Peter Nero - Don't Get Around Much Anymore
In July 2009, All About Jazz published an interview with legendary pianist and Philly Pops maestro Peter Nero. That interview jumped between his early musical development and his current 30-year tenure as founder and music director of the Philly Pops. There wasn't time then to ask him about what turned out to be the subject of the current interview, the long intervening period including his salad days as a pianist, an ongoing venture which he continues to pursue in addition to being director of the Pops.On the occasion of this, his second All About Jazz interview, Nero seemed more in the mood to "free associate" than to give a chronology of his career, so he ranged from topic to topic like an improvising jazz musician, but always sticking to the tune—namely, his career from the 1960s to the present. As in Louis Malle's classic film, My Dinner with Andre (1981), the interview gives an intimate glimpse of Nero, going wherever his recollections take him. It was a sheer delight to talk freely with a man of such remarkable accomplishments, who is also a warm, cordial individual with a sense of humor that he incorporates in his music. Reminiscences about Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Lynn Roberts, Marian McPartland, Billy Taylor, Bill Dana and Bob Newhart comingled with observations about his early struggles on the circuit, making the big time, and the joy of music. During the last part of the interview, Nero provided insights about his use of humor in music, a sideline which has charmed, shocked and surprised audiences from his early days to the present. Chapter Index The Early Days Before Fame World War II Canteen Music More About Coming Up on the Circuit On the Rise More Asides Working with the Philly Pops Working the Audience: Humor and Music The Early Days Before FameAll About Jazz: In our previous interview, you shared your life story from your childhood and days as a music student up to where you were a contestant on a couple of TV music competitions, signed with an agent who gave you the name Peter Nero, and obtained your first record contract. In the decades following, you rose to the status of one of the most popular musicians in the world. Your rise must have seemed meteoric. Peter Nero: However, I wasn't making any money back then when I started out.AAJ: But didn't you have a best-selling record right at the starting gate?PN: No. They were a success by record company standards, but in those days, they weren't that concerned about individual record sales; they were looking for at least a 20-year career for a pianist on records. They did it the slow, hard way. My first album sold only 35,000 copies. That barely covered costs because we used a 35-piece orchestra (the number 35 was just a coincidence.) Like the Hollywood film studios, the record companies nurtured the artists, brought them along, and looked towards a long future.AAJ: They thought of you as a future investment and weren't concerned about sales at the beginning.PN: They thought of all artists in that way. When I joined RCA Victor Records, they were looking for a long-term pianist, who turned out to be myself; a male vocalist, John Gary, who had a short but brilliant career; a female vocalist, Ann-Margaret (she broke in as a singer); a miscellaneous novelty group, the Limelighters, folk singers and comedians who played a lot of colleges; and a horn player, Al Hirt, who was down in New Orleans. And they set aside $100,000 per year for promotion money. It's so different nowadays. If you're new, you have to walk in the door with a finished product. And if you sign with a big record company, if you don't sell a million copies, they'll drop you; and for your next record, you have to have the finished product and beg them to distribute it. So if I came up today, I wouldn't have the same advantages at all. At that time, aspiring musicians like myself had to start out playing clubs. The first club I played in New York was the Embers, a good music room that featured instrumentalists, although Jonah Jones would sing once in a while when he wasn't playing trumpet choruses. After that I played Basin Street East, owned by the same people I think, and it was pretty much of a show setup. You'd play for 30 minutes or so and then there would be an intermission pianist, which is actually how I first broke into the business, playing intermission piano at the Hickory House at age 21.AAJ: So you really started out the same way that hard core jazz musicians do, playing small clubs,PN: Right. I started out playing saloons—they're called clubs but they're really saloons. Did I ever tell you about Jilly's?AAJ: Wasn't that Sinatra's hangout?PN: Yes, that was a great place for me to grow as a musician. At the other clubs, the pianos were crappy, and others discouraged me from playing jazz. At the Village Vanguard they had a trio playing jazz for dancing and I was playing intermission piano as people paid their bill.AAJ: They had dancing at the Village Vanguard?PN: Oh, yes!AAJ: But it's a little hole in the wall!PN: The maximum capacity said 150, but they squeezed over 200 people in there.AAJ: Do you recall the owner, Max Gordon?PN: Of course, and he also was a co-owner of the uptown club, The Blue Angel, and I played intermission piano there as well. Bart Howard, who wrote "Fly Me to the Moon," was their house pianist and I subbed for him. I got bored during the featured artist part of the show, usually a singer so I worked the lights to amuse myself.World War II Canteen MusicAAJ: All this nostalgia reminds me that I wanted to ask you about the upcoming concert of the Philly Pops on March 28, 2010, where you're going to recap WWII dance music in a show called Stage Door Canteen.PN: We already did one show like that five years ago with the same singer, Lynn Roberts, the quintessential big band singer She's still the best. She comes out dressed in St. John's knits, and just sings, no vocal mannerisms, no choreography, no histrionics, just gets out there and sings like an angel!AAJ: For those of us with an interest