Impressionist Anderson still flexing vocal muscle

By Jerry Fink

Friday, March 24, 2000 | 2:37 a.m.

Bob Anderson may be the greatest entertainment bargain in Las Vegas.

In addition to hearing Anderson sing, you get Tony Bennett, Barry Manilow, Jack Jones, Steve Lawrence and any one of 70 or 80 other classic voices that may pop out of his finely tuned larynx.

And the star-studded show is free in the Starlight Lounge at the Desert Inn hotel-casino through April 9.

Anderson has been one of the world's premier singing impressionists for almost 30 years, a one-man Rat Pack -- reprising the voices of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.

He is a singing encyclopedia of musical greats -- Tom Jones, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Mel Torme and Elvis Presley are just a few of the voices at his command.

"I fell into impressions because I had no hit records," Anderson said. "In the late '70s you had to do punk, funk, acid, disco or rock to get a label to sign you. They weren't signing people like me to records. Jack Jones, Steve Lawrence and other popular singers were losing their recording contracts."

There are a number of singing impressionists around -- Bill Acosta at the Luxor, Danny Gans at the Mirage and Andre-Philippe Gagnon at the Venetian, to name a few.

But they rely heavily on comedy for their acts, and they reach outside of music, bringing in impressions of politicians and actors to round out the shows.

Although there is an element of humor in Anderson's performance, the songs are the heart of his act and most of his voices are of Las Vegas icons.

"I don't do caricatures. I try to assume their personality," the still youthful-looking 50-year-old entertainer said. "And I try to keep my impressions to the performers (who) are the giants of the industry, guys whose careers have endured for generations. I don't want to keep adding all the new singers. While they may be good, they don't represent that quality of music that has endured for 50 to 60 years."

His audiences appreciate that. "To me, this is Las Vegas," said Jacque Willis, a new fan from Memphis, Tenn., who caught his act for the first time last week.

Anderson is not a household name, although he was a pioneer among singing imitators in Las Vegas. "He is absolutely the best," longtime friend and Las Vegas legend Buddy Greco said. "He becomes those people. He is truly the finest singing impressionist around, in addition to having a great voice of his own."

Greco knew Anderson before Anderson stepped into the limelight. He was a close friend of the impressionist's aunt, who was the chief librarian for a major Detroit radio station that played the music of Greco, Bennett and other up-and-coming singers of the '50s.

The aunt, popular among the young singers, introduced Greco to Sinatra, which was the start of a lifelong friendship between the two musicians. "Whenever I appeared at a club in Detroit, Bob's aunt would be there. And a couple of times she had this young guy with her, 14 or 15 years old," Greco said. "She said this kid is going to be a star. That was Bob.

"He would sit in the back of the room and watch me perform. I was one of the first people he ever did. He not only has my voice, but all of my mannerisms. I just think he's the best."

Down on the farm

Anderson learned to sing when growing up on a farm near Detroit with eight brothers and sisters. "The first one up in the morning ran downstairs and put on the record player and there was music in the house all day," he said.

Anderson learned the songs of his favorite singers and, without intending to, in the process learned their voices as well. He and his five brothers sang at birthday parties and other gatherings when they were in their teens.

"We were the Detroit version of the Osmond Brothers," Anderson quipped.

Soon after high school graduation he was drafted into the Army. After his discharge he flirted briefly with following his brothers into the carpentry trade but then decided to take a trip to Las Vegas to see what it was all about.

His being discovered is a classic story.

Anderson arrived in Las Vegas in 1973 in a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. Two days later he was driving down the Strip and pulled into the Sahara hotel-casino. It was early morning. He looked up at the marquee, which read "Frank Gorshin and Joan Rivers."

"I said, 'Jeez, I'm really here,' " Anderson said.

He went into the Conga room to see if he could watch a rehearsal. Nancy Sinatra and the Everly Brothers were going to replace Gorshin and Rivers.

"I'm sitting in a booth in the back of the room and there's Nancy Sinatra on stage rehearsing her show that was going to open that night," Anderson said. "I'm sitting there and all of a sudden, two minutes later, a tremendous fight breaks out between the Everly Brothers, and I mean a big one. They got into a fight with themselves and with Nancy and walked off the stage after three days of rehearsal and went back to Los Angeles.

"Nancy's in a panic. They've got the phone, calling Mac Davis, Vic Damone Jack Jones, Pat Boone and everybody she could call to come and open the show for her."

Anderson, 22 and fresh off the farm, approached Sinatra and announced he could sing all the songs listed for the opening, and in the voices of the original artists.

"Everybody laughed," Anderson recalled. "Billy Strange, who was Elvis Presley's conductor and guitar player, was with Nancy at the time. He said to Nancy, 'Give him a mic.' And that evening I opened in the main showroom of the Sahara hotel."

After the successful audition, Sinatra took him in a limousine to a tuxedo shop and got him a suit and then put him up in a suite on the top floor of the hotel across the hall from her own rooms.

That morning he had been looking up at a marquee with the names Gorshin and Rivers on it. That afternoon, from his suite, he looked down on the same marquee with his own name now on it, along with that of Nancy Sinatra and comedian Pat Buttram.

"I'm freaked out," he said. "I'm calling home and nobody believes me so I tell my family to call me back at the hotel suite after I hang up."

Anderson toured with Sinatra for a year.

Reaching for the stars

His next big step up the show business ladder came when he was singing at a place called Ye Little Club in Century City, Calif., a '70s hot spot for every major star in Hollywood.

Merv Griffin heard his singing impressions, wrote a new act for him and a week later put him on his show at Caesars Palace. The defunct Dunes hotel-casino hired him for two weeks and held him over for 156 weeks.

"You couldn't get in the room, every night it was packed," Anderson said. It was the favorite late-night spot for entertainers. Many of those he imitated in his act would join him on stage.

He went on to make 13 "Tonight Show" appearances with Johnny Carson, 70 with Merv Griffin and 25 with Mike Douglas. Anderson attributes his failure to sustain that level of success on a bad manager.

"People wonder why I'm not a household name. It was because of bad management. My manager ruined my career," he said. The manager for Johnny Carson wanted to help out Anderson, but Anderson's manager at the time wouldn't cooperate.

"I got to be known as a guy with a great act but one who can't do anything with his manager, and that was the end of that," Anderson said.

Invitations to the Carson show, Douglas and other venues that had been open ceased and a career that had been shifting into high gear stalled. He found that staying on top was not as easy as breaking into the business had been.

But Anderson was not discouraged when he failed to reach the superstar status that seemed to be his destiny from the beginning. He found another destiny -- to keep alive the voices of the greatest entertainers of our time.

He continues to live in Las Vegas, playing frequently at the Desert Inn. He's popular on the corporate events circuit and plays a lot of state fairs. He also spends about 12 weeks a year in Europe.

"I work all over the world. People in this business tend to think that if you're not working in Vegas, you're not working. But there's a big world out there," he said.

Because his family is here (he and his wife, Karen, have raised two children) he prefers to perform in Las Vegas and hopes to get a permanent venue, one like the Starlight Lounge.

"It kind of bugs me that I don't have my own room," Anderson said. "In a way, I'm shooting for that. Vegas is a great place to work -- the people are here, new people coming in all the time."

The lounge is an intimate setting, allowing Anderson to interact with audiences who are thrilled when they shout out the names of their favorite artists and Anderson comes back with songs done in the appropriate voices without missing a beat.

One moment he may be singing "I Write the Songs" in the voice of Manilow and the next, "Happy Trails" like Roy Rogers, or "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" like Bennett.

About the only thing Anderson can't sing is his own "Swan Song."