Lounge performers yearn for the days of intimate shows

Tuesday, June 20, 2000 | 8:39 a.m.

Today's Las Vegas shows typically have things that explode, people who fly, disappearing tigers and spectacles with smoke-shrouded superstars singing to audiences of thousands.

What they don't have, some veteran performers observe, is intimacy -- the sensation that an entertainer is connected with the individual audience member and that it is important to the entertainer for that person to be there.

Intimacy began its exit in the mid-1970s, when corporations took control of the Entertainment Capital of the World and started looking at the bottom line.

"Old-timers" -- musicians who have worked here for decades -- say that business people who don't understand the role of entertainment in the hotel-casino industry have driven a whole class of performers -- and performers with class -- from Las Vegas.

Two performers who are the classiest of the old school will be in Addison's Lounge at the Regent Las Vegas hotel-casino beginning tonight and continuing through Sunday.

The show is called "Frankie Randall in Concert."

Randall, a singer-pianist-songwriter, will include in the show a stirring tribute to the late Frank Sinatra. He and Sinatra were close friends for almost 40 years and even lived next door to each other in Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs.

Backing up Randall will be a six-piece band that includes Joe Darro, a pianist-singer who has been called one of the best in the business by many of his peers.

Randall, 62, and Darro, 65, know Las Vegas intimately.

The people with whom they have worked over the years would fill a "Who's Who" book about the entertainment world of Las Vegas' past.

Randall, a classically-trained pianist, first performed here in 1962 at the Thunderbird hotel-casino. He had been singing at Jilly's in New York City, a club owned by Sinatra's closest friend, Jilly Rizzo, when a lounge act fell through.

After the initial appearance Randall returned often to play most of the lounges in town, working with such comedians as Jack Carter and Totie Fields. His first showroom was at the Sands hotel-casino with Joey Bishop.

"I bought a home here in '68, behind the Boulevard (mall)," said Randall, who still has a home here and one in Rancho Mirage. "A bunch of show people lived in the area. Harry James had a house, Bobby Darin, Phyllis Diller."

Randall had established a respected career as a cabaret singer, recording artist, television performer (a frequent guest of Dean Martin) and actor when Steve Wynn hired him in the early-1980s to be vice president of entertainment at Wynn's two hotel-casinos in Atlantic City.

When the properties were sold to Ballys in the mid-1980s, Randall stayed with the new owners until returning to performing in 1991.

"Being an executive with a corporation burns you out," he said. "The job with the hotel was wonderful, the perks were great. They give you an expense account, a car, you sign your name anyplace, comp this guy, comp that. It's fun. You use the company jet to travel, you get limousines. But it's demanding. You get phone calls at three or four in the morning ... it disrupts your whole life.

"I wanted to go back to the business I love -- playing piano, singing. At the end of the performance people applaud for you, buy you a drink ... it's a friendly atmosphere as opposed to the demanding pressure of the casino business. (Working for the casino) was wonderful, a great experience ... but life's too short to not do what you really enjoy."

Today he performs around the world, often at corporate functions, casinos or small clubs. He doesn't play Las Vegas a lot.

Since Sinatra's death in 1998 Randall has been performing a tribute to him, either as an entire show or as part of a show in which he does a wide variety of music.

"In the tribute to Sinatra I don't try to imitate him in any way," Randall said. "I tell this story of how I met him ... and little personal stories about him and I weave in this great music that he gave me.

"I do a puritanical approach. This was my friend."

All that jazz

Darro, a native of Albany, N.Y., has been singing and playing piano professionally since he was about 16 years old. He was influenced by such musicians as Sinatra, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, George Shearing, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

"I loved the improvisation of jazz," he said. "It fascinated me. I studied scat (singing) when I was a kid. Buddies would laugh, now they ask me to do it."

For several years he picked up extra money playing in bands on the weekend. He worked on IBM machines for the state of New York during the day.

