Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is performer Arkipass, singer the ambassador to
Speaker 1: the Great American Songbook, Michael find Scott. I go on,
Speaker 1: so you said you were just performing last night at
Speaker 1: the Pasadena Pops. Tell me about that. This is the
Speaker 1: this is the end of my seventh season. I've been
Speaker 1: working for seven years conducting and it's something I've never
Speaker 1: done before. I was asked to do it at the Pops,
Speaker 1: and I primarily programmed classic American musical arrangements, ones that
Speaker 1: often are not heard for decades, or some that have
Speaker 1: never been publicly played before. We played for the first
Speaker 1: time live the original orchestration of Over the Rainbow, which
Speaker 1: was recorded October seven at MGM and has not been
Speaker 1: performed in its entirety since that time because the orchestration
Speaker 1: was lost and I just recently found it. Okay, what
Speaker 1: is different from that than the well known version? The
Speaker 1: version that Serta in the movie is wonderful, but it
Speaker 1: was recorded with one microphone. There were different well, there
Speaker 1: were I should say one input. There were a few microphones,
Speaker 1: but it was recorded on one channel, so you don't
Speaker 1: hear a lot of things that are in the arrangement,
Speaker 1: and every time it's been transcribed, people have left out, uh,
Speaker 1: what what I think are essential parts of the arrangement.
Speaker 1: But you literally couldn't hear it. So it was a
Speaker 1: revelation for people. People went crazy just being able to
Speaker 1: hear this iconic piece of music in this iconic arrangement
Speaker 1: that they thought they knew. But I've never really heard
Speaker 1: that way. Okay, you're really an expert. So let's go
Speaker 1: back at that time. Do they even have multi track recording? Yes,
Speaker 1: yes they did. They recorded on separate strips of film.
Speaker 1: It was optical film, so yeah, you get like the
Speaker 1: Silver Street on the side. Yeah, and MGM was doing
Speaker 1: it as early as there's a there's a recording of
Speaker 1: a ballet by Dmitri Tiomkin that was written for an
Speaker 1: unreleased MGM film called The March of Time, and it
Speaker 1: exists in multi channel. And they usually would only record
Speaker 1: multi channel when they did a choir, when they needed
Speaker 1: a separate voice channel, or where there was something complex,
Speaker 1: and oddly, with a Wizard of Oz which is a
Speaker 1: very complex score with a lot going on, there are
Speaker 1: only two cues that they recorded multi channel which was
Speaker 1: the overture and the cyclone music. The rest of it
Speaker 1: was recorded one channel, which I find a mystery because
Speaker 1: b movies, lesser films with lower budgets were recorded multi
Speaker 1: channel at that time. Okay, So how many channels could
Speaker 1: they ultimately have as many strips of film as they
Speaker 1: wanted they could line them up? I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: literally know if there's but but but there are some
Speaker 1: that there are six channels, seven channels. And of course
Speaker 1: Fantasia was released in Fantas Sound in l A and
Speaker 1: at Radio City, which was a six channel process, and
Speaker 1: that's what they labeled fantas Sound. Yes, And was there
Speaker 1: any other movie in fantas Sound? Just just one? Okay?
Speaker 1: So if it was six if the theaters at that
Speaker 1: time did they have multi channel exhibition rooms, they had
Speaker 1: to fit them specially for that, and which is why
Speaker 1: it wasn't, which is why they needs yet right, okay,
Speaker 1: So what else did you play last night? What else
Speaker 1: did I play? It was a salute to MGM, So
Speaker 1: I played the Barn Dance from seven Rights for Seven Brothers,
Speaker 1: the overture from High Society, which was orchestrated by Conrad Salinger.
Speaker 1: The greatest Hollywood arranger, and Skip Martin. I played Love
Speaker 1: Is Where You Find It, which was an aria for
Speaker 1: Katherine Grayson because I found that original MGM chart. The
Speaker 1: MGM library was thrown away in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: by a guy named James Aubrey, who was head of
Speaker 1: the studio, because it was a cost cutting measure. So
Speaker 1: every single MGM arrangement was destroyed. They were all put
Speaker 1: into a dumpster, or they were used as landfill for
Speaker 1: the four oh five Freeway. The entire MGM library was destroyed,
Speaker 1: so all the musical greats that worked for MGM, their
Speaker 1: work was was destroyed unless somebody happened to keep a
Speaker 1: copy themselves, and so this entire legacy was lost. So
Speaker 1: whenever you hear an MGM arrangement like Singing in the
Speaker 1: Rain or or any of those iconic things that they'll play,
Speaker 1: and they're always reconstructed, and Over the Rainbow is a
Speaker 1: chart that well, they saved the Conductor books, which is
Speaker 1: which is a rudimentary reduction of the full scores, and
Speaker 1: so they reconstruct from the Conductor books. But in the
Speaker 1: case of Over the Rainbow, nothing survived. There was not
Speaker 1: even a Conductor part for the original arrangement, and so
Speaker 1: when I found it it was it was one of
Speaker 1: those Eureka moments. Well, once again, how did you find it?
Speaker 1: I found it at the offices of David Rose Music.
Speaker 1: Angela Rose White, who is David Rose's daughter, had been
Speaker 1: moving some things in our office and I went over
Speaker 1: there and I saw a folder that said over the Rainbow,
Speaker 1: and I assumed it would be an arrangement that her
Speaker 1: father did in the nineteen fifties and instrumental thing because
Speaker 1: he wrote these incredible He did these famous mostly for
Speaker 1: the stripper. Yes, and um. I opened up the folder
Speaker 1: and it said Loos Incorporated Production ten sixty and I
Speaker 1: lest I was looking at a set of original parts
Speaker 1: for the Over the Rainbow, which if David Rose had returned,
Speaker 1: would have been destroyed. So the fact that he didn't
Speaker 1: return it is why it survived. And he was married
Speaker 1: to Judy Garland from so it must have been borrowed
Speaker 1: for something and never returned. Did you find anything else
Speaker 1: in Angela's trove? I found other charts that he created
Speaker 1: for for Judy Garland, and he worked so ubiquitously in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: There were charts for many other singers and he was
Speaker 1: married to Martha Ray and got he did some wonderful
Speaker 1: records with Martha Ray. And so this is the stuff
Speaker 1: that I spent my lift looking for. You know, I
Speaker 1: know we talked about this all the time, but let's
Speaker 1: go stay with the Pasadena Pops. Had you ever conducted
Speaker 1: before you got this gig? No, And you'd think that,
Speaker 1: having worked with so many orchestras, that I would have
Speaker 1: turned around and paid attention to a conductor. I always
Speaker 1: took it for granted, you know. And when I started
Speaker 1: doing about Jesus Christ, this is hard. So what was
Speaker 1: the learning curve? Like? Tell us, Well, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the actor's nightmare, you know, like being on a
Speaker 1: stage and not knowing your lines. Because that first time,
Speaker 1: well they asked, what happened was I had done an
Speaker 1: appearance with the Past Lena Pops with Marvin Hamlets, who
Speaker 1: was their principal Pops conductor, a Cole Porter show, and
Speaker 1: two weeks later he died. That turned out to be
Speaker 1: his last concert, and it was shocking to everybody and
Speaker 1: in terrible and about two weeks after his passing, somebody
Speaker 1: from the Past La Pops called and said, would you
Speaker 1: consider taking over Marvin's post, and I said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you get somebody who's a conductor, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: we need somebody that has some sort of name value,
Speaker 1: and we we think that you'd be great. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I love pops music. I said, but I don't conduct.
Speaker 1: And I said no, and they kept after me, and
Speaker 1: they contacted me again, say well, we've already asked her
Speaker 1: season and we're gonna we could possibly go under if
Speaker 1: we don't have someone to It was that, you know,
Speaker 1: no guilt trip. So I said, well, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: try it, but you have to understand I have never
Speaker 1: done this and I don't know how to do it.
Speaker 1: They said, well, we're willing to take that chance. I said, okay.
Speaker 1: So I hired an orchestra to practice. I went to
Speaker 1: Seattle and Larry Blank, who's an amazing conductor, coached me.
Speaker 1: I went to Seattle and for three days I worked
Speaker 1: with an orchestra and had the musicians give me notes.
Speaker 1: And then I worked and worked and worked. And then
Speaker 1: June of next year whatever that was seven years ago
Speaker 1: or eight years ago. Uh and uh i uh. I
Speaker 1: raised my hands and they came in and they played
Speaker 1: and they really saved me, you know, they really were
Speaker 1: very kind and and uh, and it worked and now
Speaker 1: I can do it. Now I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: But then I was what is the key? What? What
Speaker 1: do you have to learn to conduct? Of course, the
Speaker 1: rudimentary um signals UH, of of giving a clear downbeat,
Speaker 1: of having your arms raised high enough that everybody can see.
Speaker 1: It's it's clear communication when there are what we call corners,
Speaker 1: when there's a change in tempo, or when there's two
Speaker 1: things going on in the orchestra and you have to
Speaker 1: cut them off on the left and keep going on
Speaker 1: the ride. And and so it's all about communicating um,
Speaker 1: a sense of the music and it's um. It looks
Speaker 1: easy and parts of it are easy, but the parts
Speaker 1: that are not easy can be fiendishly difficult. And one
Speaker 1: of the hardest parts for me is that there is
Speaker 1: always a slight time delay from the time you physically
Speaker 1: give the down beat and the orchestra plays the down beat.
Speaker 1: When I play the piano, it's instantaneous, but with an orchestra,
Speaker 1: depending on which orchestra it is, there is a time delay.
Speaker 1: And in Europe there are even longer time delays, and
Speaker 1: the the conductors are accustomed to it, but it's maddening
Speaker 1: because you have to conduct ahead of the beat, and
Speaker 1: if you're accompanying a singer, you have to conduct ahead
Speaker 1: of the beat, so you will hit the down beat
Speaker 1: when they hit their downbeat in next bar. And it's
Speaker 1: It was one of the most difficult things I'd ever
Speaker 1: had to do. And I was talking to Andre Preven
Speaker 1: about it, who of course was one of the most
Speaker 1: magnificent conductors, and he said, it's just conditioning. You just
Speaker 1: have to keep moving ahead because if you actually start
Speaker 1: to follow the orchestra, you'll get behind the beat. Let's
Speaker 1: just assume you were not on the podium and the band,
Speaker 1: the orchestra had all the music in front of them.
Speaker 1: With that work at any level, to what degree is
Speaker 1: the conductor necessary? To what degree does the conductor add?
Speaker 1: It's easy if it's a thing that just counts off
Speaker 1: and it stays at the same tempo. Uh. It's very
Speaker 1: difficult if it's a maller symphony, because somebody has to
Speaker 1: give all of the cues. Uh. And there have been
Speaker 1: times where an orchestra has continued to conduct. Famously, when
Speaker 1: Tuscanini in his waning years I was conducting a Wagner
Speaker 1: piece and he was very proud of his Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was a photographic memory, but he
Speaker 1: memorized the music. And he is in the midst of
Speaker 1: this Wagner piece and he forgot the music and he
Speaker 1: was so humiliated that he hung his head and he
Speaker 1: walked off the podium. And the NBC Symphony kept playing
Speaker 1: because they weren't going to stop, but they they knew
Speaker 1: to keep playing. And the default is the concert master.
Speaker 1: The first violinist is the one that that you follow.
Speaker 1: But if it's a piece that the orchestra has played before,
Speaker 1: they have the muscle memory and the potential to keep playing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when you have a great night, how much is
Speaker 1: the responsibility of the conductor as opposed to the players.
Speaker 1: It's both, It's really both, because there are still times
Speaker 1: when they will save my ass and uh, where I'll
Speaker 1: miss a cue here or there, and there are times
Speaker 1: where I will bring them up because one of the
Speaker 1: other things that's hard without if it's a piece that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a drummer, keeping the pulse of the orchestra
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of people playing, and especially this
Speaker 1: is an outdoor vent so the acoustics are different from
Speaker 1: the back of the place to the front, and so
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a delay with the trombone, so you
Speaker 1: have to tell them to play ahead of the beat.
Speaker 1: So one has to communicate the pulse. You have to
Speaker 1: keep the po I have to keep the pulse going.
Speaker 1: And when it's a piece of music that's difficult, the
Speaker 1: orchestra sometimes will will slow down. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that you learn as a conductor that I learned, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of counterintuitive, is that the beat has to
Speaker 1: get smaller. And the tendency is when you want it
Speaker 1: to be faster, is to flail your arms more and
Speaker 1: move your arms more. But it actually you have to
Speaker 1: do the opposite. You have to become more economic with
Speaker 1: the beat and you have to bring it in uh, smaller,
Speaker 1: so they pay. I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 1: that's the way it's done. Okay, that's done so that
Speaker 1: the orchestra is not over loud. So let's play faster.
