Pianist Miller spans Sinatra generations

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 | 8:39 a.m.

Bill Miller had a front-row seat to entertainment history.

The 87-year-old musician was a fly on Frank Sinatra's showroom wall for 43 years, playing piano for the legendary singer and watching headlines in the making as events unfolded before him.

"Someday, when I get old, I might write a book," Miller said.

Today, Miller is playing piano for Frank Sinatra Jr. in "Sinatra Sings Sinatra" at MGM Grand the same hotel where Frank Sinatra Sr. performed at his last Las Vegas engagement in 1994.

Sinatra Jr.'s run ends Wednesday.

Miller was playing piano for Sinatra when Sinatra Jr. became his father's conductor in 1989. He has been playing for Sinatra Jr., off and on, for the past three years.

"You can't compare the father and the son," Miller said. "They are two different people."

Few may know that better than Miller.

"I met Frank for the first time very briefly around 1942, when he was with (Tommy) Dorsey and I was with Charlie Barnett's band," Miller, a Los Angeles resident, said.

Miller had been playing professionally since age 16, beginning when the Big Band Era was in full swing and Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were headliners. He joined Barnett in 1939, and was with his band until going into the Army in 1942.

After his discharge in '46, Miller rejoined Barnett.

"But the big-band business was falling apart" Miller said. "It got too expensive. Very few stayed intact Tommy Dorsey was one of the few."

The paths of Miller and Sinatra didn't cross again until September 1951, when Miller was playing piano with a trio in a lounge at the Desert Inn.

Miller's first gig in Las Vegas was in August 1951, at the Thunderbird, a job he got while en route from California to New York. He was headed east to be the pianist for a television show that was to feature Martha Raye.

"I was married by then, with a young baby," Miller said. "My wife and I decided to drive to New York, but we stopped in Vegas along the way."

Miller learned the Thunderbird was looking for a piano player, so he took the job for a couple of weeks, which turned into two more weeks and then two more.

"I kept calling New York and after a couple of months they said the TV show was not happening," Miller said.

That was all right with the native of Brooklyn, N.Y.

"I had very little competition in Vegas at the time," Miller said.

There weren't a lot of hotels and casinos on the Strip in 1951 -- only the first El Rancho (which opened in 1941), the Last Frontier (1942), the Flamingo (1946), the Thunderbird (1948) and the Desert Inn (1950) had been built.

Among the popular Strip entertainers were the Ames Brothers, George Goble and the Mills Brothers.

"The Mills Brothers were the big headliners," Miller said.

It was a difficult time in Sinatra's life. His records weren't selling. His movies weren't popular. The public was angry that he was having a relationship with actress Ava Gardner, whom he married Nov. 7, 1951. Sinatra opened at the Desert Inn on Sept. 4 of that year.

"It was his first engagement in Vegas," Miller recalled.

Sinatra heard Miller perform, not remembering they had met once years earlier.

"When I met Frank the second time I had been on the job two months, working every evening," Miller said. "I was in good shape, playing my best."

And Sinatra needed a piano player.

"The timing was just right," Miller said. "He asked me if I would like to start work with him."

So Miller joined Sinatra at a low point in the celebrity's career.

"It was a bad period," Miller said. "Nobody seemed to want him."

Then, in 1953 things began to change. Sinatra won the role of Maggio in the film "From Here to Eternity," and received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He changed record companies, from Columbia to Capitol.

In 1961 Sinatra left Capitol and founded his own label, Reprise.

"Things took off again," Miller said.

And Miller was there for most of the ride.

"I didn't think much of anything about it," Miller said. "I wasn't that curious. Anything that happened in his life was in the newspapers."

Miller enjoyed the spontaneity of the entertainers he performed with when they were onstage.

"That was the fun part," Miller said. "They had some ideas they would write out -- do this and that -- but the script kept changing. They were ad-libbing a script."

Miller hung out with Sinatra.

"Especially in the earlier days," he said. "Especially after he and Ava broke up. He liked to hang out. He wasn't a heavy drinker, he just liked to hang out."

Miller described Sinatra as "hot and cold."

"When things were going well, he was easy to work with," he said. "But if something was bothering him, he would take it out on the band, or whatever. He never got onto me too much. I knew when to back off and to stay away. We got along fine. Apparently he liked my piano playing."

Miller left Sinatra for six years, from 1979 to '85.

"I was conducting and playing the piano," Miller said. "But then he wanted somebody to conduct and me just to play piano. I didn't like that arrangement. That's how I left. It was a friendly parting."

Miller, who had always worked for other entertainers when not doing something with Sinatra, became the pianist for singers Vic Damone and Peggy Lee.

"Mostly, I did whatever came my way," he said. "I did some recording with Nelson Riddle. I went back to my free-lance work."

During Miller's six-year hiatus, Sinatra used a couple of other pianists, but eventually rehired Miller.

"He had his lawyer call me to see if I was interested in coming back, so I came back," Miller said. "Outside of that six-year period, I was with him from '51 till he retired in 1994 -- 43 years total."

Sinatra's last date in Las Vegas was at MGM Grand on May 29, 1994. He died on May 14, 1998.

"Frank had his instructions about what he didn't like to hear," Miller recalled. "He didn't want anybody to play too busy, don't play all over the place, nothing flighty. He was restricting, but I learned what he liked and what he didn't like, and that worked out."