in jazz history, what some of these allusions to dancing and WWII add up to is the change from swing music, which was for dancing, to bebop which was entirely for listening. And you came up around that time. During the war years, there were Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Woody Herman, and so on, and people danced to their music. Then, after the war something happened—they stopped dancing to jazz. As leader of the Pops, do you think perhaps there ought to be a revival of dance music?PN: We play a lot of big band music, and we've actually had professional dancers on stage, but you know something—we got complaints! The audiences felt it got in the way of listening to the music. I was surprised. I've sometimes encouraged the audience themselves to dance but there weren't any takers!AAJ: Perhaps it reflects changes in the culture. But for the moment, let's continue with your career development. I was surprised by your earlier comment because I thought your rise was meteoric. But you were saying it was a bit of a struggle at the beginning.PN: It was not meteoric but I think it was better that way because the faster you go up, the faster you go down. What do you do after the big success? In this business, you can't level off because you are going downward. You have to keep doing something creative that sells as well. I've always managed to incorporate the music of the day into whatever I do. It doesn't lock me in to any one idiom and I'm always trying to grow in all respects as well.More About Coming Up on the CircuitPN: Getting back to my bio, after I played Basin Street East, I then went on the national circuit. I did the London House in Chicago. Again, they didn't have singers—I don't know why, maybe because there was an excise tax on them—they mostly had piano, with an occasional horn player like Jonah Jones or Dizzy Gillespie. They were also restaurants. The London House was one of the best steak houses in Chicago. I did Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit, which, as the name suggests, featured pianists. Toronto had two rooms, one was the Colony. And there was the Town House. Oscar Peterson used to play one of those two places all the time. I played at the Colony on the main drag. They had a bar setup, balcony and tables. It was a tough room to play, and all they had were piano trios. In Cleveland, a club closed due to a fire so everyone went over to the Hickory Grille. I used to come back and play there periodically. In order to develop a following, you had to play these clubs and the owners signed you up for a three-year contract.AAJ: At one club? That's unheard of now.PN: One club, once a year, three weeks each stint. However, the pay was absolutely horrendous. They knew it would be worth it to you because you could put their name on a resume and get reviews in their town. In fact, the first time I played the London House, I had to borrow money in order to make the gig. I had to pay the musicians, transportation and the hotel, so we guys stayed three in a room! The room had black and white tiles, like a flophouse! But it only cost $3.50 a guy for a night and it was right down the street from the London House, which is a pretty nice area. When I did Baker's Lounge in Detroit, I stayed at a motel.AAJ: When did this take place?PN: It started in the fall of 1961. The first album had come out April 1st of that year.AAJ: You had told me that you met George Shearing on one occasion in Chicago.PN: That was at the London House. The first thing RCA did was to send me on a promotion tour: 12 cities in 14 days. We started on the West Coast. I had come out of the clubs, and then all of a sudden, I heard my music on the radio! That was the biggest thrill of all. See, I had become very skeptical after playing club intermissions and piano bars. The singers made money because while they were doing romantic songs, $50 bills flew across the piano—they were being tipped big because the guys in the audience were romancing their girlfriends! When I played, I had my bassist and we played the fastest tempos I possibly could, and I felt very conspicuous because the audience did not consist of jazz fans, and the only place they loved my playing was at Jilly's in New York.At the Hickory House, I played opposite Marian McPartland and Billy Taylor, the latter becoming a mentor for me. Much later on, I had him as my guest artist in Philly with the Philly Pops and in Tulsa with the Tulsa Philharmonic, which I worked with for nine years. I conducted for Billy, Dizzy and Shearing and at the end, sat opposite them at a second Steinway Grand and we just blew choruses for about 15 minutes. When we did the same concert twice, some of the orchestra players wanted to know how we had time to rehearse and learn two different versions (LOL). In the early 1980s, I became pops music director of the Florida Philharmonic and built the series from zip to 24 concerts per season. I had to coax Dizzy to let me sit in with him and he, being skeptical, finally agreed to run through a head chart on a B flat blues and at 200 mph. After the run-through, his rhythm section made a bee line for me to give me their business cards. Dizzy's gone but they're still here. Ask 'em.AAJ: Did you do pops or classical?PN: My pops consisted then and does now of jazz and classical.AAJ: Who did the arrangements for these large orchestras?PN: If they were for piano and orchestra, I did them. Also had a library of about 600 more that I had done for 50-plus recordings. I also wrote charts for orchestra alone and farmed out the rest. As Andre Previn said in his book, I got into conducting out of self defense and started in the early '70s. In the early '60s, I did two albums with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. One had the "Rhapsody in Blue" and six arrangements of Gershwin tunes and the second, the Gershwin "Concerto in F" and a piece I wrote called "Fantasy and Improvisations."On the RiseAAJ: So, your rise wasn't as slow as you suggest; a lot happened in just two years. From clubs to radio and the Boston Pops.PN: During my