Speaker 1: So okay, the beat is smaller. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the trombones. When you say the timing is different,
Speaker 1: you're talking about for the audience or for the conductor,
Speaker 1: the front of the house the back of the house.
Speaker 1: The timing is different in that for the sound to
Speaker 1: travel from the trumbo section to the front of the podium,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a delay, and I, well,
Speaker 1: that's what I found. Okay, So how many gigs a
Speaker 1: year at the Pasadena Pops? We do five concerts every
Speaker 1: every summer, three of which I conduct, one I just sing,
Speaker 1: and then there's a fifth one that I that I
Speaker 1: don't conduct, and then I conduct another orchestra in in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach, Florida in the winter January, February, and March,
Speaker 1: which which I do. Uh. Another three. So the other
Speaker 1: thing that's hard for me is that I'm not conducting
Speaker 1: all the time, so I have to get my chops
Speaker 1: up before I returned to the podium, and I have
Speaker 1: to practice, and I have to practice and get it's
Speaker 1: And mainly the practice is wrapping my brain around it.
Speaker 1: Then the physical movement, it's the visualization. Do you like it?
Speaker 1: I love it now, But when I first was doing it,
Speaker 1: it was so terrifying that I just would pray that
Speaker 1: I would get through it. And now I love it
Speaker 1: because it's the ultimate to cut. Okay, you know where
Speaker 1: you can program anything you want. And I, because of
Speaker 1: who I am, collected music and orchestrations for decades, and
Speaker 1: now I have charts that I never dreamt I would
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to conduct. I mean, charts for for
Speaker 1: ladies that are not in my key vocally and things
Speaker 1: that I would just find and now I can play them.
Speaker 1: And the amazing thing is that the response of the
Speaker 1: audience is so over the top for this music, which
Speaker 1: is so gratifying because most other orchestras are skewing younger.
Speaker 1: They're doing Elton John and Billy Joel and a lot
Speaker 1: of pop stuff, which is great, but but very few
Speaker 1: orchestras are playing classic pop music. So it's it's it
Speaker 1: shows that there is an audience out there, Okay for
Speaker 1: that at audience. You know, let's assume you go to
Speaker 1: see one of the classic rock acts. They have their hits,
Speaker 1: they know there's going to get a huge response. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you have your tricks? Do you had to make
Speaker 1: up the so called set list the program and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I know this will get a big response or this won't,
Speaker 1: or how do you deal with that putting a setlence
Speaker 1: together for an orchestra as just the same as what
Speaker 1: I did when I started playing in piano bars. It's
Speaker 1: all about thinking of an opening number. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like like a musical, where you program each piece of
Speaker 1: music that tells a story. That's a musical journey. There's
Speaker 1: a fast paced thing, there's an overture, there's a ballad,
Speaker 1: there's a medium tempo thing. Uh, different styles of music.
Speaker 1: Uh so Uh. It's very carefully programmed. And I probably
Speaker 1: agonized more over the order of the pieces than choosing them,
Speaker 1: because once I've chosen them, I have to to project
Speaker 1: what kind of response it's going to get, and partially
Speaker 1: that response is predicated on how I introduced the piece
Speaker 1: of music, telling people what they're going to be hearing.
Speaker 1: Like when I played over the Rainbow, I told the
Speaker 1: story of this piece and it hadn't been heard in
Speaker 1: eighty years, and it got a huge hand at the end.
Speaker 1: If I if they just were listening to Over the Rainbow,
Speaker 1: they would say that's nice, but they wouldn't know that
Speaker 1: this was something special. So that's part of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you got the Palm Beach gig as a result of
Speaker 1: the Pasadena gig. Yes, and so we you see more
Speaker 1: of these in your future. Well, yes, the short answers, yes,
Speaker 1: even though the economics are such that it doesn't pay
Speaker 1: what what I make as a singer. So I'm doing
Speaker 1: it out of passion. And the money that I've spent
Speaker 1: restoring these orchestrations has has been much more than I've
Speaker 1: than my salary has supplied. So okay. So when the
Speaker 1: players in these various orchestra like in Pasadena, you're nearer
Speaker 1: or Arcadia, literally you're near a big city. Who are
Speaker 1: the players in the orchestra, it's an incredible orchestra. They
Speaker 1: are uh players who often do Hollywood scoring sessions, like
Speaker 1: Jim Thatcher, who's our principal French horn player. He is
Speaker 1: John Williams favorite. He does all the John Williams sessions.
Speaker 1: These are players that that play all kinds of music
Speaker 1: because they work in Hollywood. So it is a dedicated
Speaker 1: orchestra that it is usually the same faces, not always
Speaker 1: because there always are subs, but they are, but they
Speaker 1: are they are a savvy group. And yet with every orchestra,
Speaker 1: the goal is to bring the music that will be
Speaker 1: fun and challenging, and pops concerts are often so dumbed
Speaker 1: down for the orchestra that they're bored, and so my
Speaker 1: goal is to bring arrangements that are exciting, that are
Speaker 1: fresh and will be challenging for the orchestra, so they're
Speaker 1: not just what they call sawing footballs, you know, playing
Speaker 1: whole notes that our company with someone singing yesterday, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there could be a great arrangement yesterday by
Speaker 1: Johnny Mandel or Henry Mancini, or there could be one
Speaker 1: that's just boring as I'll get out. So I have
Speaker 1: to make sure that every chart is something that has
Speaker 1: some kind of substance. And how much rehearsal is there.
Speaker 1: We have two two and a half hour rehearsals, which
Speaker 1: isn't enough. But they're so great that that they always
Speaker 1: write to the occasion and it always is amazing to
Speaker 1: me how they do it. Okay, can you just find
Speaker 1: the Great American Sound Great American song Book? From my audience,
Speaker 1: to me, the Great American Songbook is a body of
Speaker 1: work that essentially begins in the teens of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and it has no cut off point. Perhaps the golden
Speaker 1: age of the Great American Songbook was the nineties, thirties
Speaker 1: and forties, and that it was a period when we
Speaker 1: had an amazing group of songwriters including George Gershwin, called Porter,
Speaker 1: Jogi Carmichael, Duke Gallington, Fats Waller. I mean, you go
Speaker 1: down the list that wrote classic songs that have survived.
Speaker 1: But I think we had another amazing influx of amazing
Speaker 1: of great writers in the sixties and seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: with with Carol King and Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams
Speaker 1: and Joni Mitchell and and uh Harry Nilsen, And I
Speaker 1: mean they are to me just as significant, but to
Speaker 1: me the great. For a song to qualify being part
Speaker 1: of the Great American Songbook, it has to be a
Speaker 1: piece of music that transcends the time in which it
Speaker 1: was written, that it survives through the decades, and it
Speaker 1: is known to everybody and survives from various recordings. And
Speaker 1: so to me, uh, it's a song like over the
Speaker 1: Rainbow or Singing in the Rain or God Bless America,
Speaker 1: or There's No Business like Show Business, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: We Will Rock You. You You know what I mean. There's
Speaker 1: songs that are universe universally known, that that survived the
Speaker 1: test of time and continually are reinvented and rerecorded and
Speaker 1: are known. And so I think there are songs written
Speaker 1: today that that will become part of the American songbook
Speaker 1: because I think it's ever evolving. There's no cut off
Speaker 1: for me, however we live, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: a lot of these songs made their fame or got
Speaker 1: their fame as a result of being in films or
Speaker 1: being on the hit so called hip parade. But in
Speaker 1: the Internet era, where everything is so dispersed and h
Speaker 1: the popular chart is dominated by hip hop music, you
Speaker 1: still think that there are songs being written that will
Speaker 1: be part of the song book. I do only because
Speaker 1: history has shown that songs from every era somehow survive,
Speaker 1: even though to me I couldn't tell you what they are.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think I think Frozen from Let It
Speaker 1: Go It's probably gonna be around for a long time,
Speaker 1: unfortunately because the songwrives me crazy. But that's not the point, yeh.
Speaker 1: And it's true that many songs from the Golden Era
Speaker 1: came from films and came from uh other places. So
Speaker 1: I don't really know the answer, but just looking at history,
Speaker 1: I have to believe that there have to be things
Speaker 1: that that will survive. Name the two songs that are
Speaker 1: your favorites from the Great American Songbook. Oh well, that's
Speaker 1: that's almost like Sophie's choice, you know, but look the name.
Speaker 1: More than that, name a handful that you just your
Speaker 1: top tier. Well, things that pop into my brain. Love
Speaker 1: is Here to Stay is a song that I never
Speaker 1: get tired of singing, And for me, songs that constantly
Speaker 1: stay fresh are ones that that our favorites. So I'm
Speaker 1: king one Gershwin song. It would be Love is Here
Speaker 1: to Stay. If it's a Manstine, it's two for the Road. Uh,
Speaker 1: Jerome kern Um, probably the way you look tonight. I
Speaker 1: mean there are obscure songs that I love that nobody
Speaker 1: knows that our favorites of mine, like, uh, the theme
Speaker 1: from The Bad and the Beautiful, which has a beautiful
Speaker 1: lyric by Dorry Prevn. It's one of my favorite pieces,
Speaker 1: but it's completely obscure. Yeah yeah, but I was asking
Speaker 1: answer the question appropriately. We're not reading the bell of
Speaker 1: the audience today. It's all about you. Oh well, thanks, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish. I'm not used to that unless it's my
Speaker 1: mother scolding me. But at least your Jewish you have
Speaker 1: something to say. I remember going to college the first
Speaker 1: time I was involved when I went to a melting
Speaker 1: about high school. But you know, when I went to college,
Speaker 1: there were very few Jews, and I encounter people who
Speaker 1: didn't talk. Whereas you know the scene in uh, the
Speaker 1: Woody Allen movie where they're sitting around the table and
Speaker 1: everybody's talking over each other radio days. That's certainly how
Speaker 1: I grew up. But you talk about being let me
Speaker 1: go before that. You're obviously both an ex spred in
Speaker 1: this field and very knowledgeable. Is there anybody on your
Speaker 1: level that you're aware of? Everybody has their niche, if
Speaker 1: you will, Uh, I don't know that there's anybody that
Speaker 1: knows as much about certain aspects of of orchestrations, of
Speaker 1: pop orchestrations, and there are people out there, but I
Speaker 1: think the conflagration of all the different things I know
Speaker 1: about American popular song is perhaps unique. But Will Friedwald,
Speaker 1: for example, as a guy who knows a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot, and Vince Giordano, who is a specialist in
Speaker 1: in vintage big band music, has devoted his life to it,
Speaker 1: So they are certainly uh as knowledgeable or more knowledgeable
Speaker 1: than I am. About different aspects of American popular song.
Speaker 1: But each of us have unique corners of our brain
Speaker 1: that that are specialized, if you will, and how often
Speaker 1: is your expertise called upon by third parties? Pretty often,
Speaker 1: because people will contact me almost every day asking about
Speaker 1: a song or arrangement. Are looking for something, especially other conductors.
Speaker 1: Are people working on projects that that want to find
Speaker 1: something because it's not easy these days. In spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that we have the Internet and we have
Speaker 1: so much access, it's sometimes not easy to find an
Speaker 1: arrangement or where something went through the years. Uh, even
Speaker 1: a piece of sheet music now can be problematic because
Speaker 1: if you download something from the internet, it might not
Speaker 1: be the original because now we have all these iterations
Speaker 1: of different things. You know, it's like recordings where things
Speaker 1: are remixed and what you're what you're feeling on remixing, Well,
Speaker 1: they're so dangerous, exactly. We got the originals, like remixing
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper I got into this, the guy who did
Speaker 1: originally and Giles who and remixed it. That's like sacrilegious.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got the one, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: one they put out. You can't change that. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like Capitol Records UH put out c D s issued
Speaker 1: c ds of several original cast albums the Music Man, Um,
Speaker 1: Funny Girl, Um, Somendheim's Follies, and I forget the other one.
Speaker 1: They did a bunch of them, but those cast albums
Speaker 1: were all mixed as if you were watching that from
Speaker 1: the audience. They had the microphone panning like Robert Preston
Speaker 1: in the music Trouble My Friends. You hear his voice
Speaker 1: panning from left channel to right channel. Whoever produced that
Speaker 1: album sat in the audience and made notes and produced
Speaker 1: that where you hear the voices moving around. Well, the
Speaker 1: first CD releases the Capital put out, We're from the
Speaker 1: album masters, so they were the same as the album's
Speaker 1: transcribed to c D but they had a lot of hits,
Speaker 1: so someone said, oh, we gotta remix this. Well, whoever
Speaker 1: remixed all those The voices panned absolute everything is pan center,
Speaker 1: and they are desecrations of those original UH productions, And
Speaker 1: people say, oh, well the CD is better. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. Okay, not necessarily unless the original producer goes back.
