 1936, their sixth of ten films together, and many say their best. The elegance, the grace of it, the feet that seemed never to quite touch the floor, the perfectly matched bodies swaying and anticipating each step, adapting effortlessly to the ridiculous confines of Sid Trainor’s “Ballroom Area,” as if the couple were dancing atop a Fifth Avenue penthouse under the stars of a summer night. It took my breath away.
And as I neared the final phrases, they glided back as smoothly as spirits to my piano and settled like swans onto their seats. Fred held Ginger’s graceful hands before him lightly. They gazed into each others’ eyes.
“Lovely,” he sang tenderly, “never, never change--
“Keep that breathless charm.
“Won’t you please arrange it ‘Cause I love you,
“Just the way you look to-night.”
Why my fingers moved of themselves, why they would not, could not stop playing, I could not fathom. I just had to slowly repeat those final notes, and I slowed way down as I did so, each note now chording, holding--. .I didn’t want the song, the dream, to ever end.
I dropped my eyes to the keys for only a moment, to execute a final tinkling arpeggio. But that was all it took. When I glanced up again, Fred and Ginger were gone, and Alan Ladd now held his lady’s small hands to his lips.
Such a hush followed as my magic couple rose and left
Then suddenly thunderous applause erupted. The Broadway revelers instantly snapped out of their trance as if released from a sorcerer’s spell, then rushed the piano.. They crowded into all the seats around the grand like musical chairs. Sid was beside himself, redirecting more seats, dishes, and drinks. Allegra was running her legs off on reorders. I started to rise, but Sid rushed over to me.
“Johnny Boy! Where you going! You can’t leave now!” he implored. “C’mon, keep it going! Play! Play!”
Oh well, my butt was stuck to the bench anyway, I thought. They’d probably have to pry me off. “Evening, folks. What’s your pleasure?” I asked
“All the Things You Are!” someone shouted. “And sing it.”
“Great song,” I congratulated. “One of my favorites I don’t sing, but you can.” And I began another Jerome Kern tune I truly love.. “Very Warm for May, wasn’t it? About 1940, I believe.”