In 1960 big band leader Bobby Sherwood, who became popular in the 1940s, heard Darro and invited him to join the group on tour. Much of what Darro knows about music he attributes to Sherwood.

"Bobby did a little bit of everything ... he taught me a lot of songs I never heard -- (by) Cole Porter, Jerome Kern. He was a great teacher, a great man, a great friend. I loved him, I really did. He was a terrific guy and he knew everybody and everybody knew him so I met so many people through him."

Sherwood's band settled in Nevada after striking a deal with the Del Web Corp. to work at its casinos in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Reno.

Darro worked with every top name in town and became friends with most of them. They included such legends as Sammy Davis Jr., Shecky Greene, Pat Henry, Louis Prima, the Mary Kay Trio, Jack Jones, Debbie Reynolds and a host of others, including the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.

"Dan and I used to play golf together. He was telling me once about a great idea they had for a TV show. They were going to call it 'Laugh-In,' " Darro said.

He was also close to jazz vocalist Joe Williams, who died last year. "I talked to him when he was in the hospital, four days before he died," Darro said of the late Las Vegas resident. "He told me he was coming home the following Monday."

Darro laments many of the changes that have taken place here, including the loss of a lot of his friends. "I don't know too many of the new people (in the business)," he said.

Darro is concerned about his future. He would like to be able to retire when he chooses the time and not because the jobs have dried up.

"Most of the people in the hotel industry doing the booking are much younger and they're getting younger crowds to come in and spend money," he said. "But I hope they keep our kind of stuff too, give them both a chance."

Scene not heard

Darro and Randall have been part of the local music scene for almost four decades, since the days when intimacy was a part of every show. Their audiences came to hear the singers backed up by live musicians, not to see overblown productions that assaulted the senses.

Randall said that high-tech shows are "terrific but they aren't old Las Vegas. That simple 'I'm a performer, you're an audience'-type of show (is gone). When you go to a big spectacular everything is going to happen at the exact same spot in every show. But with cabaret performers you never knew what was going to happen ... there was spontaneity."

He said that the big production shows such as "O" are great but have drawbacks.

"How intimate can a performer get in that setting?" he asked. "Even a Ricky Martin show is somewhat impersonal. Years ago, at the Sands or (Caesars) Palace, the showrooms had seats for 800 or a thousand or 1,200 people. It's easy (for a performer) to get to those people. That intimacy has been lost, people don't get it when they come to this town anymore."

He said that people love impromptu things that happen during a performance. "People still look for that. There is not near enough of that left," he said. "Yes, we have the Three Tenors, Pavarotti, Ricky Martin, but that intimacy between the audience and the performer is not there anymore."

And live music is scarce.

"Every hotel had a house orchestra with at least 18 or 20 musicians," Randall said about the entertainment scene of years long gone. "I don't think you can find a house band in town now."

When people say they miss the old Las Vegas, Randall said, the live music is a big part of what they miss.

"(Taped music) has lessened the impact. (Take) Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme at Caesars. When that curtain opens up and you see that (orchestra) ... the trombone players, saxophone players, string players, the harp and percussionist, it's magnificent. It's like going to the symphony. But if that curtain opens and you just see a backdrop (and no musicians), it loses in the presentation."

Live music, intimate settings and saloon singers such as Sinatra were part of the foundation upon which Las Vegas was built.

"People miss cabaret performers. There are not near enough of them working in this town," he said. "(Las Vegas) used to be a town that developed entertainment. Wayne Newton was developed in this town. Danny Gans was developed in this town. There's not near as much of that going on. Bobby Darin and guys like that used to come here and work with people like George Burns and Jack Benny and whoever else.

"Big headliners today were helped along by these bigger performers."

Musicians ruled

Darro arrived in Las Vegas the same year as Randall, in 1962. His first gig was at the Flamingo hotel-casino.

"When I first came here it was so great," Darro said. "You could go to any hotel in town. There was music 24 hours a day -- live music. There were no tapes in those days."