Speaker 1: But sometimes even the original producers don't remember or you know,
Speaker 1: because it's in the moment and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other things going on. Okay, have you gotten any of
Speaker 1: these people to go back and do the best version
Speaker 1: of the original? Have I personally? I mean because I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you're a person in the field, you and you care.
Speaker 1: Does that backlash, so to speak, have any effect? Or
Speaker 1: these multinational corporations don't care. Well for the most part,
Speaker 1: they don't care. I mean, I'm like you. You you
Speaker 1: complain because you care and you want and you want
Speaker 1: people to pay attention. And sometimes they do and they say,
Speaker 1: oh god, that's great, I'm sorry. But then it comes
Speaker 1: down to the bottom line. You know, it comes down
Speaker 1: to how much is it going to cost to do this?
Speaker 1: And and and it's uh, it's sometimes heart sinking, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's the way of the world now. Well,
Speaker 1: the worst thing is that becomes the default version. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It makes me crazy, Like there are certain songs on
Speaker 1: the radio all here or the alternate takes. Someone got
Speaker 1: it from the box set and they put that up
Speaker 1: that's that has a different change in it. How can
Speaker 1: you do that? Yeah, and it's like it's the alternate
Speaker 1: take because they didn't choose it exactly. Well, put okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back you talk about your digging, your archivist,
Speaker 1: uh side of your world, tell us more about that.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, from the time I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by the history of the music that
Speaker 1: I listened to. When I was five and six years
Speaker 1: old and I discovered there was something called sheet music
Speaker 1: where a song was written down. I was fascinated by
Speaker 1: the covers and the information, the names, even though I
Speaker 1: was just learning to read. And so I've always had
Speaker 1: an interest in where the music came from. And then
Speaker 1: I became interested in the songwriters and the process. And
Speaker 1: so as a performer, when I performed music, I always
Speaker 1: tried to go back to the original sources, being the
Speaker 1: sheet music, a copy of the of the manuscript of
Speaker 1: the first recordings, because they all give me keys to
Speaker 1: how to interpret a piece of music. And there are
Speaker 1: so many parts of popular music that are oral traditions.
Speaker 1: For example, Summertime from Poor Game invest which is one
Speaker 1: of the best known pieces of music. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think it's a folk song. They don't know that
Speaker 1: it was actually composed by George Gershwin. He wrote it
Speaker 1: in for an opera called Poor Game Best, and it's
Speaker 1: been recorded by everyone from Lantine Price to Janis Joplin,
Speaker 1: and the original sheet music of Summertime does not have
Speaker 1: a high note that every soprano and every production of
Speaker 1: Poor invest is sung since the beginning of time because
Speaker 1: it's Husha, little baby, don't you cry? And then in
Speaker 1: the opera the soprano sayings this high note that goes
Speaker 1: on forever and it's this melting moment. It's not in
Speaker 1: the music, So the question is when did that start?
Speaker 1: When when did that go? When did that become part
Speaker 1: of poor game best. It's not notated there. So if
Speaker 1: you didn't know that, and you just go from the score,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't sing the high note, and people would say,
Speaker 1: where's the high note? You know? Or um? If I
Speaker 1: only had a brain, I could while away the hours
Speaker 1: confirmed with flowers, consultant with the rain. People are saying,
Speaker 1: and my head I'd be scratched. That's not the way
Speaker 1: the music is notated, and my head I'd be The
Speaker 1: entire song is notated differently from the way everyone sings it.
Speaker 1: I can't help loving that man um the bridge of
Speaker 1: that as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.
Speaker 1: That's again, those high notes are not in it. The
Speaker 1: music as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.
Speaker 1: But anyone that sings that song always goes up because
Speaker 1: that's okay. Well, some of these songs, they were written
Speaker 1: and they were conducted. Couldn't they have been changed on
Speaker 1: the fly in the original recording? Absolutely okay. Well, in
Speaker 1: the case of can't help loving that Man, I found
Speaker 1: a manuscript of Jerome Kern where he was demonstrating for
Speaker 1: some writer the way his songs are sung, and it
Speaker 1: says original the way I wrote it, and it has
Speaker 1: without the high notes, and under that it says way
Speaker 1: Morgan sang it, referring to Helen Morgan who introduced it
Speaker 1: in Showbout. So there is an acknowledgement of how it
Speaker 1: was changed. Now. I don't know how jer own Current
Speaker 1: felt about that. Now. Julie Stein told me that when
Speaker 1: he was working on Funny Girl with Barbara streisand he
Speaker 1: wrote the song people with Bob Merrill, one of the
Speaker 1: great American standards. Now streisand when she sang it on
Speaker 1: stage and Funny Girl, she sang instead of people, people
Speaker 1: who people who people, she was sanging people people who
Speaker 1: need pupils. And Julie said, Barbara for the first recording,
Speaker 1: would you please sing it the way I wrote it
Speaker 1: because everyone will copy you and I want people to
Speaker 1: hear just for the recording. And she said okay, and
Speaker 1: she went into the session and she sang the high
Speaker 1: note and sang the way she wanted and it drove
Speaker 1: Julie crazy. So now everyone says people people or the
Speaker 1: song at Last, you know, everybody does the edit James
Speaker 1: of Vision at Last and I Love has Come Along
Speaker 1: and Live Live. It's a song. That's not how the
Speaker 1: songs written. At Last, My Love has Come along, My
Speaker 1: lonely Days are over in life is just a song.
Speaker 1: That's how it's notated. But every Wednesdays and Live is
Speaker 1: just the song. Everybody is copying the Edda James record.
Speaker 1: Thousands of people copying it. And she died only a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and boy was she pissed about that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So as you dig one thing that's been well known
Speaker 1: at this point is a lot of these films were trashed. Okay,
Speaker 1: to what degree are the scores or the original song,
Speaker 1: uh pages extant? It depends on the studio. MGM threw
Speaker 1: away everything, I mean, music wise, paramount saved a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Universal. It's very spotty, a lot of stuff missing,
Speaker 1: but they do have some stuff. Um r k oh.
Speaker 1: Because they went under so many years ago, a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff went into storage and a good chunk
Speaker 1: of that survives. Sam Goldwyn, most of their scores are gone.
Speaker 1: Twenty Century Fox has a lot, but not everything, because
Speaker 1: people would borrow things and not return them. I was
Speaker 1: trying to find the original Glenn Miller orchestration from the
Speaker 1: movie of the song Chattanooga Cho. They didn't have it
Speaker 1: because somebody borrowed it along the way. So it's a
Speaker 1: case by case basis. And in some cases, as you said,
Speaker 1: some films are lost and are gone and that now
Speaker 1: finally well known Universal Fire. Nobody talks about all the
Speaker 1: films that were gone on all the television shows that
Speaker 1: were lost, and so there's a lot. There's a lot
Speaker 1: that still is uh not spoken about with that thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about songs like you know what the original versions
Speaker 1: Gershwinds Rome Current in terms of their original writing, does
Speaker 1: that tend to survive? Uh? There are almost there were
Speaker 1: almost no Jerome current manuscripts. It was one of the like,
Speaker 1: why don't they survive? And then in uh, I was
Speaker 1: happily involved with it. They're turned up at the Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers Music Warehouse, which became sort of a whole clearinghouse
Speaker 1: of many different publishers that had gone, that had been
Speaker 1: by succession become part of Warner Brothers Music Um. It
Speaker 1: turns out that there was kind of like the the Um,
Speaker 1: the Lost Arc of missing music manuscripts, and eighty seven
Speaker 1: Gershwin manuscripts turned up, and a bunch of current manuscripts
Speaker 1: turned up, much to the shock of the music world.
Speaker 1: But the short answer is that a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot is lost, and there are certain songs for which
Speaker 1: we don't have the original manuscripts. And then in the
Speaker 1: case of some songwriters, there's a lot because they saved everything.
Speaker 1: Like Irving Berlin saved everything even though he couldn't write music,
Speaker 1: so his man his original manuscripts are in the hand
Speaker 1: of a copyist. Richard Rogers saved almost everything. But in
Speaker 1: the case of many other songwriters, they're they're just gone.
Speaker 1: You know, Fats Waller would sell his songs for for
Speaker 1: the price of a couple of beers, or for twenty
Speaker 1: bucks for pocket money, so his his manuscripts are gone.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Ellington stuff. Uh, and and things
Speaker 1: also morph. There's not always that aha moment like the
Speaker 1: Way You Look Tonight Jerome Kerrn, which was an Oscar
Speaker 1: winning song sung by so many people. I discovered quite
Speaker 1: by accident that originally the germ of that was a
Speaker 1: piece of underscore for a nine Jean Harlem movie called Reckless,
Speaker 1: where the in the background of one seeing the orcasts
Speaker 1: playing duh uh just a little phrase. And a year
Speaker 1: later Jerome Current turned that into the way You Look tonight.
Speaker 1: Let's assume you go to Let's so it exists and
Speaker 1: you go to the archive. Is this stuff easily findable
Speaker 1: or is it like going down a rabbit hole and
Speaker 1: you know it's somewhere. Uh, it depends, Like everything, it depends. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Library of Congress is in many ways the premier
Speaker 1: repository for this stuff, and their collections of Gershwin, of
Speaker 1: Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern are very well tended, and
Speaker 1: yet it's not always easy to gain access. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you can gain access, and if you have a legitimate reason,
Speaker 1: you can get in there. And they're a wonderful scholarly
Speaker 1: archivists who can help. Aren't they years behind? Though? Well
Speaker 1: everybody is because it's a problem of economics, and they
Speaker 1: catalog things by demand. It's like I wanted to find
Speaker 1: a David Rexon piece because David Rexon's collection is there,
Speaker 1: and he's best known for writing Laura and was a
Speaker 1: wonderful guy and a good friend. They had never cataloged
Speaker 1: his collection, which had been there for many years. And
Speaker 1: I asked why and they said, because Michael, you're the
Speaker 1: first person to ever asked for anything from the collection.
Speaker 1: And then there's the situation of a place like Harvard,
Speaker 1: which was one of the worst experiences I've ever had
Speaker 1: as a person trying to do musical research. I was
Speaker 1: treated very nicely by the archival employees there, and by
Speaker 1: the higher ups. They treated in the most humiliating way.
Speaker 1: And it was because of the Johnny Green collection, which
Speaker 1: I knew Johnny Green quite well and was looking for
Speaker 1: something and I went to somebody and said, there's stuff missing,
Speaker 1: there's stuff that's not here, and they treat me like
Speaker 1: I was an idiot, and they said, well, it's just
Speaker 1: not there, and I said, I was at Johnny's house
Speaker 1: when the stuff was being packed up and sent to
Speaker 1: you guys, and it's a lot of stuff. They said, well,
Speaker 1: then it maybe disappeared through the years. I said, it
Speaker 1: can't have there's too much stuff. And I called the
Speaker 1: acting head of the Department of the Special Collections. His
Speaker 1: name was Tom Horricks, and he essentially hung up on me,
Speaker 1: and one of the people who was one of the
Speaker 1: catalogers there sent me an email and said, I hope
Speaker 1: you're sitting down, And he said, I took to heart
Speaker 1: what you said, and he said, I started going through
Speaker 1: with my colleague and we started looking at bar bar
Speaker 1: code numbers and stuff. It turns out that there were
Speaker 1: two hundred boxes of Johnny Green material that had been
Speaker 1: received at the at the loading dock that had sat
Speaker 1: there since like nineteen eighty nine or nine, and they
Speaker 1: were never cataloged and nobody knew they were there. Do
Speaker 1: you think I ever got an acknowledgement or an apology
Speaker 1: or anything from Harvard nothing except for my this wonderful
Speaker 1: So there's wonderful people on the staff there. It's just
Speaker 1: the fact that they were arrogant about it and treated
Speaker 1: me like I was an idiot. That story stands alone.
Speaker 1: I don't need to uh make a comment about it, Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: in the Great era of the twenties thirties forties, the
Speaker 1: first people who wrote the songs tend to be different
Speaker 1: from the people who performed the songs. Then in the
Speaker 1: rock era, starting with the Beatles, they tended to be
Speaker 1: the same people. Once again, we're an era where they're separate. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that the people who did it solely
Speaker 1: as an advocation were better or dad had a different
Speaker 1: insight or a different way of doing it. That must
Speaker 1: be noted. I think there were all kinds of motives
Speaker 1: for writing songs then as there are now. Some people
Speaker 1: write out of inspiration and some people write for commerce. Certainly,
Speaker 1: even the great songwriters were mindful of trying to write
Speaker 1: a hit song. But uh, the Gershwin's, for example, are
Speaker 1: the guys that write for Broadway musicals wrote for Broadway
Speaker 1: musicals back in the day. I had to write for
Speaker 1: plot and for character. They had to write for certain things. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that music always reflects the time in which
Speaker 1: it's written. It's it is our history. Irving Berlin once
Speaker 1: that history makes music, and music makes history. And regardless
Speaker 1: of the reason that the music for which the reason
Speaker 1: is written, or if it's inspired or not, it still
Speaker 1: is certainly a doc at historical document of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the times. I don't know if I've answered
Speaker 1: your questions. Are you kind of did as I say?
