Posted on 11/23/2006 7:06:52 PM PST by UnklGene
ONE FOR THE ROAD - Bill Miller, 19152006
Frank Sinatra called himself a saloon singer, because thats where he used to sing, way back when in Jersey juke joints and road houses. Not for long. He was too good, even then. But for a while, if you headed up to the Rustic Cabin on Route 9W in the Garden State, they had this pianist pushing a little half-piano from table to table and the waiter would sing with him and they had a tip jar on the lid and you couldnt help noticing the kid sang awful good for a waiter, and pretty soon the singing was earning him, as he figured it, about 15 clams a week. Thirty, forty, fifty years later, week in, week out, the same singing waiter with full supporting orchestra was barreling through some grim rock stadium on the edge of a strip mall in some nondescript suburb. And, midway through the set, the lights would dim and Frank Sinatra would announce that he would now sing a saloon song and proceed to shrink whichever sterile aircraft hangar hed been booked into down to the size of those poky smoky New Jersey saloons of his youth. There were the old props the tumbler, the cigarette and the scene-setting grew ever more ornate over the years, expanding into an almighty pile-up of retro hipsterisms as Frank prepared us for the tale of some emblematic long-lost loser whose chick split, flew the coop, cleaned out his stash and left him cryin into a gallon of Muscatel. And underneath a tinkly tipsy barroom piano intro would begin, and Sinatra would invite us to assume the position of the bartender and listen to the old, old story:
Its quarter to three Theres no-one in the place Except you and me So set em up, Joe I got a little story You oughtta know
We all knew the story. But the strange thing is, through the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and into the Nineties, no matter how flip the speaking part got, by the time Frank started to sing that first line the semi-parodic grooviness was all gone, and you were in for the most intense four minutes in the show, intimate and universal, bleak but weirdly exhilarating. The man playing the piano was Bill Miller, and that intro to One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) is his invention. Its a marvelous thing that works at so many levels: it evokes the tinny sound of a saloon piano, and it meanders a little woozily like a fellow whos drunk a skinful heading back to the bar for one more, and it also has a kind of bleak weary acceptance about it, as if both storyteller and barman know that in the end the one buttonholing the other will change nothing; its self-aware about its self-pity, it understands that, in everything that matters, its already past closing time. And its also an acting performance, in that Miller is playing not just the piano accompaniment to the song but also the role of the barroom pianist in the story the singers telling. Miller matches the paradox of the vocal performance with one of his own: just as Sinatra gives what Robert Cushman called a perfectly controlled performance of a man whos falling apart, so the pianist under the cover of a rinky-dink saloon piano provides an amazing harmonic intensity.
Thats a hell of a lot to cram into a few bars. I once tried to say all the above to Bill Miller, and he said:
Yeah.
Oh, well. Thats what he said back in 1951 when he was playing at the Desert Inn in Vegas and Sinatra came by to ask if hed like to work with him:
Yeah.
He stayed for the best part of half a century, and played Sinatra songs to the very end, dying in Montreal, after a hip operation and a heart attack while in town for a month of shows with Frank Sinatra Jr. He was 91, and had to be helped from his wheelchair to the piano stool. But the fingers still worked. A few months after Sinatras death in 1998, Miller returned to the stage for a concert by Frank Jr. The lights were dimmed, the pianist took his seat in the dark, unannounced, and began to play One For My Baby. The audience let out a gasp, remembered Junior. They were all Sinatra fans and they recognized Bill immediately.
Miller wasnt exactly unsung. Au contraire, on stage, seven-eighths into Mack The Knife, Frank liked to take a chorus to introduce the musicians:
We got Bill Miller playin the piano And this great big band bringin up the rear All these bad cats in this band now Make the greatest sounds you ever gonna hear
But that was pretty much it in the way of public acclaim, aside from on-stage references to his ghostly pallor (Our pianist is a man we call Suntan Charlie ). Yet Miller and a handful of other guys who comprised the Sinatra rhythm section up there with him night after night in Vegas and Atlantic City and London and Rome and Rio and Tokyo belong to a very exclusive club. Bill outlasted Ava and Marilyn and Mia and the other dames, and Dino and Sammy and most of the pallies, too. And the musicians got the best snaps for the scrapbook not the tuxedoed bonhomie and Friars Club kibitzing you see in the pics of Frank and Bob Hope and John Wayne, not the pasta joint mug shots of Frank and lesser buddies, but Frank at work, with you! Theres a great photo of Miller half a century ago, doodling at the keyboard, tie loosened, bleary eyed, cigarette hanging from his lower lip, and Frank leaning on the piano, tanned and open shirted, hand in pocket, looking over the sheet music - and beaming with delight. Millers running through a number for him, and Sinatras liking what he hears, and maybe its going to be the next I Get A Kick Out Of You or You Make Me Feel So Young. In other words, Miller is in the act of helping make Sinatra Sinatra which is the only reason were remotely interested in what broads hes nailing.
He was born across the river from Frank, in Brooklyn a few months earlier. At 16, he was billing himself as Bill Miller, The Ace Of Jazz. At 18, he was pianist for Larry Funk And His Band Of A Thousand Melodies, and then came Red Norvo and Charlie Barnet. Heading home from a gig at the 1940 Worlds Fair, he and the gal he was dating had the car radio on. Hey, listen, she said. Doesnt that sound good? Thats Dick Haymes. Miller said, No, its not Dick Haymes. Dick Haymes doesnt sing that good. He had to wait till the end, and the disc-jockeys announcement: All Or Nothing At All by Harry James and his orchestra, vocal refrain by Frank Sinatra.
