Saga of a Saloon Singer

By Gerald Clarke

From the Cafe Carlyle to the White House, Bobby Short is In

Some people are happy in their delusions, and Bobby Short is one of them: he insists upon calling himself a saloon singer. Oh, yes, he will admit, there is no sawdust on the floor of Manhattan's Cafe Carlyle, where he has been singing and playing the piano for the past 13 years. And, yes, he always works in a dinner jacket tailored on Savile Row--one of ten that hang in his closet. Still, he is quite certain that he is, was and always has been a saloon singer. But then, for all anyone knows, the Queen Elizabeth II may think of herself as a rowboat.

All that is by way of saying that in an increasingly inelegant world, Short is the very symbol of elegance, style and an easier way of life: penthouses, champagne and buckets of dry wit. Not too long ago, his appeal seemed largely confined to New York City. Now just about everybody seems to be enchanted by Bobby and his friends--Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Cy Coleman and Stephen Sondheim. By the end of April he will have appeared in Kansas City, Omaha, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. At the end of this week he will entertain the Reagans and their special guest, Prince Charles, at the White House--his third gig at the Executive Mansion since 1970.

In Columbus, where he will perform at a fund-raising benefit for the arts council May 31, F. & R. Lazarus, one of the department stores, is even redecorating a part of a floor to look like the Carlyle, complete with ashtrays brought in from New York. Says Ric Wanetik, the council's executive director: "Here in the Midwest it's In to know who Bobby Short is and even more In to know that he represents class and style."

Short began life there in 1924, the son of a black coal miner in Danville, Ill. He taught himself to play the piano when he was three or four, and when he was eleven, he went touring the country as the Miniature King of Swing. The king was soon deposed, however. Bookings became scarce after a couple of years, and Bobby returned to Danville to finish high school. After that, it was back to the piano and the saloons of Chicago, and then Los Angeles, where he stayed, off and on, for more than a decade. He made one brief foray to New York, but he did not do well at the old Blue Angel nightclub and, nursing his hurt pride, retreated west again. "The most burning desire I had," he says, "was to come back to New York and conquer it. Manhattan seemed like the most amusing place in the whole world. It still does."

When he did return in the mid-'50s, the city happily surrendered. "I came in on the heels of a glorious, glorious time in show business," he says. "Every big hotel had a room where you could see extraordinary stars every night, and there was live entertainment everyplace. I was hot, but there were also places to go and be hot in." The Duke and Duchess of Windsor became fans, and society soon followed. Then disaster: the '60s. Amid the howls of the rock generation, Short's style of singing suddenly seemed outdated. He enunciates every word so clearly that even Henry Higgins would stand up and applaud, and he manages to be both ebullient and world-weary at the same time. A few private parties here and there and an occasional job in a club kept him going, but he thought seriously about abandoning the piano for a job in the men's clothing business. He knows almost as much about the cut of a suit as he does about the lilt of a lyric, and he almost certainly would have been a success in the suits and slacks business.

But there were always a few true believers hiding in the catacombs along Park Avenue. When the noise died down, they began sneaking into the Carlyle, which established a little smoke-filled shrine for Short in the late '60s. It is now, he says sadly, the only high-class supper club left in the world. "There's no place like it in Paris or London certainly. It represents the peak and the pinnacle."; When he is performing, five nights a week, two shows a night, there is almost never an empty seat, and New Yorkers, who used to make up most of his audience, have been largely displaced by out-of-towners. Whoever they are, they are Short's guests, and he is, or makes believe he is, their host, chatting with them from time to time and occasionally coming over to the tables. He is a natural host, say his friends, and parties at his nine-room bachelor duplex near Carnegie Hall are better cast than most Broadway shows. "He has a marvelous eye for detail, like knowing all the verses to a song," says one close friend, Sisi Cahan, a public affairs executive of the Metropolitan Museum.

But a smoky saloon--even an expensive one like the Carlyle (cover charge for a Short show: $12.00 a person)--is not the best place to preserve a voice, and this will be Short's last full season there. He will return for occasional visits, but he plans to spend more of his time writing (he is now at work on a book called Saloons) and touring around the country. He charges something like $12,000 for a night's entertainment.

Besides, he says, it is harder to keep up a saloon singer's schedule at 56 than it was at 30. "When I was younger and able to cope with it all, this kind of success seemed elusive," he says. "It was something I dreamed about in those days. Singing is harder to do now." His friends are not convinced. "Bobby has the image of himself as being worn out," scoffs Radio Producer Jean Bach. "It isn't true." And Short himself seems uncertain. "A friend of mine told me that I'm a constant fountain of youth for people who come to the Carlyle," he says. "They come year after year, season after season, and it's a going-back for them, a way to relive special times of their lives. And I suppose that enabling them to do that is in the end the function of a saloon singer like me."

--By Gerald Clarke

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