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering whether you think people who solely right
Speaker 1: are inherently better or different from the people reform in
Speaker 1: their own music. Well, Michelle Grand wrote every single day,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, regardless of where he was in
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, that was his thing. He just
Speaker 1: loved to write. Marilyn allen bergman, the favorite thing in
Speaker 1: the world. We're writing. You know that they love it
Speaker 1: and it's part of their blood. They have to write.
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between songwriters who have to write
Speaker 1: because it's an expression of something that they have to
Speaker 1: get out and someone that writes to order, even though
Speaker 1: they can be one and the same. How about someone
Speaker 1: who is a performer primarily and insists on using their
Speaker 1: own material. Do you think that's inherently better or worse
Speaker 1: than the people who soli are songwriters. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's better or worse, because sometimes the people who are
Speaker 1: encouraged by producer, Hey kid, you could write your own songs,
Speaker 1: so you get all the royalties and we'll split the publishing.
Speaker 1: They may start out that way, but sometimes amazing writers
Speaker 1: have come from that. I'm trying to think of an example,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are many people who didn't really
Speaker 1: know that they could write The Rolling Stones. One of
Speaker 1: them that okay originally and then they wrote Okay. We're
Speaker 1: in era where people are suing for copyright infringement at
Speaker 1: a much greater quantity and velocity than they ever did.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion on things are still copyrighted, People still
Speaker 1: pay attention. Well, if you want it, you wrote it,
Speaker 1: they seem to, Yeah, I know, I'm just it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, copyright is such a ross. It's such a
Speaker 1: tremendous miss. Okay, but let's stop there for a second.
Speaker 1: In a perfect world, what would it look like. Well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, in the world of songwriting, there is
Speaker 1: this crazy divide where things written after January one or
Speaker 1: in copyright much longer than anything written before that. And
Speaker 1: I think there should be a universal copyright for music.
Speaker 1: So it's all the same because right now Rapsody in
Speaker 1: Blue goes p D January one, two thousand, Yeah, public
Speaker 1: domain two thousand and twenty, And um, I think that
Speaker 1: eventually things should go public domain. I think that there
Speaker 1: is a time when they absolutely belonged to the world.
Speaker 1: So I'm not hard nosed about it, but uh, there
Speaker 1: should be a uniform copyright law. And around the world
Speaker 1: it's different. You know, it's twenty years is it twenty years?
Speaker 1: In Japan and Germany, they're all different. And until recently
Speaker 1: in the in Europe there was not joint nous, which
Speaker 1: meant that the music of a song could go public domain,
Speaker 1: but the lyric would still be in copyright, so you
Speaker 1: could write new music for the lyrics. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so crazy, and so it needs to be uniform. Uh.
Speaker 1: But as far as um people sampling and using a
Speaker 1: piece of it, absolutely there should be payment for it.
Speaker 1: And I don't understand why there would be any question
Speaker 1: about I think to a great degree that's the case.
Speaker 1: Even if talking about hip hop music, where it's famous
Speaker 1: for sampling, they used to sample stuff. Now they write
Speaker 1: their own beats because they don't want to even get
Speaker 1: into that. They don't want to an issue of infringement.
Speaker 1: They also don't want to pay. But we had the um,
Speaker 1: the Blurred Lines case. We have all these cases where
Speaker 1: people are suing today where there are a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities and saw it's in the past, and the people
Speaker 1: never sued. Yeah. Well, there was a famous case in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty with Jerome Kern and Fred Fisher, and this
Speaker 1: is pertinent because Fred Fisher wrote a piece called darden Ella,
Speaker 1: and Jerome Kurn copied the baseline. It was an astana
Speaker 1: bum bum bum bum bum um um um bum bum
Speaker 1: bum bum and he just took that bassline and put
Speaker 1: it in another song, and Fred Fisher sued Jerome Kern.
Speaker 1: The current song was called Kolua and the Fred Fisher
Speaker 1: song was called darden Ella. And the judge ruled that
Speaker 1: technically it was a plagiarism, but he did not He's
Speaker 1: felt that Kern did not do it on purpose, because
Speaker 1: a man so eminent as Jerome Kern would not have
Speaker 1: needed to plagiarize, and Kern assumed that it was fair game,
Speaker 1: and so the award was one dollar to Fred Fisher.
Speaker 1: So he acknowledged it was a plagiarism, but felt that
Speaker 1: it was not on purpose. But he acknowledged that that
Speaker 1: it was indeed a plagiarism just using that baseline. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, the opposite verdict would be the my sweet
Speaker 1: Lord she right, he's so fine. Yeah, but okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to you originally from Ohio. Yes, we're in Ohio. Columbus. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you grew up, what was Columbus like? Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a cultural hotbed because everything was about football and
Speaker 1: at my high my high school, Woody Hayes would come,
Speaker 1: you know and look for the next famous recruiting Archie
Speaker 1: Griffin went to my high school, won the Heisman Trophy
Speaker 1: and all that, and so, uh, we had a symphony,
Speaker 1: Columbus Symphony, which was always in danger of going under.
Speaker 1: My great uncle lived in New York. It was in
Speaker 1: the music in theater, not musical theater, and he said
Speaker 1: that anytime the show played Columbus it was the death
Speaker 1: town because culturally nobody went. And I went to see
Speaker 1: Vladimir Horowitz, who played Columbus when I was in my teens,
Speaker 1: and it was the only city on the tour that
Speaker 1: was not sold out. So culturally it was not um fabulous.
Speaker 1: But my parents loved music, and I grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: with music by music. Would your father at that time
Speaker 1: most women did not work outside the home. Was that
Speaker 1: the case with your mother? It was? Would your father
Speaker 1: do for a living. My father was He worked for
Speaker 1: cons Meats. Cons Meats was a company centered in Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: headquartered in Cincinnati. Their slogan was the Weiner the world awaited.
Speaker 1: Was it a kosher weiner? It wasn't kosher. And he
Speaker 1: eventually went to work for another meat company, and when
Speaker 1: it was absorbed by Sarah Lee, became a vice president
Speaker 1: of Sarah Lee. And when I was twenty years old,
Speaker 1: I I stopped eating meat. But did he bring home
Speaker 1: a lot of weaers before that? Boy? Yes, And he
Speaker 1: always warned us, explained to us the difference between all
Speaker 1: be frightened, you know. And he explained as very taught
Speaker 1: us very early, I'd be careful with those hot dogs kids, right.
Speaker 1: I just remember my parents were only the Hebrew national
Speaker 1: That's right, because those were safe. Yeah. So okay. How
Speaker 1: many generations were your parents families in America? My grant,
Speaker 1: my four grand parents all emigrated from Russia Lithuania. If
Speaker 1: you going back to check out where they grew up
Speaker 1: or their upbringing situation, I haven't. I haven't. I had
Speaker 1: an offer to go to Russia and then it was postponed.
Speaker 1: But I would love to go on to to do
Speaker 1: some concerts and that's what I will go there. And
Speaker 1: also right before she died, my father's mother mentioned in
Speaker 1: passing that she had a sibling whom she from whom
Speaker 1: she was separated when she came to America. So there
Speaker 1: was a sibling that went somewhere else that I never
Speaker 1: knew about. So I may have relatives there that I mean,
Speaker 1: I may never find them. But it's that whole thing
Speaker 1: that there's people out there that It's funny because on
Speaker 1: my mother's side, Uh, both her parents came from very
Speaker 1: large families, one of nine, one of thirteen. And after
Speaker 1: the war, you know, all these people re emerged. A
Speaker 1: lot went to what was then Palestine eventually Israel, and
Speaker 1: then they'd have the Jewish newspaper where you would advertise,
Speaker 1: like with one of our uncle, Saul, he came to
Speaker 1: America after being in the Russian Army, and he would
Speaker 1: advertise the Jewish paper, Hey, I have these relative does
Speaker 1: anybody know them? And that's how they found each other.
Speaker 1: So was your family in Ohio and your father go
Speaker 1: to there for work? Well, my parents were born in
Speaker 1: in in Columbus. Uh, why so why did your grandparents
Speaker 1: go to Ohio? I asked my mother that not too
Speaker 1: long ago, and there was some job opportunity for one
Speaker 1: of them, and then others sort of followed suit. My grandmother,
Speaker 1: my mother's mother, came to New York and worked in
Speaker 1: the sweat shops, you know, in the garment industry. And uh,
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly how she got to Columbus, but
Speaker 1: sometimes one would go and then the rest would follow,
Speaker 1: and then a community would be formed. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: grow up? Uh? Are you accute as a member of
Speaker 1: the group and outsider just one of the great masses?
Speaker 1: How did you fit into a society? I did not
Speaker 1: fit into society. When did you realize that? From the beginning,
Speaker 1: I stayed in the basement of our house um reading
Speaker 1: books and drawing, and and listening to music and listening
Speaker 1: to old records. My grandmother had some seventy eight rpm
Speaker 1: records that she gave me, and I listened to them
Speaker 1: in the basement, and and my mother would say, honey,
Speaker 1: please go outside, go outside. I was always pale. I
Speaker 1: didn't relate to any of my friends because I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to any of the music they listened to. I
Speaker 1: didn't like kids my age because I thought they were
Speaker 1: dumb because I was all around adults all the time,
Speaker 1: so I was it was very solitary. In high school,
Speaker 1: I got involved with theater and then I had friends,
Speaker 1: and then it sort of changed. But prior to that time,
Speaker 1: I was I was a lonely kid. And you had
Speaker 1: a sibling. I had two siblings, an older brother and
Speaker 1: have an older brother and an older sister, and they
Speaker 1: were quote normal. My parents knew how to do with him,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know how to deal with me because
Speaker 1: I was the sensitive one. Okay, so they were half
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. No, they're they're full okay. So at
Speaker 1: what point do you pick up a musical instrument five
Speaker 1: years old? When I was five, my parents moved into
Speaker 1: a new home. They cobbled together enough money to buy
Speaker 1: a new house, and and they had an empty living
Speaker 1: room and they had enough money left to buy a
Speaker 1: little furniture. And my dad said, let's buy a piano.
Speaker 1: And my mother said, nobody's gonna play the piano. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was five years old at the time. My sister
Speaker 1: was nine and my brother was eleven, and my dad
Speaker 1: just loved music. He said, let's buy piano. Maybe one
Speaker 1: of the kids will play, and my mom said, let's
Speaker 1: get furniture. And I remember they took me to the
Speaker 1: piano dealer in downtown Columbus. I don't know why they
Speaker 1: took me and not my brother and sister. And they
Speaker 1: they picked picked out a spin At piano, the cheapest
Speaker 1: piano they could buy. It was five dollars and they
Speaker 1: brought it home. And the next day when it was delivered,
Speaker 1: my dad was off at work, and I sat down
Speaker 1: and played dough a dear a thing I played with
Speaker 1: both hands, and my mother came in from the kitchen
Speaker 1: and said, who taught you that? And I said, nobody
Speaker 1: taught me that. She said, well, someone had to teach
Speaker 1: your your your father must have shown you, because my
Speaker 1: dad could play like chop sticks or whatever. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I made it up. She sent me to my room
Speaker 1: for lying to her because she was sure that somebody
Speaker 1: had to teach me. And when my father came home later,
Speaker 1: they realized that I was playing the piano by ear.
Speaker 1: So I started playing immediately. Just from the get go,
Speaker 1: I could play the piano, and then you had lessons.
Speaker 1: I had lessons. Briefly, I had a piano teacher at
Speaker 1: Capitol University and she would always play the lesson for me,
Speaker 1: and then she put the put the book on the piano,
Speaker 1: play the lessons, and I would just listen to her
Speaker 1: play the lesson and copy her. So after about two months,
Speaker 1: she put the book on the piano first and didn't
Speaker 1: play the lesson, and she said, okay, play this. I
Speaker 1: said I can't. She said why not. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it says. She said, You've been
Speaker 1: playing this for two months. I said no, I've been
Speaker 1: listening to you. And she got this look of rage
Speaker 1: on her face and she went out in the hall
Speaker 1: where my mother was waiting for me. She said, Mrs Feinstein,
Speaker 1: do you know your son has been playing by ear
Speaker 1: as if it was the dirtiest you know, expletive. And
Speaker 1: my mother said, yeah, yeah, I knew that, didn't you.
Speaker 1: She said no, so and I said to my mom
Speaker 1: I said I don't like piano lessons. So they said okay,
Speaker 1: and I just learned to play just on my own.