Nor were there were production shows, just a lot of entertainers -- musicians, singers and comedians who developed a rapport with their audiences.

"Classy entertainers interested in music and entertaining," he said. "They came to sing. All the hotels had a big band ... there were 40 pieces (in an orchestra) for Frank ... You went in there with Frank, Sammy and Dean and a 40-piece live band and the (the music) would make the hair on your arms go up. Now there are four or five guys with two synthesizers."

Darro remembers hearing Harry James and his orchestra, Billy Eckstine and his nine-piece band and Della Reese and her group.

"Then you could go down the street to the Sahara and there was Louis Prima and his group," Darro recalled. "It was a 24-hour town. You worked all different shifts. I could go to work at 3 in the morning or 10 in the morning.

"It was great (for musicians). There was a lot of camaraderie. You would get off work, go to another hotel and the pit bosses knew you. 'Hey Joe, how you doing? What can I get for you? Like to go to a show, have dinner?'

"You go into a lounge and whoever was playing there would say, 'Hey, my good friend Joe Darro. How about coming up and playing a couple of tunes?' It was great. There were a lot of friends."

In the pre-canned music days the musicians worked constantly. "Sometimes you could even double up. I might work with Bobby (Sherwood's band) one shift and, if it didn't conflict with anything, work with someone else on another shift," Darro said.

The money was good and so were the times.

"Oh sure, the mob was here back then but they treated you well as long as you did your job and minded your own business," he said. "They paid you well, and if you wanted to go see a show, no problem. Go see one of the bosses. 'Say, gee, you know, my family's in town. Sure, Joe. What do you want? A room? Dinner? Show?' and they give you a comp slip.

"When the corporations came in, that's when everyone took the kabash. All these corporations figured this is not paying for itself. They saw they were paying four groups $50,000 a week but they were not making $50,000 a week on drinks -- but what they didn't take into consideration was that they were making it out in the casino."

To cut expenses hotels started bringing in bands and shows on tape. "The bottom line was profit," Darro said.

Now Darro has to hustle hard for his gigs. You might see him playing at a wedding, bar mitzvah or political gathering. He recently played several weeks at a small lounge outside a restaurant at the Mirage hotel-casino, providing background music for diners. Club dates are not as frequent as they once were.

A musician's strike in 1989 didn't help the local entertainment landscape. Before then the musician's union was stronger and more active.

"We had a big building on Tropicana across from where the MGM Grand is now. There was a big rehearsal studio in the back," Darro said. "All of the guys, after their jobs, would go there and play. Somebody with a lot of great arrangements might call all these guys and say 'I'm rehearsing tomorrow night. I got all these new arrangements by all these guys. You want to play?' He'd get a whole section -- five saxes, trombones, trumpets, a rhythm section. We'd go there and play till 6 in the morning.

"You would go in and hear all these great players from all these house bands screaming and playing all these great tunes," Darro said. "They did that for many, many years. Now the building has been sold and the union lost a lot of its power."

The strike was over money, longevity, health, welfare and other issues.

"Our contract was up. We thought the Culinary Union would go out (on strike) with us. It would have made us very strong if they went out with us, but they didn't. We went out on our own and we got killed. The corporations just killed us. That was kind of the downfall of the union. We never recovered."

A lot of musicians left town, heading for Los Angeles to work for recording studios and television. Some went to New York to play on Broadway. "But a lot are still here, teaching, in real estate or whatever," Darro said. "A bunch of us who have been here a while keep pretty busy."

Darro stays busier than a lot of musicians because he is so well respected. "He's one of the greatest singers in the business," said Pete Barbutti, a jazz musician and stand-up comic who has lived in Las Vegas almost as long as Darro. "Joe doesn't get the recognition he deserves."

Barbutti said that some of the top entertainers in the business, such as Williams and Sarah Vaughan, routinely asked Darro to do duets with them.

"Joe is one of the best," Barbutti said.

But sometimes, in today's impersonal world, the best is not enough. Sometimes you need smoke and tigers.

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