A decade later, Frank had had it all and was on his way back down to nothing. Miller was the man at the keyboard as Sinatra rebuilt his career. He became celebrated for the saloon piano on One For My Baby, Drinking Again, Empty Tables, a trio of Johnny Mercer three-in-the-morning numbers. But Miller was also indispensable to the other side of the singer the swingin Sinatra you hear on his up-tempo Way You Look Tonight. The bassist Chuck Berghoffer once asked him, How do you swing so hard? What do you think about? I just get a cuckoo rhythm section, said Frank, and stay out of the way. Not exactly. He rode on top of it, like a surfer coming in on the perfect wave. Miller was always the heart of that side of Frank, the rhythmic piano intros that kick-start The Lady Is A Tramp, or Lonesome Road, or even Old MacDonald. Yes, that Old MacDonald:
Old MacDonald had a farm Ee-i-ee-i-o And on that farm he had a chick
You can pretty much guess how things develop from there. Plenty of Sinatra scholars loathe that record: Why would a guy who can sing Rodgers and Hart record Old MacDonald? As the detractors see it, because he can; its a power trip, a way of saying Screw you to the world. Say what you like about gangsta rap, but even Snoop Dogg isnt arrogant enough to give us Old MacDonald had a farm/And on that farm he had a ho But I love that Old MacDonald. It builds wonderfully, and Alan and Marilyn Bergmans lyrics, despite boxing themselves into the nursery rhymes with-a-little-this-here-and-a-little-this-there structure manage to top each verse with the next:
with a promenade here and a promenade there At a square dance, boy, this chick was no square
That said, with the best will in the world, Old MacDonald isnt exactly an interesting tune, and thats where Miller comes in. His piano helps make it such a wild ride. Hes like the mechanical hare at the greyhound track, if a mechanical hare could swing: he sets off, and Sinatra takes off, too.
In 1964, the pianists home in Burbank was washed away in a mudslide. The Millers were swept along with it: their teenage daughter Meredith made it to the top of a hill, and Bill was rescued hanging from a car, but his wife Aimee was only found the following night. Sinatra identified the body and then went to see Miller in hospital. If its any consolation, said Frank, there wasnt a mark on her.
As the laconic Miller liked to tell friends, It wasnt any consolation. But Frank paid the medical expenses and got Bill a new place. And, when they inevitably bust up in the late Seventies, Sinatra hired other pianists but stayed away from One For My Baby altogether. Anyone can conduct My Way (as Miller did on the hit recording) but Sinatra understood that the truly definitive Sinatra song depended on the presence of another man. In 1985 Miller returned for One For My Baby and one more decade for the road.
There was one last classic recording, too. The final cut on Sinatras 1993 Duets isnt really a duet at all or at least not a celebrity duet. Take a chisel to the CD and remove Kenny Gs syrupy drooling of All The Way on the front of the track and then sit back as the strings recede, and Bill Miller begins his bar-room piano noodling. Its the best duet on the album just Frank and Bill and the latter doesnt even get a credit on the sleeve, just a tiny namecheck deep in the interior of the small print as Mr Sinatras pianist. The voice is rough, its vulnerability deliberately exposed, especially on the last lines long goodbye. But, raw and harrowing as it is, its a final Sinatra masterpiece. The piano dies away and the last saloon singer lays down his burden: one for us and one for that long, long road.
Well, thats how it goes And, Joe, I know youre getting anxious to close So thanks for the cheer I hope you didnt mind my bending your ear
Five years later, Miller played it at Sinatras funeral. The familiar introduction, but no voice came in, no Its quarter to three In all the years Bill Miller had accompanied the familiar words, for the first time ever, there was no-one in the place except him.
The Atlantic Monthly, October 2006
Ping
Thank You!
I think these occasional pieces on music and musicians may be Steyn's best work. Which is saying a lot. This one gives me chills.
How could Mark neglect to mention the composer of the tune for "One For My Baby", Harold Arlen?
I was thinking the same thing as I finished it, and then saw you had already articulated the thought. Like Frank himself, Steyn may be one for the ages.
Steyn is such a young man, yet he is able to capture things that were, before he was. He is an awesome talent, and a treasure.
Steyn writes it as if he lived it. Remarkable talent. I lived all of those years....and I couldn't begin!
I'd love to get a look at Steyn's record collection!
It's good to read Steyn when he's on topics other than politics. Steyn has such talent and feeling for his subjects that I could enjoy a technical manual if he were the author. Rest in peace Mr. Miller.
Heck of an eulogy.
I believe the monthly Atlantic feature is called Post Mortem; it's an obituary. Not necessarily of musicians, but of interesting people -- some celebs, some not.
It's my favorite Steyn, too. He's the only writer who has ever made an obituary insightful reading.
"I lived all of those years....and I couldn't begin!"
Me too. That is what I was trying to say. This man is a treasure, and I believe he is self educated.
I am not a Sinatra fan, but this piece almost made me one. Steyn is unique in his talents. What more can anyone say?
God gave all of us brains. Few of us use them as well as Steyn does, it seems to me.
This must be a first: not a single negative response to an article. Come to think of it, the worst thing I can think of anyone saying here about Steyn is a piece of his a while ago was 'not his best'.
Bump, and Thanks for the post. I did not know that Bill & Frank Jr. were working together. Kind of glad to hear it.
I read earlier that Anita O'Day just passed.
The inexorable march of time is a very sad thing to see.
The studio version (on his "Only The Lonely" album) is classic esp with the superbly arranged strings on the last verse.
BUT....there's a CD of a concert he did in a French nightclub with his banter in the beginning and accompanied by only Bill Miller. Simply magical....
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