Speaker 1: I just kept so, when did you learn to read music? Well,
Speaker 1: I still don't reading music very well. And that was
Speaker 1: like the biggest sticking point with conducting, because I have
Speaker 1: to work laboriously on a score to really learn it
Speaker 1: before I conducted, and Andre prevn when when I told
Speaker 1: him I was conducting, he said, well, can you read
Speaker 1: the transposed instruments on a score? And I said no.
Speaker 1: He said, well don't you think I had to do that?
Speaker 1: I said yeah, I said, that's why I'm so embarrassed
Speaker 1: even discussing this with you. So I'm still learning a lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get rid of lessons you continue to play,
Speaker 1: like every day. I don't play every day, but I'm
Speaker 1: working so much. No, no, no, when you're at that oh,
Speaker 1: at that age, at that age, yeah, I was playing
Speaker 1: every day. I was listening to songs and listening to
Speaker 1: things on the radio, and at that time there was
Speaker 1: the the contemporary pop stations that my sister and brother
Speaker 1: were listening to me. So I was hearing Carol King
Speaker 1: and the Beatles and all that. And then my parents
Speaker 1: listened to w BNS, the easy listening, so I would
Speaker 1: listen to all the standards and they would play all
Speaker 1: the standard singers from Sinatra to Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Pegley,
Speaker 1: Nat Call. So I heard all that, and then my parents, um,
Speaker 1: like all households at that time, bought all the cast
Speaker 1: albums of all the music. Of course, that was before
Speaker 1: only gay people boughdcast albums enough and uh so I
Speaker 1: learned My Fair Lady and the Sound of Music and
Speaker 1: all those Everybody bought those albums. When Mary Poppins came out,
Speaker 1: you know we did too, absolutely so. Uh So you're
Speaker 1: playing and you get the high school, well, and you
Speaker 1: say you become part of the theater group. What does
Speaker 1: that look like. Well, it was one of the places
Speaker 1: where I could I could fit in the music. I
Speaker 1: was kicked out of choir because, um, I talked back
Speaker 1: to the teacher too much. It was a real smart ass.
Speaker 1: I thought, I knew more than Are you still a
Speaker 1: smart ass? No, not anymore. I've I've I've learned that
Speaker 1: it's important to fake humility and business. Now it was
Speaker 1: George Burns said, when you can fake sincerity, you've made
Speaker 1: it in show business. But the truth is that I'm
Speaker 1: not a smart ass anymore. But I was. I was.
Speaker 1: So you got kicked out for being a smart as? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that was the choir. What about the theater theater? Um,
Speaker 1: no problem. I became the head of the Maskers Club,
Speaker 1: which was out of the theater group, and I also
Speaker 1: did all the public address announcements you know in high school,
Speaker 1: you know, the I would I would put together these little, uh,
Speaker 1: little dramas, you know, these one minute sort of commercial
Speaker 1: and play old music and stuff. And it was this
Speaker 1: would be for the whole school before school started. They
Speaker 1: play over the speakers during home room. Okay, were you
Speaker 1: in the plays once in a while, Once in a while,
Speaker 1: I was. You were responsible for the music and the
Speaker 1: I would sometimes put the music together for the players.
Speaker 1: I played the piano for the show. Uh. When we
Speaker 1: did Fiddler on the Roof, they cast me as the Rabbi,
Speaker 1: which was because I guess I was acting in many
Speaker 1: ways like an old man. So I wasn't a particularly
Speaker 1: good performer. But for some reason that year in my
Speaker 1: senior year, I was named best Actor, which was a
Speaker 1: sad commentary. Okay, did everybody know you were this uh
Speaker 1: prodigy and piano? Yes? So that was where? Okay, were
Speaker 1: you a good student? Bad student? I was a terrible student,
Speaker 1: terrible more kind of grades um sees d s. In
Speaker 1: my senior year fs, I just barely graduated because I
Speaker 1: hated school. I didn't care about it. I didn't understand
Speaker 1: why we had to study mathematics, and I mean, it
Speaker 1: just it was incomprehensible to me. I just thought it
Speaker 1: was a waste of time. But what did your parents
Speaker 1: say about that? Well, my parents, I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to deal with me, and I had them wrapped around
Speaker 1: my finger. My mother. My dad was traveling, and my mom,
Speaker 1: she she just she was so exasperated. If she got
Speaker 1: a call from me in the middle of the day.
Speaker 1: She know I did something wrong in school, I could say,
Speaker 1: and I'd say, moms, she said, what did you do?
Speaker 1: And I was kicked out of school at one point,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't allowed to return until I went to
Speaker 1: a therapist. Well, you kicked out for for talking back
Speaker 1: to one of the teachers. They told me I had
Speaker 1: to do something and I said, well why. They said,
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you why. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: you do. And they kicked me out for questioning authority.
Speaker 1: And then did you go to the therapist. I went
Speaker 1: to the therapist and we were dealing with anger issues
Speaker 1: and he helped me a lot, actually, And then I
Speaker 1: went back to school and I was allowed back after
Speaker 1: I had the note from the therapist, and and then
Speaker 1: everyone who was in their senior year and taking their
Speaker 1: S A T S and you know all that. At
Speaker 1: and and UH, I decided I wasn't going to go
Speaker 1: to go to college because the guidance counselor who was
Speaker 1: who didn't like me at all. She said, you are
Speaker 1: not college material. You should not go to college. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I didn't go to college, and my parents never
Speaker 1: said anything about it to me. And one day I
Speaker 1: went to my mom and said, aren't you gonna ask
Speaker 1: me if I'm going to college? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: you never said anything about it, so we assumed you're not.
Speaker 1: So then you knew it was cool. At what point
Speaker 1: did you know you wanted to make music your life? Well,
Speaker 1: in high school I had started working uh in a
Speaker 1: in a in a restaurant, and I was making good money,
Speaker 1: like at a piano bar, well playing I wasn't singing
Speaker 1: yet playing the piano, and I people started hiring me
Speaker 1: when I was fifteen and sixteen to play for weddings,
Speaker 1: and that was amazing. I never thought you could get
Speaker 1: money for for making music. But after high school I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was gonna do, so by default
Speaker 1: I was playing in in a piano bar, excuse me,
Speaker 1: and I was asked by somebody to sing, and I
Speaker 1: had sun in choir, but before I got kick and
Speaker 1: the hardest thing in the world was trying to play
Speaker 1: the piano and sing at the same time. So over
Speaker 1: about a year, I, while I was playing in the
Speaker 1: piano bar the restaurant called the Dell, I kind of
Speaker 1: figured out how to accompany myself, and that was one
Speaker 1: of the most valuable things I could have done because
Speaker 1: but no teaching. You were self taught. Self taught, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: and so okay, you graduate from high school, you're still
Speaker 1: living in your family home. How long before you then move?
Speaker 1: I this is in Ohio. I played for about three
Speaker 1: years in piano bars, and I still didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was going to really do for my life because
Speaker 1: I was convinced that I couldn't possibly have a life
Speaker 1: making music and I was playing in piano bars, so
Speaker 1: what what chance did I have of advancing? But I
Speaker 1: decided to move to California at the age of twenty
Speaker 1: because from the time I was very young, I had
Speaker 1: this insistent voice telling me to move to California myself.
Speaker 1: Same thing, okay, it just used to beg my mother
Speaker 1: when are we gonna move to California? And you heard
Speaker 1: those beach Boy records? Mom, we got to move to California.
Speaker 1: And then I did, uh huh, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was just it was it was a fad to complete
Speaker 1: that I was going to go. And my father, right
Speaker 1: around the same time, had had started traveling into California
Speaker 1: and he said, let's he said to my mom, let's
Speaker 1: move to l A. So independently of me, they decided
Speaker 1: to move to l A. But I traveled for a while.
Speaker 1: I went to New York and moved traveled around. And
Speaker 1: then when I came to California, my parents had moved
Speaker 1: there before they but you traveled around working or just
Speaker 1: I went. I was in New York for a while,
Speaker 1: just sort of taking time and staying with relatives and
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out the music business. No, no,
Speaker 1: I knew I couldn't figure that out. Okay, so now
Speaker 1: you come to California. Your parents have moved here. Yes,
Speaker 1: I stayed with my parents, which was weird, uh in
Speaker 1: in uh Canoga Park, Okay, which was actually the fringe
Speaker 1: of l A County. Yeah. Yeah, And I stayed with
Speaker 1: him for a couple of months and then I started
Speaker 1: playing in piano bars, and I moved to an apartment
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, the studio apartment. No goal, This is just
Speaker 1: what you're doing, just doing that, just trying to figure
Speaker 1: things out. What kind of piano bars and where. The
Speaker 1: first one was in Panorama City, in the San Fernando
Speaker 1: Valley called Mother's A good place to be was the
Speaker 1: Slogan and it was run by a guy, owned by
Speaker 1: a guy who thought he was Humphrey Bogart playing that
Speaker 1: playing that song. I mean, I was terrified of this man,
Speaker 1: and uh. I played there for a bit, and then
Speaker 1: I got a job as a piano salesman because I
Speaker 1: thought I can't possibly make a living playing the piano.
Speaker 1: And there was a piano dealership called Finnigan's owned by
Speaker 1: this guy, Bill Finnigan. He at four different stores, and
Speaker 1: again in the San Fernando Valley. I was a piano
Speaker 1: salesman at Finnigan's. And this guy was such a shyster.
Speaker 1: He had an old uh Steinway piano from the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and these people came in and said, it's a beautiful piano.
Speaker 1: He said. Richard Wagner wrote The Bulkyry on this piano.
Speaker 1: I mean, he would make up these stories. Liveracchi first
Speaker 1: played chopsticks on this piano, and he would tell this
Speaker 1: pian and I would say that's not true. And he
Speaker 1: fired me because I challenged his authority, and and so
Speaker 1: I was out of that shop. But before you were fired,
Speaker 1: could you sell piano? I sold a few. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a good salesman because I knew what the wholesale price was,
Speaker 1: and I felt so guilty, you know, charging in the
Speaker 1: retail price. I mean, it was, it was. It was
Speaker 1: just like that's another similarity between you and me. It's
Speaker 1: like I could tell you a few stories, but at
Speaker 1: your podcast. So you get fired from there? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got fired. And then something very strange happened. I was
Speaker 1: collecting records. I had always been a record collector of
Speaker 1: seventy eighths and just different stuff. And at this point,
Speaker 1: people believe seventy eight have the best sound because of
Speaker 1: the speed in the deeper groove and their direct disc right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh there. I have a huge collection of seventy eights
Speaker 1: going back to the church. Okay, so you're collecting record
Speaker 1: are you buying them all over the place? Because in
Speaker 1: seventies six and seventy seven. When I came to California,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of places where you could find
Speaker 1: all kinds of records. It was amazing. And Uh, I
Speaker 1: went to a place in Hollywood, uh looking for records
Speaker 1: by Oscar Levant, because I discovered Oscar Levant and Gershwin
Speaker 1: and was looking for a rare Oscar Levant recording. And
Speaker 1: he was the greatest interpreter of the music of George
Speaker 1: Gershwin and an amazing classical pianist. And I went to
Speaker 1: the store in Hollywood called the record collector, and I said,
Speaker 1: do you have this Columbia album Oscar Levan at the
Speaker 1: piano And he said no, but we have some records
Speaker 1: that belonged to him. And he had this box of
Speaker 1: of acetates and air checks and test pressings all of
Speaker 1: Oscar Levant, the dated back to n four. I said,
Speaker 1: where did you get these and he said, We've got
Speaker 1: them from an auction of the Levant to state. Well,
Speaker 1: I had to I put down fifty dollars on the
Speaker 1: box of records, and I had to borrow a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars from my parents to buy these records.
Speaker 1: And it was an amazing cash of all these studio
Speaker 1: rehearsal recordings of Levant from MGM and radio show with
Speaker 1: him and being Crosby and Gershwin recordings. It was incredible.
Speaker 1: And I had met this lady at the piano store
Speaker 1: who knew agents William Morris, and I told her about
Speaker 1: finding these records and she said, well, you should call
Speaker 1: Levant's widow, June Levant, and asked her why she got
Speaker 1: rid of these records. I said, well, I would if
Speaker 1: I knew her, but I don't know her. And she
Speaker 1: got me June Levant's phone number and I called up
Speaker 1: June Levant out of the blue. I said, Hi, my
Speaker 1: name is Mike Feinstein. I just moved here from Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and I bought these records that belonged to your husband.
Speaker 1: She said, well, I have on my husband's records. Where
Speaker 1: did you get those? I said, from such such a
Speaker 1: piano star. She said, well, I have them all and
Speaker 1: I said, well, this one has a letter tucked in
Speaker 1: the sleeve that's addressed to him. And I read her
Speaker 1: the letter. She said, oh my god, that's Skyler and
Speaker 1: she said call me back into our and she hung up.
