Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

‘Cool Thing’ at Tropicana remains in conflict with fair pay

Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns

Bobby Gladd

A view of the Tiffany Theatre stage and Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns.

Sante Fe & The Fat City Horns

Sante Fe & The Fat City Horns

The Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns horn section. Launch slideshow »

Wanting to Play

Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns frontman Jerry Lopez, who has negotiated pay for the musicians, laments that the union is "just going to kill another cool thing," and emphasizes that the musicians taking part are content having a suitable venue with hundreds of big-band fans.

Labor's View

Las Vegas Musicians Union Local 369 President Frank Leone has asked members to "stand down" from performing the Monday night, big-band lounge shows at Tropicana because performers aren't compensated fairly.

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Jerry Lopez.

It is becoming clear that, at Tropicana, "the cool thing" and "fair compensation for musicians" cannot peacefully co-exist.

The cool thing, as Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns frontman Jerry Lopez has dubbed it, is the night of entertainment offered free of charge at Tiffany Theatre and Celebration Lounge — until Monday, at least. Santa Fe takes the stage at 10:30 p.m. and performs until midnight. Afterward, an orchestra of more than a dozen top Las Vegas musicians performs at Celebration Lounge, just outside the theater.

The show lasts until about 1 a.m. It is a cool thing.

But are those musicians, who receive what amounts to gas money for these jam sessions, being paid fair compensation? Not even close, says Las Vegas Musicians Union Local 369 President Frank Leone, who is charged with ensuring his ranks are paid union scale for their time and talent. Consequently, the union has asked its members to "stand down" from performing the Monday night, big-band lounge shows, known as "kicks gigs" in the industry.

"I am a union official, and as a union official I am sworn to uphold the bylaws of the Local 369 and our national organization, the American Federation of Musicians," Leone says. "I do not have the ability to condone any violation of our bylaws, including playing for free ... I have no choice in this."

Monday's performance by a band of union and non-union players, the Satin Saddle Jazz Orchestra, could be in jeopardy. Bandleader Soeren Johnson is not a member of Local 369, but is known to adhere to union policy — and Leone says any union member who plays Monday night for the small stipend that has been provided for these showcases would be "subject to the remedies as provided in our bylaws: Fines, and/or expulsion ... but we are trying to avoid that by allowing members to understand that they should not be playing for less than area standard."

About 700 musicians are members of Local 369, says Thom Pastor, the union's secretary-treasurer.

Lopez is a former member. As Santa Fe's bandleader, he organized the shows at issue and negotiates directly with Tropicana Entertainment Director Lee Ann Groff-Daudet for musicians' payment for both shows. Lopez laments that the union is "just going to kill another cool thing," and emphasizes that the musicians taking part in the performances are content to having a suitable venue — replete with hundreds of big-band fans — to showcase their chops.

The dispute is a classic case of musicians' desire to perform before hundreds of fans, even for little or no pay, weighed against the union's need to ensure musicians are properly paid.

Lopez says he understands "both sides of this."

"But the musicians are doing these gigs because they love to play, pure and simple ... I know (Leone's) intentions are good, but he's very narrow-sighted in this."

A brief history: Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns is one of the city's most-respected bands, having performed in Las Vegas lounges and showrooms since 1975. The band backed Clint Holmes during his headlining run at Harrah's. Its horn section played behind Bette Midler at The Colosseum at Ceasars Palace, and several members play for Donny & Marie at the Flamingo. Lopez had been the bandleader for Wayne Brady at the Venetian.

After a successful run at The Lounge at the Palms, Santa Fe was brought into Tiffany Theatre for a two-week trial run beginning Jan. 18. Those near-capacity shows were no-admission affairs, though preferred seating near the front of the stage was offered in reduced-rate room packages.

The hotel has planned a $5 cover charge, which pays for the show and a drink, to be in place Monday. It's the first time a charge has been attached to the show.

But Lopez says the band will not see an increase in its pay.

"It's more a way to accurately track attendance to our shows," he says. "If the hotel makes a little more money, and in the long run we make a little more, fine."

During and shortly after the initial two-week run, Tropicana officials did consider enacting a ticket price, but Lopez argued against it, accepting a flat fee to compensate the band. Even the union has been fine with it. The concern among union officials, Leone in particular, is the standing gig at Celebration Lounge.

A rotating group of musicians playing big-band jazz has been featured at the lounge from the beginning of the Santa Fe run. Because the musicians are playing for a nominal fee, $30 and a free drink, and not provided any percentage of the gaming or bar profits — and because the show is staged at a famous Strip hotel that features union adversary Wayne Newton as its chief headliner — Leone says it was time to act.

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Jerry Lopez appears with Santa Fe and the Fat City horns at Tropicana's Tiffany Theatre.

Pastor contacted member musicians last week asking them to stand down for Monday's performance by the Bruce Harper Big Band. But the union relented, at least for a week, because that show was fast approaching and musicians had committed to it.

