Old Home Week for Mickey Finn

Lisa Ferguson

Friday, May 29, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.

Fred "Mickey" Finn couldn't stay put for long.

After more than two decades starring in "The Mickey Finn Show" in a slew of Las Vegas showrooms starting in the late 1960s, the piano player pounded out his last Dixieland tune here in 1990 and retired to the mountains of Virginia. Or so he thought.

"I rode my horse and it was great," Finn says, "except after about eight years, you find out that when there's no income, you'd better get your rear end back to work."

After three years of playing Florida's theme park circuit, Finn, joined by his comedic quartet of banjo-pickin', keyboard-tapping, drum-pounding players, has returned to Las Vegas to perform a revamped version of "The Mickey Finn Show" at the Gold Coast hotel-casino through Sunday.

It's a scaled-down version of the production he opened with at Caesars Palace in 1966, beginning his extensive Las Vegas run.

"We had the big production numbers and the dancers and several acts and a big band behind us," 60-year-old Finn recalls. These days, working with a smaller group, "means that we have a lot more latitude onstage to be more spontaneous."

Backing him up are former Miss America runner-up (circa 1970s)-turned- professional banjo player Cathy Reilly; honky-tonk keyboardist Curtis Eugene "Gene" Keen; mallet and xylophone player Dr. Rudy "Child Star" Rodarte (who has performed with Finn for more than 25 years) and drummer Warren Sauer, who joined the group in 1963.

While Finn calls the show's music style "comedy Dixieland," he says the musicians are "such virtuoso players, they play just about everything. It's mainly 'happy music,' that's what we call it, because it's got that foot-stomping beat and we get the people clapping and laughing and participating."

It's been that way all along for Finn, who took up piano lessons at age 7, following an accident that mangled one of his fingers.

By 21, he had opened his Dixieland Roaring '20s nightclub in San Diego, Calif. That's where executives from NBC spotted his act and signed him to host the musical-variety show "Mickie Finn's" (named after his banjo-playing wife, Mickie), which aired during the summer of 1966.

Following a world tour, Finn and company set up shop in Las Vegas. Over the years, the group played gigs at the Sahara, Holiday Casino (now Harrah's), Frontier, Union Plaza and the now-defunct Landmark and Aladdin.

What's the key to the group's staying power? "We make people smile and laugh and there's not much pretension," Finn says. "It's not a big production show, but it's like old-time Las Vegas."

Tickets for the 8 p.m. performances of "The Mickey Finn Show" are $14.95, plus tax, and can be purchased by calling 365-7075.