Speaker 1: I called her back. She's well, I think I have
Speaker 1: Oscars records. I just look, but can you come over
Speaker 1: and bring the records with you. I said, well, they're
Speaker 1: very fragile, but I'll come over. So I went over
Speaker 1: to see her, and she was visibly surprised to see
Speaker 1: this twenty year old kid at the door. And she
Speaker 1: had a guy with her whom she had introduced as
Speaker 1: an attorney because I think she was ready for some
Speaker 1: big legal battle. And she started telling me stories about
Speaker 1: her husband, and I knew every story because I was
Speaker 1: a fan of Oscar Levant. And then she started looking
Speaker 1: at me like the dog looking in the gramophone horn,
Speaker 1: with her head cocked to one side. And it turned
Speaker 1: out that the records I had bought were sold at
Speaker 1: the Levant State auction, but she didn't know they were
Speaker 1: gone because she didn't go to the auction because it
Speaker 1: was too emotional for her and she didn't mean to
Speaker 1: sell them. She had put the records aside to save.
Speaker 1: So part of his collection was sold by accident, and
Speaker 1: she had of it, and I had bought the other
Speaker 1: thirty percent of it that was sold by accident. So
Speaker 1: she we realized what had happened, and she said, you
Speaker 1: know what you can sold. You can keep those records,
Speaker 1: but just don't do anything commercial with him. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: and we became friends and she started taking me to
Speaker 1: dinner and telling me stories about Oscar Levant and about
Speaker 1: the Gershwins and all these people and and um, well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me for someone who didn't get along
Speaker 1: in high school and got kicked out all the time,
Speaker 1: that you instantly got along with Oscar Levan's widow. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because I got along with adults. I mean, authority figures.
Speaker 1: You're right, I didn't get along with but June I
Speaker 1: was so thrilled to meet her, and she's telling me
Speaker 1: stories about this era of music that I love. But
Speaker 1: you kept the relationship up absolutely. That shows an interesting
Speaker 1: aspect about you. That's contrary. I mean, you explained it
Speaker 1: by being an adult. But continue, Well, I have a fascination.
Speaker 1: For now, I'm not saying your interest. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to be one and done. I went, I met this person.
Speaker 1: Let me tell my friends. To keep the relationship required
Speaker 1: a certain amount of effort on your on your behalf.
Speaker 1: I understand, yes, yes, well I had no ulterior motive
Speaker 1: other than the fact that I know. But it is
Speaker 1: that part of your personality. You meet someone in your world,
Speaker 1: that you will pick up the phone and say, not
Speaker 1: only the first time, but after you met them, you
Speaker 1: will continue the relationship. Yes, yes, if I if I
Speaker 1: feel something, absolutely okay. So you went, you were continuing
Speaker 1: to see Oscar Levin's widow. You went to dinner and
Speaker 1: and she uh took me around the parties and started
Speaker 1: introducing me as a protege. She took me to Sam
Speaker 1: Goldwyn Junior's house and I said, meet my protege. And
Speaker 1: they asked me to play the piano, and I sat
Speaker 1: down and played. Love walked in on the piano that
Speaker 1: George Gershwin had demonstrated it for Sam Goldwin Sr. And
Speaker 1: then she took me to a party at the studio
Speaker 1: of Tony Duquette, and I played the piano, and I
Speaker 1: met Dolores del Rio and Southern and all these ancient
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars. And they liked me because I spoke their language,
Speaker 1: their movies and I knew their world. And and Dolores
Speaker 1: do Rio made a movie called Ramona. There was a
Speaker 1: big hit song Ramona. I heard the mission bells above,
Speaker 1: and when they asked me to sit down and play
Speaker 1: the piano, I said, gee, maybe if I play Ramona
Speaker 1: Dolores del Rio will sing. And this one guest at
Speaker 1: the party looked at me and said, some dreams do
Speaker 1: not come true. So anyway, eventually June Levant introduced me
Speaker 1: to Leonard and Ira Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was eighty years old. Okay,
Speaker 1: just because they wanted work done or this was part
Speaker 1: of our circle. June was very friendly with with Lee Gershwin,
Speaker 1: uh and uh Oscar Levant was close friends with with
Speaker 1: the Gershwin family. He had died in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen seventy seven at this point, and June
Speaker 1: had periodic lunches with Leonard Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was house
Speaker 1: bound and she told Lee about me. She said, I
Speaker 1: met this young kid and he plays piano and it
Speaker 1: and Lee said, oh, well, we need all of our
Speaker 1: records cataloged and I need somebody and can you give
Speaker 1: me Can you tell him to call me? So she
Speaker 1: called me up and she said, Lee Gershwan wants you
Speaker 1: to call her. I said why. She said, well, she
Speaker 1: and Ira have these records they need cataloged and uh,
Speaker 1: you should you should call her? And I said, okay, great,
Speaker 1: thank you And I said thanks you and she's, well,
Speaker 1: you have to be very careful. You have to call
Speaker 1: her Mrs Grosher, and she's a very tough, mean lady,
Speaker 1: and just don't screw it up. She's so I said, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So I called Lee Gershwin and she and told me
Speaker 1: to come over and and she was very tough, but
Speaker 1: she loved me. She she either loved you or we
Speaker 1: were toast. And so she said, come over to the house.
Speaker 1: And there was sitting Ira Gershwin, this legend of American
Speaker 1: popular song who had written the lyrics to some of
Speaker 1: the greatest standards of the twentieth century, and he was
Speaker 1: autographing a record album. And I was nervous, and I
Speaker 1: sat down and leonor his wife and her sister were
Speaker 1: in a corner sort of watching, and somebody had issued
Speaker 1: an album of demos of Ira Gershwin singing and he
Speaker 1: had no voice, and he anyway, I said, Mr gersh
Speaker 1: when I have that record, and he looked at me
Speaker 1: like I was crazy. He said, why do you have
Speaker 1: this work? I said, because I love your working, And
Speaker 1: he said, you're the first person I met outside of
Speaker 1: a relative who has this record. And then to make conversation.
Speaker 1: I said, Mr Gershwen, I have a seventy eight record
Speaker 1: of gems from La La Lucille. He said, La La Lucille.
Speaker 1: That was George's first Broadway musical, nineteen nineteen. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: it must have the songs on it, the two hits
Speaker 1: Teota Lum Bumbo and nobody but you. I said, that's right,
Speaker 1: and Lee gersh went turned to her sister and it
Speaker 1: isn't that cute? He's telling Ira that's right. So that's
Speaker 1: how my relationship with him started. Immediately we sort of
Speaker 1: hit it off and and uh, I ended up spending
Speaker 1: six years working for I doing what as his amanuensis,
Speaker 1: which is a fancy word for student. But I was
Speaker 1: cataloging stuff in the house and Lee Gershwin came to
Speaker 1: me one day and said, look, you've given my husband
Speaker 1: a new lease on life, and we need you in
Speaker 1: this house. She said, I know you're going to go
Speaker 1: off and do other things one day, but um, just
Speaker 1: keep yourself busy and most importantly, keep Ira happy. So
Speaker 1: I basically was Irish companion, and then I became their
Speaker 1: eyes and ears to the outside world, and they would
Speaker 1: send me out to see a Gershwin production or if
Speaker 1: somebody wanted to do something, they would put me in
Speaker 1: touch with them to work with them to make sure
Speaker 1: it was what the family wanted. And when he died,
Speaker 1: I became his literary executor until I had a falling
Speaker 1: out with Lee after I was death and they were
Speaker 1: able to push me out of that and I was
Speaker 1: bereft because I was separated from from them from the estate.
Speaker 1: And then a few years later we had a rap
Speaker 1: Rochemont and Lee and I stayed close till her passing. Okay,
Speaker 1: while you were working with the Gershwins, well you still
Speaker 1: performing in piano bars. I was okay. So in any
Speaker 1: event he died, you're out of the estate. When does
Speaker 1: your so called it's not so called, it's when does
Speaker 1: your musical career begin. Well after after I was pushed
Speaker 1: out of Irish estate, I just started playing, dedicated, dedicated
Speaker 1: my time to playing in piano bars because I needed
Speaker 1: to earn a living and UM. At that point I
Speaker 1: got hired to play to place on Las angele Bolevard
Speaker 1: called three North that was opened by the same investor
Speaker 1: who's who. Investors who had invested in Spago and UM.
Speaker 1: They were convinced that this was going to be the
Speaker 1: next big thing, and I was playing old songs in
Speaker 1: the lounge, and after two months they fired me because
Speaker 1: they said, you're playing old songs. We need you to
Speaker 1: play pop stuff. I said, that's not what I do,
Speaker 1: and they gave me two weeks notice. But in the
Speaker 1: two weeks, for some reason, a lot of people started
Speaker 1: coming in to hear me play, and the my job
Speaker 1: was preserved. When that place closed, I was hired to
Speaker 1: play at the Mandrean Hotel, which had just been opened
Speaker 1: in a lounge, and um, it was in that same
Speaker 1: period that I became friends with Liza Minnelli. Just before that,
Speaker 1: Did you like this experience or you were solely doing
Speaker 1: it for the money? Well? I liked it too. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I liked it and sometimes I didn't like it. I
Speaker 1: was playing five hours a night, and I was playing
Speaker 1: in gay bars too, because gay bars, in some instances
Speaker 1: were the only places that would hire somebody that played
Speaker 1: mainly old movie songs and show tunes and such. But
Speaker 1: they were very mixed places where a lot of straight,
Speaker 1: straight people would come in and wanted to hear uh standards.
Speaker 1: Uh so how did you meet Liza Minelli? Well? I
Speaker 1: had met her father, Vincent Minnelli, who was the great
Speaker 1: Hollywood director, because he was close friends with Ira and
Speaker 1: Lee Gershwin. Um Ira Gershwe was best man at Vincent
Speaker 1: Minnelli and Judy Garland's wedding, and Liza was named after
Speaker 1: the Gershwin song Liza. So Ira Gershwan was Liza's godfather.
Speaker 1: So I had uh Christmas of whatever? That year was
Speaker 1: eight four. I guess I was playing a lot of
Speaker 1: Christmas parties because people were hiring me to play private parties.
Speaker 1: And I played a party that Vincent hired me to
Speaker 1: play his his Christmas party, and Liza was there and
Speaker 1: Gene Kelly was there. So I'd play Singing in the
Speaker 1: Rain and I'd play like I like myself and obscure
Speaker 1: songs from their movies, and they look at me like right.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. And eventually everybody left and
Speaker 1: I was still at the piano, and Liza sat down
Speaker 1: next to me. She said, kid, from now when we're
Speaker 1: joined at the hip, really And I said, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and it was true she so,
Speaker 1: but that was the first thing she spoke to She
Speaker 1: hadn't been speaking to you during the evening that's correct.
Speaker 1: I had actually met her briefly previously at a party
Speaker 1: here that but it was that moment and we ended
Speaker 1: up going out to a place, a nightclub where we
Speaker 1: hung out and we stayed up all night and and
Speaker 1: played music. And I told her was working at the Mandre.
Speaker 1: And the next night she came into the Mandre and
Speaker 1: and she came in every single night and brought people
Speaker 1: to hear me. She brought Elizabeth Taylor, she brought Gregory Peck,
Speaker 1: she brought at all these people. And then she decided
Speaker 1: she was going to host a party for me at
Speaker 1: the Mondrian. She said, at an inaugural party. I said,
Speaker 1: but I've been playing there for five months. She said,
Speaker 1: nobody knows. This is gonna be your debut party. And
Speaker 1: she hosted a party with Elizabeth Taylor, with Henry Mancini,
Speaker 1: with greg Rypeck. You know, Jenny Jenny was there, Jenny
Speaker 1: Mincy um. It was the kind of party that if
Speaker 1: it hadn't been thrown from me, I never would have
Speaker 1: been invited to. And and she hired her publicists and
Speaker 1: it put me on the map. And then I was
Speaker 1: invited to be on the MERV Griffin Show, and I
Speaker 1: did TV shows, and then I was hired to play
Speaker 1: the Algonquin in New York and got made my New
Speaker 1: York debut and she hosted my New York debut. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I got an offer, uh to play Broadway.
Speaker 1: And then I got an offer from Ernest Fleischmann to
Speaker 1: play Raps in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl. Okay, what
Speaker 1: period of time were we talking about? How long a
Speaker 1: period this was? This was a two year period. Okay,
Speaker 1: now you meet lies to what degree we were star
Speaker 1: struck by these people? Well? I was star struck, but
Speaker 1: I also again could speak their language. Okay, So then
Speaker 1: you're playing at the Marion. How long after the inaugural
Speaker 1: party do you end up on MERV Griffin? Uh? It
Speaker 1: was let's see, the inaugural party was May of nine
Speaker 1: and MERV Griffin was later and it was just like
Speaker 1: a month later. Okay, wasn't your mind blown? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: at this point did you have any so called people
Speaker 1: working for you? Manager, agent, publicist, any of that. I
Speaker 1: had a default agent who liked my playing in the
Speaker 1: piano barns A kid, I'll work you know, I'll represent
Speaker 1: you like he's doing me a forever. So he became
Speaker 1: my agent and what agency do you work at? It
Speaker 1: was a p A and uh I got a gig
Speaker 1: in San Francisco doing a show because prior when I
Speaker 1: was still playing in piano bars, it was not a show.