stint at the lounges, I got my first concert gig, at the University of Maryland in College Park in their field house. That was $1,250 for the night, pay your own hotel, transportation and musicians, while the London House was $1,000 for the week with the same deal. So the pay got a lot better.AAJ: Somewhere during that time, you started coming up.PN: Well, that first concert really broke the ice. At that time, the colleges were a big venue to play. There were the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary and The Limelighters. One time, Simon and Garfunkel, who were just starting out, opened for me. It was at a field house at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. I heard them warming up and turned to my musicians and said, "Who the heck is that?" They said, "That's your opening act, Simon and Garfunkel." I'd never heard of them, but they were getting popular with the young people with their recordings. They did the first half of the evening, and the kids tore the house down. A tough act for a pianist and trio to follow.AAJ: That's indicative of the way the whole music scene was changing at that time.PN: Yes, The Beatles changed everything. When they came over in 1964, the record companies made me go from standards to what were called "cover records." We'd look at the pop charts, and out of 12 top tunes, we'd pick out those we felt would get up the charts, so everything we did were instrumental versions of vocal hits.AAJ: So around that time, you began to develop an audience and make a good living, making the necessary adjustments.PN: But, look. Comedian Bob Newhart's first album sold a million copies, the first comedy album that sold that many. I went out on tour with him around 1963. The people that owned the London club owned another club in downtown Chicago, Mr. Kelly's, a supper club. It was Bob's home town, and he signed up with them, as he was breaking through with his album. During that time, I had to fulfill the remaining two years of my contract with them at the London House. Newhart had the same deal at Kelly's, which was ludicrously small for him, and he paid them three times his fee to get out of the contract.AAJ: Frank Sinatra did the same thing with Tommy Dorsey.PN: The point is, I started a heavy climb, and the money got better—there was no doubt. I was building an audience. I did some singles but they didn't get on the charts, so I was classified as an album artist. I didn't have a million-selling album or single until The Summer of '42 (Columbia, 1973), which was in 1972. So it took me 11 years to get there. And in between, I'd already done about 30 albums! I had done 24 with RCA and six with Columbia.AAJ: Did you use a particular group of musicians for those albums?PN: Oh, yes. I used the same New York guys. Bobby Rosengarden was the drummer. George Duvivier was the bassist, although Milt Hinton was on my first album. Duvivier had a strong sound, he was a monster. For the recording with the Boston Pops, I used him, with Bobby on drums, because my regular trio at that time couldn't do orchestra work as well. George is a legendary bassist, a big guy, and he could play the fastest tempos anyone ever heard, and all with the wrist, no finger plucking.On the first rehearsal in Boston with the Pops, which consisted mostly of players in the Boston Symphony, including the principals in each section because on one album I did Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and on the other I did the "Concerto in F." We did two rehearsals, two concerts, and then the next morning we recorded the whole album in three hours straight. We did it right in Symphony Hall, on the floor—they took the tables and chairs out, and let the drapes hang down as sound barriers. It was 1963 and I was 29 years old. The adrenalin was really flowing. In 1965 we did the "Concerto in F" pretty much straight through because it had very few solo passages I could re-record. It was the fastest "Concerto in F" ever recorded. One record reviewer wrote, "This is what the Boston Pops sounds like when they're double parked."AAJ: Oscar Levant recorded "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F" a few years before that. Did you know him?PN: No, but I could tell you a funny anecdote about him. Levant was so impressed with Vladimir Horowitz' technique, he was so amazed by it, as was everyone else, that when he met Horowitz, as Horowitz was leaving for Europe, Levant quipped, "When you go to Europe, do you take your octaves with you or do you ship them ahead?" [laughter]. Levant knew that Horowitz could play with blinding speed, color, phrasing, accuracy and dynamics. I thought that remark was so funny, because I thought to myself, "Yeah, Vlodya, ship them ahead, because they'll get there before you anyway!"AAJ: I recently heard a vintage recording of Horowitz playing the Rachmaninoff "Third Piano Concerto" live with the New York Philharmonic. The speed and artistry that he displayed was truly amazing.PN: Do you know that Rachmaninoff himself was an excellent pianist but after hearing Horowitz perform it, he never played it again. But it wasn't so much that he couldn't keep pace with him, it was the whole conception of it. It really takes someone from the outside to see what it is, because the composer himself is so involved in writing it. I myself have done some arrangements which I could only really understand two years after I wrote them because when I wrote them they were just coming out of me without knowing exactly why.AAJ: It's very interesting to see how you have been evolving as a musician ever since you started out. I was talking earlier with your Philly Pops manager Ernest Toplis and he pointed out how you've kept evolving even during the time period that he's been working with you. Getting back to your bio, so your career is developing and then, at this moment of adrenalin rush in Symphony Hall, you have what psychologist Abe Maslow called a "peak experience," an electrifying moment when you make that key change in the "Concerto in F." It must have been a stunning moment in your life.<strong