The New York Sun, by Will Friedwald | December 26, 2007
One of the best things about New York is the chance to hear the Great American Songbook for the price of a cocktail. If you stroll into one of the East Side hotels, order up a Harvey Wallbanger (or, lately, a cosmo), you are free to sit and listen to an attractive voice singing and playing Rodgers and Hart for as much time as you have. It’s as much a part of the New York experience as Broadway, Birdland, and the folk clubs in the Village. But it’s a tradition that’s lately under fire: The number of hotel-owning mega-conglomerates that are willing to employ a union pianist-singer for three hours a day is rapidly dwindling. One of the most venerable New York piano nooks, the Café Pierre, is closing at the end of the year when the Hotel Pierre shuts down for renovations.
Until now, the outstanding hotel-based pianist-singers have been something that New Yorkers could take for granted. But with the Pierre going dark, I decided to catch up with three of the finest: Daryl Sherman at the Waldorf-Astoria, Loston Harris of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel, and, at the Pierre, Kathleen Landis, who will be between positions as of January 1.
The Café Pierre is the smallest and most intimate of these rooms: long and narrow and, overall, much like a piano bar on a cruise ship, a feeling enhanced by the regulars who gather nightly. Ms. Landis plays with an elegantly ornamented style, particularly on the “Rhapsody”-like concert arrangement of “The Man I Love,” and sings somewhat like Dinah Shore at her best. At times, she seems less like an entertainer than a card dealer. One table of revelers in the back wants Christmas carols, another table of visiting Parisians demands French songs, while most of the nightly regulars clamor for Gershwin, which has been her specialty since well before her 1998 album “Gershwin: Island to Island.” She not only satisfies all of them, deftly switching from one mode to another, but also tells tales of famous composers who’ve visited the café.
While recounting her meeting two decades ago with the lyricist Mitchell Parish, she spins an ingenious, spontaneous medley of “Stardust,” “Stars Fell On Alabama,” and, for the season, “Sleigh Ride.”
Back in the naughty ’90s, Bemelmans Bar was traditionally the worst place in New York to hear music – mainly because the crowds were so noisy that no music could be heard. And before Mayor Bloomberg, the room was so filled with cigar smoke that it was impossible to either see or breathe. Loston Harris, who has been in residence in the room since the legendary Barbara Carroll was ingloriously deposed, has found a way to make himself heard: He has brought in a trumpeter (Marcus Parsley) to cut through the din, and if that doesn’t always shut them up, at least it provides my ears with a focal point and helps me tune out the extraneous noise.
Early in his career, Mr. Harris made two albums, but his intonation and playing have improved so much since then that it’s a shame he hasn’t released an album since 2003. He has comfortably adapted something of Sinatra’s staccato phrasing on swingers, and his playing continues to derive from Nat King Cole, especially on ballads; on fast numbers, he plays percussive, slightly dissonant chords that seem designed to compensate for the lack of a drummer and also attract attention in the room.
Last Wednesday night, there was a particularly boisterous crowd, and Mr. Harris countered with not one but two trumpeters, Mr. Parsley and one of the great contemporary brass players, Lew Soloff, who was visiting after playing with headliner Steve Tyrell’s band across the hall. They started with Chet Baker’s bright and brassy treatment of “Winter Wonderland.” The mood and tempos were upbeat for the whole set: Even “Angel Eyes,” normally done as a saloon song, was pert and perky. His only ballad this set was Frank Loesser’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” which inspired some tender obligato work from Mr. Soloff, and he finished with two numbers inspired by Sinatra’s “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers,” “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
The Waldorf-Astoria is still the nicest hotel for listening to music; even though the piano is situated in a space over the stairwell and under an enormous ceiling, with Romanesque columns that go on forever (and, for the season, what seems like the Jolly Green Giant’s own Christmas Tree), Daryl Sherman’s warm and intimate style makes the area seem cozy. Here, the specialty of the house is Cole Porter, since he once occupied a suite in the hotel and Ms. Sherman continues to use his piano. Ms. Sherman’s head contains the most extensive repository of obscure but delightful gems from the songbook since that of the late Charles DeForrest.
She’s particularly strong on rare pieces by Porter, such as, at last Wednesday afternoon’s set, “Let’s Fly Away,” “Where Have You Been?” and “Use Your Imagination.”
I’ve rarely heard Ms. Sherman sing anything written after 1950, so I was thrilled and delighted to hear her do the subtle and moving “Hard Candy Christmas,” a country-Broadway-holiday hybrid from “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.” Even so, her most poignant number, oddly enough, was “This Is So Nice It Must Be Illegal,” from Fats Waller’s only major book show, “Early To Bed” (1943). George Marion Jr.’s lyrics, light and funny as they are, play off of the fears Americans had, particularly during World War II, of Nazis, communists, and other forms of totalitarianism: “Quick, let us kiss before it’s illicit – it can happen here!” When I heard that, I couldn’t help but think of how the closing of the Pierre and the encroaching end of the tradition of hotel singer-pianists would symbolize an equally bleak future: It can happen here.