Speaker 1: I was background. Then in San Francisco, they were opening
Speaker 1: a new hotel and they needed someone to play in
Speaker 1: the show room. They had small show room, and I
Speaker 1: was hired by default because they couldn't find anybody else.
Speaker 1: And somehow they hired me, and the critic for the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle wrote this rave review and that I
Speaker 1: put together a show. I figured out what songs I
Speaker 1: was going to sing. I talked to the aufics before
Speaker 1: or after MERV Griffin. It was before because MERV happened
Speaker 1: well I don't know the exactly, I don't remember, but
Speaker 1: it was all happened within a couple of months, and
Speaker 1: uh I got this of review and suddenly the gig
Speaker 1: was sold out, the two gig was sold out, and
Speaker 1: they extended me. So my tom My agent flew up
Speaker 1: to San Francisco to see me do this show where
Speaker 1: he saw me talking and do I put a show together?
Speaker 1: And I remember he came backstage and he was jumping
Speaker 1: up and down like a little kid, and he said,
Speaker 1: We're going to make a lot of money, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm worth something to somebody. That was you know,
Speaker 1: the Blessing and the curse. Okay, so you dur MERV Griffin. Uh?
Speaker 1: To what degree does that help your career? Uh? I
Speaker 1: don't remember any shock waves from it. And I asked
Speaker 1: Rosemary Clooney if she would go on the show with
Speaker 1: me because I was so scared, and she agreed to
Speaker 1: go on the show. And how did you know Rosemary?
Speaker 1: She was Ira Gershwin's next door neighbor. So I met
Speaker 1: Rosemary during the time I was working for Ira. You
Speaker 1: basically knew everybody. Well. I had met a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I played a lot of Hollywood parties, you know,
Speaker 1: so meet people. Okay, so you do MERV give Griffin,
Speaker 1: you play the Algonquin. Continue from there. Well after the
Speaker 1: Algonquin again, I got these fantastic reviews and they did
Speaker 1: a New York Times Sunday magazine piece on me. That's
Speaker 1: a really big deal. How how long after the Mandrean
Speaker 1: inauguration was that? That was one year? So one year later,
Speaker 1: I'm in New York and playing the algon. Okay, but internally,
Speaker 1: aren't you like I mean, that's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: cope with all that success. Oh, I was. I was
Speaker 1: in shock, and I also didn't know how to handle
Speaker 1: with it. And I became at one point very arrogant,
Speaker 1: and I became I became an asshole a lot of times.
Speaker 1: That's not good for your career. It wasn't. But somehow
Speaker 1: I learned. I learned pretty quickly, and I survived. I
Speaker 1: have I'm not gonna name names, but I was friends
Speaker 1: with a couple of people that I saw them destroy
Speaker 1: their career. The thing is that I, I'm fundamentally a
Speaker 1: good person. You know, I mean tolerate idiots, right, I
Speaker 1: just I mean I I was inappropriate. I was inappropriate
Speaker 1: and also when I got scared, I would lash out
Speaker 1: of people. And you did this totally by yourself or
Speaker 1: at some point your career if you had therapy. Well,
Speaker 1: I started therapy. I started therapy in that period. And
Speaker 1: also they sent me out on the road and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lighting person, I didn't have a sound person.
Speaker 1: I was going out doing concerts. I was all by myself.
Speaker 1: I don't even have a road manager. No I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody I had the age they sent me up.
Speaker 1: I didn't, so I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: So i'd get scared. And I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to light do lighting and it of course,
Speaker 1: and you want to be right, and I'm up there
Speaker 1: and in there they're saying how's it sound? And I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know? You know this? So it wasn't until a
Speaker 1: couple of years later somebody said, oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: you there's people that do that. I said really, So
Speaker 1: then I got a road manager, and so I learned
Speaker 1: on the job. On the job, okay, And at what
Speaker 1: point did you get a recording contract? I was at
Speaker 1: the Mandrean and a man named Herb Eisenman, who was
Speaker 1: I believe the head of publishing a twenty century Fox Music,
Speaker 1: came in to hear me and he said, I'd like
Speaker 1: to record you doing an album. And I said why
Speaker 1: He said, because I think could be a good album.
Speaker 1: I said, nobody's going to buy an album me and
Speaker 1: he said come on? And I kept saying no, and
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you say yes? Because I didn't think I
Speaker 1: was good enough. I didn't think enough. I was like,
Speaker 1: come on I'm playing piano bar and he said, finally
Speaker 1: said would you let me worry about that? If who's
Speaker 1: gonna buy it? Let me? I said, okay. So we
Speaker 1: went into a studio and we started doing a Gershwin
Speaker 1: recording called Pure Girl. We called a Pure Gerze when
Speaker 1: it was Herb's Herb's Little Company again, I asked Rosemary
Speaker 1: Clooney if she did a duet with me, and she did,
Speaker 1: and uh I recorded this Gershwe album and I was
Speaker 1: still at the Mondrian when he had the first copies.
Speaker 1: I remember he brought them. This came out on twentieth
Speaker 1: Century Fox. Right. No, No, he started a little label
Speaker 1: for Parnassis and uh I remember he did cassettes and LPs.
Speaker 1: We couldn't find a pressing plant that was available to
Speaker 1: do CDs because there was such a demand for CDs right,
Speaker 1: especially an independent company. We couldn't get pressing, So the
Speaker 1: CD didn't come out till much later, until like six
Speaker 1: months whenever he could get it. So he had these albums,
Speaker 1: he started sending them out to people and a DJ
Speaker 1: New York named Jonathan Schwartz who was on w n
Speaker 1: W who played classic American standards, paid attention to the
Speaker 1: album because there was a duet with Rosemary Clooney and
Speaker 1: he played that track. So he started playing this record
Speaker 1: and the recording started selling, and it started selling several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies, and I mean suddenly it was selling
Speaker 1: because it was unusual for a kid my age doing
Speaker 1: Gershwin and and uh it it was selling. And then
Speaker 1: when I went to New York and did the Algonquin
Speaker 1: a year later, he recorded a live album because we
Speaker 1: came live at the Algonquin and Al Hirschfeld did the
Speaker 1: cover of the so I had a Hirshfeld caricature. And
Speaker 1: then the next year, one of my second year at
Speaker 1: the Algonquin, Sardis did a caricature me. It was there
Speaker 1: was a caricature me and Sarties and I said, why
Speaker 1: are you doing a caricature of me? I haven't been
Speaker 1: on Broadway. I mean, it was crazy. And then I
Speaker 1: was invited to play the raps and he blew with
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Bowl. And and then in the next year,
Speaker 1: in nineteen d eight, Ron Daylsoner produced me on Broadway.
Speaker 1: I was in a show called Michael Feinstein, Isn't It Romantic?
Speaker 1: And I did a Broadway musical and a tour all
Speaker 1: over the country. Okay, okay, at this point, you still
Speaker 1: have the same agent, yes, And did you have a
Speaker 1: manager at that point? Yes? How did you get a manager?
Speaker 1: I was playing at the Algonquin and a lovely guy
Speaker 1: named Winston Simone came up to me and said, I'd
Speaker 1: like to manage you. And I said, I don't need
Speaker 1: a manager. And he said, I'll tell you what. I
Speaker 1: will manage you for free for the next year, and
Speaker 1: if you don't like what I do, you can tell
Speaker 1: me goodbye. And I said okay. And he managed me
Speaker 1: for about six months and I and I'd say, uh no,
Speaker 1: it was about four months. And I put him on
Speaker 1: salary because he knew what he was doing. Okay. So um,
Speaker 1: at this point, what are you feeling internally? Fear fear,
Speaker 1: afraid you're gonna be exposed? Absolutely? And are you making
Speaker 1: any money? I'm making money, like crazy? Okay. What are
Speaker 1: your parents say? Well, Jewish parents, you know they were
Speaker 1: They're like, oh my god, my son and son. Have
Speaker 1: you met my son? You know they were they were
Speaker 1: over the moon. Okay, how did this affect your personal life? Well?
Speaker 1: I was suddenly traveling a lot. I was on the
Speaker 1: road and I was very lonely, and I was smoking
Speaker 1: a lot of grass. It never affected my performances because
Speaker 1: I was very disciplined. When did you start smoking grass?
Speaker 1: Sometime after high school? Sometime after high school? So it
Speaker 1: was a musician thing, that's how you fell into it. Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: it was something that I was dead set against because
Speaker 1: some of my some some of my extended family had
Speaker 1: drug problems. But then I did it, and then I
Speaker 1: discovered that it opened music for me in a way
Speaker 1: that that was different, and I couldn't get to that
Speaker 1: place of connecting with music that deeply without it, which
Speaker 1: was of course a dangerous thing. But um, it was
Speaker 1: something that I loved and it I have to say
Speaker 1: that I came up with a lot of arrangements when
Speaker 1: I was smoking, and a lot of stuff that I
Speaker 1: looked back at and listened to some of his recordings
Speaker 1: and they were good, you know, because people always say
Speaker 1: it gradually, but the truth is that if it only
Speaker 1: fried your brain, people wouldn't do it. Right. But do
Speaker 1: you still smoke? Though I stopped for twenty two years,
Speaker 1: and now I do it maybe like every two months,
Speaker 1: I'll do a little bit, maybe just for a week,
Speaker 1: and I only do a little bit of it. And
Speaker 1: because I had gotten so addicted to it, when I stopped,
Speaker 1: I never thought I would touch it again in a
Speaker 1: million years. But I don't have a problem with it,
Speaker 1: mainly because the thrill is gone. It doesn't do for me.
Speaker 1: Did you stop years? I was. I was so addicted
Speaker 1: to it and and I couldn't stop. I prayed to
Speaker 1: God that I could stop. I mean, it was it
Speaker 1: was something that was It was becoming debilitating because I
Speaker 1: couldn't do without it, and I was because I was
Speaker 1: using it to medicate emotionally, you know, my loneliness and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And then one day I woke up
Speaker 1: and I flushed it down the toilet and I never
Speaker 1: touched it again. I didn't go to a program or anything.
Speaker 1: But how hard was that period? After you flushed down
Speaker 1: the toilet? The next couple of months, it was not
Speaker 1: that hard, which was the odd thing. And I still
Speaker 1: don't understand it because prior to that, I literally it
Speaker 1: was like cold turkey. I mean, I just I tried
Speaker 1: and tried, and I had to I just like I
Speaker 1: would light up. I couldn't help it. Okay, So you're
Speaker 1: on the road. Now you ultimately get a manager and
Speaker 1: you're touring and you're making a couple of records. What's
Speaker 1: the next step after that? What's the next step after that? Well, um,
Speaker 1: I was doing these touring shows, you know, doing a lot,
Speaker 1: did the Ron Delson you do the Broadway show, and
Speaker 1: then just doing concerts, touring during concerts and performing arts centers,
Speaker 1: and and the recordings they started to wane. Uh, aside
Speaker 1: from the first several albums. Well, my fourth album was
Speaker 1: my fourth album. Electra Records bought my contract and uh,
Speaker 1: they did an album with me called Isn't It Romantic?
Speaker 1: With the orchestrations by Johnny Mandel, and that was very successful.
Speaker 1: It was never a million seller, but cumulatively I ended
Speaker 1: up selling a couple of million recordings. But that was
Speaker 1: long before sound scan, so it's not documented, but I did.
Speaker 1: But Isn't It Romantic did really well and it was
Speaker 1: a lush orchestral album. And then they could no one
Speaker 1: could figure out what the next album was. I said,
Speaker 1: let's do an MGM album and they said, great, Well,
Speaker 1: nobody wanted an MGM album. But but up to that point,
Speaker 1: everything I did, people were it was four albums, but
Speaker 1: the people bought them, you know, the Algonquina of this,
Speaker 1: and they say, I thought everything would work and I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about the music business and and nobody
Speaker 1: else knew what to do with me. So then after
Speaker 1: the next album didn't do very well, and the next one,
Speaker 1: and it was like this is this is kind of tough.
Speaker 1: And then it was that whole period for years, and
Speaker 1: people are saying, well, you sold a lot of records,
Speaker 1: Let's see what we can do with you, and let's
Speaker 1: try this, let's try that, and and I made a
Speaker 1: lot of good records, but none of them really sold much.
Speaker 1: You know. I did an album with with Jimmy Webb
Speaker 1: that was a great record and we're both proud of it,
Speaker 1: but it didn't do much. But you know, the thing
Speaker 1: about a record is that it's there for a long time.
