Marine Who Sang for 7 Presidents to Retire

Carl Hartman

Saturday, May 6, 2000 | 8:32 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Don Quixote wore a suit of rusty armor, but he'll don the scarlet-and-blue dress uniform of the U.S. Marines when Master Gunnery Sgt. Michael Ryan does his farewell performance after 30 years entertaining seven presidents and more than 2,000 public concerts.

Ryan likes "Man of La Mancha" and plans to do more than sing the special arrangement made for him from its tunes, even if the formal Marine wear of a 190-pound Marine, complete with white epaulettes, isn't quite appropriate for the skinny knight of the 1500s.

"I'll talk and act some, and the audience will have a little suspension of disbelief," he says.

A six footer, he has the 45-inch chest measurement as well as the musical background that fit the baritone for the heroic roles in Richard Wagner's operas. He can range from opera to the satirical ditties that have made him a 30-year regular at the Gridiron Club, the annual dinner of a senior Washington news group. There, he uses costume and make-up to impersonate political figures.

"I've done so many presidential candidates I can't remember them all off the top of my head," he said. "There was Hubert Humphrey and year before last it was Al Gore."

He couldn't recall, he said, whom he was impersonating when he had his most memorable Gridiron experience "being kissed on one cheek by Beverly Sills and by Elizabeth Taylor on the other."

Ryan is only the second vocalist the Marine Band has had in the two centuries since Thomas Jefferson, a violinist, made it "the president's own." It can form any kind of musical ensemble now, from full symphony orchestra to harp-and-flute duo by way of oom-pah band and jazz combo.

It seems to find the vocal experiment successful. Ryan's successor Kevin Bennear, another baritone, came on the job earlier this year.

Though he has made his whole career with the military, he and the other 142 members of the band do no military service.

"The Marine Corps is a low-budget organization," he explained. "They're not going to spend money to train someone to use the bayonet if their job is going to be to play the violin."

He likes to recall performing "America the Beautiful" at President Reagan's first inaugural, just as the American hostages were being released in Iran.

Ryan also sang at a Clinton inaugural.

"I think Jessye Norman and I are the only ones to have done two presidential inaugurations," he said.

Presidential musical tastes differ.

He remembers the surprise party the band set up for the Ford family's last night in the White House, when he sang the haunting folk song "Shenandoah."

"Then there was dancing it was a kind of family affair that we were all part of," he said.

The Carters, who came in next, preferred classical music.

At 57, Ryan has sung for every president since Lyndon Johnson.

"I enjoyed the Reagans and the Bushes most if only because they always called me by name," he said.

He thinks of himself basically as an opera singer and wouldn't mind doing some opera in retirement, as well as more popular entertainment and some additional teaching. Being a baritone doesn't limit him, he said.

"The principles of singing aren't confined to one voice or another," he said. "They apply to all voices, men and women both."