Since then, the union reportedly has said it would be fine with payment of $130 per musician for an hourlong set at Celebration Lounge. Harper's orchestra has 18 musicians, so the hotel's cost would have been $2,340 compared with the $540 it wound up paying.

The union then reportedly dropped that requirement by about half, but the band's rate went unchanged, and there has been no movement by the hotel to increase the musicians' pay next week. (Through a spokesman, Tropicana's entertainment director declined to comment for this story, but did confirm plans for Monday's $5 cover charge.)

Leone says the union is attempting to pre-empt similar "cool things" from cropping up at resorts up and down Las Vegas Boulevard.

"Why not do this at every hotel on the Strip?" Leone says. "You could say, 'We have a cool thing going at the Venetian, or Bellagio, or Wynn, that's just as cool as the Tropicana, and you're playing for free there.'"

When it is argued that today's Tropicana, undergoing a long-overdue $125 million makeover under the direction of owner Alex Yemenidjian and President Tom McCartney, is not in the same class as those mentioned by Leone, the union head counters, "(The Tropicana) claims financial difficulties, but when you look at the bar take, the table games and slot play from hundreds of people, somebody is making money. But the musicians are not being paid."

But Lopez says the hotel is not profiting from his band's performances.

"The Tropicana is losing money on Mondays," says Lopez, echoing the sentiments of many musicians who play the Trop once a week. "This is a way to draw some attention to the hotel one night a week and to give guys who want to play a chance to play."

One estimate from a person familiar with the hotel's bar take was that it made about $1,000-$1,200 per night on Mondays, which, if accurate, would not quite cover even half of what the hotel pays to put on the Santa Fe show. Of course, that discounts whatever gaming take the hotel accumulates as a result of the 300-400 fans who attend the performances.

Musicians in and out of the union have questioned the selective nature of the union's action, taken some three months after Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns' doubleheader at the Trop was launched. Leone explains that he understood there would be a brief trial period, followed by either the band's vacating the venue or earning a ticket price worthy of a major Strip showroom. It was only after it was clear to the union that there would be no increase in compensation that he decided to act.

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A look at Monday night's crowd for Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns at Tiffany Theatre.

"I looked at this as a two-week trial run, primarily. It was supposed to be that," he says. "We didn't envision what is happening now when this started."

He stressed that hotels that draw ample foot traffic can pay musicians adequate wages.

"Anecdotally, if you look at, for example, Jimmy Hopper at (Fontana Lounge) at the Bellagio," Leone says, referring to the popular longtime Las Vegas lounge entertainer who spent years at Bellagio before returning to the Palms. "He and his small band were making five figures to bring 50 people into a lounge. And you're telling me you can't afford to pay musicians who bring in hundreds of fans?"

The Tropicana shows are hardly alone as performances in which union members are paid lower than union scale. Many musicians point to the "Sandy Hackett's Rat Pack Show" at Sahara as a glaring example of a show that pays its performers a substandard rate, reportedly $80 per show, in a Strip showroom.

"We're addressing that right now," Leone says. "We're cracking down on all of this."

A local musician well-versed in union issues is trumpet master Lon Bronson, who has fronted one of the more popular orchestras in Las Vegas for 25 years. Today he is the bandleader of the "Rat Pack" production (the version at the Plaza, where performers earn about $100 each; the base union scale for that show is $126 per player, per show).

But Bronson and his band also perform once a month, on Thursdays, at Green Valley Ranch's Ovation Lounge. Those shows, too, are no-admission and were once held each week before the hotel lopped the schedule to once a month in a cost-cutting measure.

Still, Bronson and his band are paid union scale.

"That makes our situation a lot different from what's going on with Santa Fe," he says. "We didn't like the schedule being cut, but it was either that or looking at a cut in (pay) scale. At least we kept the scale intact."

Bronson spent more than a decade at the Riviera, and for seven of those years played a Monday-night gig at Le Bistro Lounge that featured the high-caliber Don Menza big band as part of its showcase.

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A view from the back of the room at the Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns show at Tropicana.

"The difference was, me and Steve went to the union beforehand and made our arguments to the union as to why this was important," Bronson says, "and it was because of all the reasons being used now, that big-band music, that 'kicks gigs,' were great for musicians and helped keep alive a form of music that we all love. It created a really cool atmosphere at the hotel that everyone loved."

Thus, there were no problems with the union and the musicians in that show, who were paid what Bronson remembers as "two free drinks and a pretty low scale."

He says the issues at the Trop are inherently difficult to wade through, given that there is such a high degree of passion for union concerns, musicians' thirst for playing, and big-band music in general.

"I think that if this were some other, contemporary form of music, there would not be so much passion with this. But big-band music is really important to everyone in this argument," Bronson says. "I also believe that one conversation before any of this started might have solved the whole thing."

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