Speaker 1: People can reevaluate and come back to them. And and uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff I did that I don't like,
Speaker 1: and there's things I did that I do And a
Speaker 1: station like the you know, seriously Sinatra that will play
Speaker 1: my records, they play things that I don't like, and
Speaker 1: I was like, god, I wish they played these other things,
Speaker 1: But you know, that's life. It's still it's still all
Speaker 1: a blessing. Okay. And at this point you're touring, you're
Speaker 1: obviously making money. Uh you say you're lonely? Do you
Speaker 1: just keep doing it? Yeah, that's what I did. And
Speaker 1: I did it for a long time, and then I
Speaker 1: got to the point where I was so burned out.
Speaker 1: I said I'm to take in a year off. And
Speaker 1: then all the business people said, oh, you take a
Speaker 1: year off. You know they'll forget about you. You did
Speaker 1: this is a really done No, no, no, don't do this.
Speaker 1: This is the worst thing you can possibly do. And
Speaker 1: I said, I'm taking a year off, and I did.
Speaker 1: And it was in that period that I had stopped
Speaker 1: smoking grass. I met my partner and then my husband,
Speaker 1: Terence Flannery, whom I never would have met. I met
Speaker 1: him at a party. I had nothing to do, and
Speaker 1: someone invited me over to watch the Tony Awards telecast.
Speaker 1: And I hate Awards shows. I went because I had
Speaker 1: nothing to do. I had recently stopped smoking the grass,
Speaker 1: and and I met Terrence. We just started talking and
Speaker 1: and he never would have even spoken to me if
Speaker 1: he knew that I did drugs. But I stopped, and uh,
Speaker 1: we got to know each other. And prior to that,
Speaker 1: I could only if the only way I could get
Speaker 1: to know someone is if I paid for them and
Speaker 1: brought them on the road with me. So anyone that
Speaker 1: I was involved with I basically had to support. Okay,
Speaker 1: had you had what was your relationship history prior to Terrence? UM?
Speaker 1: A lot of fun? Okay, So you dip your toe
Speaker 1: in the water, shall to say, but you haven't found
Speaker 1: Mr Wright right? Okay? So after that year off? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in that period, UM, I reevaluated, reevaluated and went
Speaker 1: back to performing with a renewed love for what I
Speaker 1: do and with less caring about about success. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I still cared about success, but I really
Speaker 1: focused more on the music and started writing a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And we're talking about writing music. Were writing
Speaker 1: music here and there. I worked on a show for
Speaker 1: seven years and ultimately it didn't happen, but it showed
Speaker 1: me that I could do it, and it's something that
Speaker 1: I still want to do more of. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: do you ultimately open a club in New York City?
Speaker 1: That was when I was working with Alex spirit Off
Speaker 1: as a manager and he said, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do? And I said, well, I've always had a
Speaker 1: fantasy of having a nightclub, but a nightclub is a
Speaker 1: hard business. And he created the collaboration with the Regency
Speaker 1: Hotel and I had played a private party for the
Speaker 1: Tische family, the owners of the hotel, prior to that,
Speaker 1: and so I had this. Suddenly I had a nightclub,
Speaker 1: and uh it was a wonderful fourteen years. And from
Speaker 1: that came the opportunity to open other clubs. And I
Speaker 1: opened a club in San Francisco and one and here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles more recently, and U um uh there's
Speaker 1: now we're working actually on we're gonna be opening one
Speaker 1: in Indiana and there's going to be one in in Australia. Okay,
Speaker 1: As you said, nightclubs very hard business. Why is yours successful?
Speaker 1: Because I work with people who understand the business. And
Speaker 1: you have to watch the numbers so carefully. How much
Speaker 1: you spend on food, how much you spend on entertainment?
Speaker 1: Have I mean it is. It has to be very
Speaker 1: very finely calibrated. And there aren't too many clubs that
Speaker 1: have longevity. And there's bird Land in New York because
Speaker 1: Johnny VALENTI knows how to do that. There's a blue
Speaker 1: note and such uh, And you have to understand with
Speaker 1: booking talent, the pay scale, how how to to pay
Speaker 1: a lesser a person who gets less money a certain
Speaker 1: amount so you can afford money to pay someone who
Speaker 1: gets more money and amortize it. And it's it's difficult.
Speaker 1: And what the ticket price can be that is justifiable
Speaker 1: for patron and it has to be great. Food has
Speaker 1: to be comforted, has to be value for the money,
Speaker 1: has to be an incredibly comfortable atmosphere, and it has
Speaker 1: to be an atmosphere that has a unique purpose that
Speaker 1: somebody will want to go here, somebody in that setting
Speaker 1: and it's so wonderful that it's worth it financial to them.
Speaker 1: So it's it's tough, but it's it's when it works,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. Okay, to what degree are you down in
Speaker 1: the weeds in terms of booking, food, etcetera. I'm not
Speaker 1: down very far in the ways with with booking, but
Speaker 1: I am somewhat involved with it, and my name's on
Speaker 1: the room, so the buck stops with me. But I'm
Speaker 1: lucky to collaborate with wonderful people who who know how
Speaker 1: to do it like Brad Rowan and his partner Whore
Speaker 1: with with with Vitelos, that's now find Stein at Vitelos.
Speaker 1: We have a great relationship and it's a capacity there.
Speaker 1: I think it's between one and one forty. And again
Speaker 1: with with that, the seating has to be comfortable and
Speaker 1: it has to have to be crowded to have a buzz,
Speaker 1: but it can't be too crowded so people can can relax.
Speaker 1: And it's a whole psychological thing. It's and putting a
Speaker 1: room together. The components are things that people never think about,
Speaker 1: the comfort of the chairs, the spacing of the tables,
Speaker 1: the the the the lighting, the sund down, the decoration,
Speaker 1: the level of the lights. I mean the stage lining,
Speaker 1: but the level of the lights, so people feel like
Speaker 1: it's intimate. But I mean it in a room either
Speaker 1: works or it doesn't work. Okay. In all these cases,
Speaker 1: because it teems to be associated with other businesses, who's
Speaker 1: at risk you or them? Well, it depends on the
Speaker 1: on the partnership. In most cases it's them because in
Speaker 1: one case, uh, in two cases, my name is licensed uh.
Speaker 1: And it's the old joke, how do you go into
Speaker 1: the nightclub? Business and have a million dollars. You start
Speaker 1: with two million dollars. So but it's it's but it's
Speaker 1: but it's ongoing despite all these challenges. Yeah, and how
Speaker 1: often do you play in the varying clubs? Um? The
Speaker 1: New York club which is now fine Stein's fifty four below.
Speaker 1: I play twice a year August because it's a tough
Speaker 1: month to get people to come into the room. So
Speaker 1: I do pretty well there. And then holiday time was
Speaker 1: my grandmother was a holiday time. And then uh, find
Speaker 1: Science of the Tellers. We're still working out when I'll
Speaker 1: work there because I'm on the road a lot of
Speaker 1: daring concerts and other venues, large larger venues, and so
Speaker 1: I don't normally play nightclubs because economically it's not. But
Speaker 1: the thing about a nightclub, like playing Fine Science fifty
Speaker 1: four in New York, people will play it because of
Speaker 1: the attention it gets in the publicity it gets, and
Speaker 1: and it sets you up for a lot of other gigs.
Speaker 1: So there's great value in doing it right. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about other things like radio and television that you've been
Speaker 1: involved in. Well, yeah, I had a radio series for
Speaker 1: three years on NPR that was called song Travels that
Speaker 1: I finally had to give up because it was too
Speaker 1: hard to do the darn thing with guests and live
Speaker 1: music and oh my god, it was. I loved it,
Speaker 1: but it just was. It was. It took so much
Speaker 1: time to put together that one hour, because the music,
Speaker 1: because the music and making live music with with the guest, uh.
Speaker 1: And television. I've had a number of series on PBS
Speaker 1: and beyond and and uh. I want to do more
Speaker 1: of those things. And I'm so you found that rewarding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Okay. So, at
Speaker 1: this point in the game, where your status still exists,
Speaker 1: what would you like to do in the future your
Speaker 1: own personal career bucket list? Well, I still want to
Speaker 1: write a musical because I think there's a place for
Speaker 1: the kind of show that I have in mind, which
Speaker 1: would be an amalga mora uh an homage to the past,
Speaker 1: but also is rooted in the contemporary world. Because one
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting about the music world is
Speaker 1: that everything is always you know, the next, the next,
Speaker 1: the next, the news, the news, the newest, But there
Speaker 1: are so many underserved people who care about classic music,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's a way to combine the two,
Speaker 1: because when you get people are judgmental about what people
Speaker 1: like and what people listen to. And the truth is
Speaker 1: that well illustrated with a store right. Elizam and Ellie
Speaker 1: years ago had a hit record with the Pet Shop
Speaker 1: Boys called Results. It was more famous in the UK,
Speaker 1: more popular, and she had a hit single in the
Speaker 1: UK of the song losing my Mind, and it was
Speaker 1: it was on the top ten, and she did the
Speaker 1: TV show Top of the Pops and and so she's
Speaker 1: suddenly touring and a lot of people are coming to
Speaker 1: hear her and because of her album with the Pet
Speaker 1: Shop Boys, so they think it's going to be this
Speaker 1: pop techno music. And I said, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do when these people come to your show and they
Speaker 1: expect to hear the techno stuff? And she said, Honey,
Speaker 1: all I have to do is get him in the seats.
Speaker 1: And I've never forgotten that, and so like, what's good
Speaker 1: is good? Wow? On that note, you're a great rock
Speaker 1: and tour We could go on forever, but Michael, amazing
Speaker 1: stories more to come. Thanks so much for doing the podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. I admire you so much because I love
Speaker 1: the fact that you care so deeply about this world,
Speaker 1: and you are so smart, and you were so tough
Speaker 1: on people that need to hear what you have to say.
Speaker 1: So I'm very honored to be on this program. Well,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, I'm twelling right now, but the eye,
Speaker 1: you know, just conft. I'm astounded, And I did not
Speaker 1: expect all the similarities between yourself and me. I remember
Speaker 1: when I was a freshman in college, I had a
Speaker 1: connection where you could get records and electronic goods for wholesale. Okay,
Speaker 1: and theoretically it could be a business, but I just
Speaker 1: could not charge the people retail okay. And as far
Speaker 1: as getting in trouble in school for talking people, I
Speaker 1: had that even in law school. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: that is definitely I certainly go onto the shrink. My
Speaker 1: my opinion of external people has changed with a certain quay.
Speaker 1: There's a song Dear Landlord by Bob Dylan. The famous
Speaker 1: version is the cover by Joe Cocker, and it goes
Speaker 1: each of us has his own special gift, and you
Speaker 1: know that was meant to be true. And if you
Speaker 1: don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you. And I have
Speaker 1: found everybody's a genius in some vertical Okay, and I've
Speaker 1: learned that, but there's a lot of stuff I'm really
Speaker 1: I've got. I've gotten in trouble that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: I just can't not tolerate the bs. I always end
Speaker 1: up saying something or even I'll get up and leave it.
Speaker 1: It was you got up and left. You know what
Speaker 1: it is the story and the other thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: the passion. I've had the same situation because we just
Speaker 1: remember first moved to l A. And I was going
Speaker 1: to law school. This was a couple of years after
Speaker 1: it was in l A. And I took a course
Speaker 1: uh U c l A extension. They used to have
Speaker 1: these music courses. I remember it was there. Joe Smith
Speaker 1: you've probably been from really he lived at Tentelf North Roxbury,
Speaker 1: Are Yeah, did you know him back then? I met
Speaker 1: him a few years after. Okay, Well, I remember going
Speaker 1: up to him asking the questions, you know everything, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's the same time thing. I'm just thrilled
Speaker 1: up talking to the guy, right, you know, and it
Speaker 1: could be both good and bad. Some people who feel
Speaker 1: inhibited other people it's like, you know, the best thing
Speaker 1: that ever happened to them. But you do a better
Speaker 1: job of I hate to say this, but I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say in a way that doesn't have judgment at me.
Speaker 1: You take advantage of the situation better than I do.
Speaker 1: I become intimidated. This happens. I meet these people saying
Speaker 1: let's get together, and I get too uptight. I haven't
Speaker 1: got time. I'm gonna know what's gonna happen. I've learned
Speaker 1: actually recently, because you know, being a Jewish family, my
Speaker 1: mother always told me I was a ship head, and
Speaker 1: it's like you, you know, the point is you get
Speaker 1: older and you realize everybody's got their issues and if
Speaker 1: you go, it'll be all right. But I'm still dealing
Speaker 1: with that now. Well that's very revealing and intimate. If
Speaker 1: you're just revealing that, as I say, you know once
Speaker 1: it's a similarity between you and me. But before we
Speaker 1: have our own private therapy session, I'm gonna end this.
Speaker 1: Thank you Michael so much for doing the podcast. Until
Speaker 1: next time, it's Bob left Sense