In Florida: From Molars to Moonglow

By Gregory Jaynes

In Stanley Spiro's case, the man, the hour, the music and the geography have met. Here you have this Long Island, N.Y., dentist who retires with his wife Thelma to Florida and becomes, in his words, "light-headed, lackadaisical." So he puts together a band, a big band -- Stan Spiro and the Townsmen Orchestra, featuring music in the Glenn Miller mood -- and all of a sudden retirement is a dream, just one long Moonlight Serenade.

"The first two sets, we spoon-feed them," Stan was explaining the other night at a place called O'Shea's, a vast waterfront establishment that seats 500 when they aren't dancing to Stan. "We mute the trumpets and the trombones, and we blow easy. After that, we let them have it." And so he did, with Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing.

Stan and Thelma are from Brooklyn, N.Y. They met at a restaurant where Stan waited tables. "That night, we danced together," Thelma recalled. "You know how it is," Stan interjected. "You have to talk up the tip." Well, whatever he did, he got her number, and it wasn't Pennsylvania 6-5000.

Marriage, and training in tooth repair and extraction at Temple University, soon followed, with Stan sitting in with this band or that to earn some money while he learned his trade. Stan plays alto sax, clarinet and flute. For a few weeks in 1939, he actually played with the Glenn Miller. And before his education was done, he had also played with Jack Teagarden and Maynard Ferguson. Then for 38 years he was a dentist and anesthesiologist in Hempstead, on Long Island. He produced two books, Amnesia-Analgesia, Techniques in Dentistry, and Pain and Anxiety Control in Dentistry, neither of which is as much fun as, say, Stomping at the Savoy.

A couple of years ago, when Stan turned 65 and retired, he and Thelma and two dogs, two cars and a 32.3-ft. sloop moved to Marco Island, a clean, windswept three-mile by five-mile sandbar in the Gulf of Mexico. The surroundings were gorgeous (Marco Island, with the soft brush of its palm fronds sounding like rain in the night, is the sort of place even bona fide Floridians retire to), but full-tilt retirement didn't agree with Stan. He wasn't In the Mood.

Not to say Stan and Thelma didn't give retirement a shot. For a while there, they practiced what Stan called senile maneuvers. In a little rubber dinghy that moved, Stan said, "like a burnt-assed bunny," they conquered islands. "We take a new island, it falls, and Thelma goes in, in steel helmet and full pack" is the way Stan described it. The act wore thin, apparently, for in that fashion Stan and Thelma Don't Get Around Much Anymore.

So Stan got up a band. Chester Triplett, an oral surgeon from nearby Naples, took over the skins. Tom Werth, a librarian, took a tenor sax, as did Bill Russell, a retired railroad dispatcher. Pam Dane, a senior in high school, threw in with the geezers on alto sax, as did Pam's chum Diana Macumber, who blows a baritone saxophone. Corbin Wyant, publisher of the Naples Daily News, contributes on trombone, along with Jim Kalvin, a marina owner, Michael Isabella, an embroidery manufacturer, and Scott Wise, a salesman. Two other salesmen, Roger Park and Steve Chamberlain, address their chops to trumpets, in the company of Mark Branson, a high school music teacher, Mark Fessenden, a florist, and Glen Harcus, a racing-car manufacturer. On bass is Dick Burchell, a salesman, and on piano is Dan Stefanko, a music teacher. The vocalist is Dante Lupi, from Astoria, in Queens, N.Y. -- "I went to school with Tony Bennett's cousin" -- the manager < of a condominium project. In all, A String of Pearls.

Stan is a fussbudget; either you do things right or you make no attempt is the way Stan sees the world. He rehearsed his band for ages before he took it public. And when he finally did, it blew the public's hat in the creek, which is to say the band cooked, dig? It was tight. And it is not a stretch to say Stan Spiro and the Townsmen Orchestra came on like a train, to liken them to the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

They are booked solid through next June: nightclubs, country clubs, banquets, benefit afternoon performances in a local park -- name it, they play it. "I wanted the Glenn Miller sound," Stan was saying one recent Sunday night at O'Shea's, where he plays every Sunday night, "and it turned out it was perfect for southwest Florida, for the age group here. The sentiment. The nostalgia. We played the elegant Quail Creek Country Club in Naples last night. When we opened, the people jumped up, and they didn't stop dancing from 8 till midnight." That said, Stan slid into Don't Be That Way.

On the floor, old and young rose to dance, some lacking a certain fluidity, but all quite game. The lights from O'Shea's played on the waterfront outside the dance hall, and off in the mangroves of Marco Island an insect combo embellished the Spiro sound with a contrapuntal hum. It was all bloody romantic, and when a paddle-wheeler, the latest O'Shea expansion, came to berth with 100 or so diners aboard, they simply fell to working off their meals aerobically: a waltz to warm up, a jitterbug for the cardiovascular good, a waltz to cool down. "I never cared for any other kind of music," said a woman of some years named Barbara Rudolph, "and I never had a husband who did either." Just then she was dipped by Myron Perlstine, who smiled despite the tune, which was I'll Never Smile Again.

"People call all week long," said Graham Hayward, the maitre d'. "They want to reserve a table down front. People make it a ritual every Sunday night." Hayward's boss, Dolores Shea, who with her husband Tom runs O'Shea's (the O got separated from the family two generations back), offered this blessing: "They've done very well. They don't draw teenagers, but they draw everybody else. We've had steel bands, Dixieland, everything, but the big band is neat, especially our big band. Now just listen to that." They were playing Stella by Starlight.

But they weren't playing it for the money. For this weekly gig, for example, the take is $1,000 -- not exactly a fortune when split among so many. "It would be hard to make a living this way," said Corbin Wyant, the publisher-trombonist. "I don't think you could raise a family, plan retirement, those things. One of the best trombonists I've ever known now sells tools. It's really sad. He played with Stan Kenton." A moment later Wyant brought his own ax to bear on Kenton's wonderful Peanut Vendor .

Dante Lupi, the singer, said during the next intermission that he had worked with rock bands for 15 years before he came to feel he was a little long in the tooth to stick with that game. Then he had five years making mellower music for the country-club set, suffering in the end the ignominy of accompanying himself with tapes "because I couldn't afford a band. Then I didn't sing at all for a couple months, and I, like, went crazy." When the invitation to sing with Stan came along last year, he leaped for it. "I've always liked this music. I knew I could do it." And indeed he can. Using arrangements that were surefire lady-killers 40 years ago, Lupi can work a room, provoking now and then the odd swoon. Should have heard him on I'll Be Around.

For hours more the people swung this starry Florida night, swung on through Never Should Have Told You, And the Angels Sing, Moonglow, These Foolish Things Remind Me of You. The band knocked off at the Cinderella hour, its leader a happy man. "I'm always hopped up after a job," he said. "I love it. I just love it. Do you remember White Castle hamburgers? They come frozen now. They come in a box. You pop them in the microwave and then eat them in the bed. Beautiful. They taste just like they did in the street." Given the hour this musician eats, the fuel he takes in is a kind of restorative. With apologies to Count Basie, you could call it Stan's One O'Clock Jump.