“Sing,” from A Chorus Line (1975)
Here they are, my two remaining photographs of our cabaret group, Just Friends: Esther, myself, Dan Fusillo and Cathy Lochner, Diane Prentice (not in the photos) accompanying us on piano. The second photo, unfortunately, stuck to another picture before I salvaged it to photocopy.
L to Rt: Esther, Dan, Cathy, me
L to Rt: Esther, Cathy, Dan, me
Dan had acted with us in Fiorello! and directed me in Todd and Cathy was his girlfriend. They approached us about doing a cabaret act with them. It was a good join. They were about ten years younger than us –a contrast in ages but not an overwhelming one. We fit in regular intervals up the height scale, from Esther’s 5′ 2″ to my 6′ 3″. Dan was a baritone and me a tenor, and Cathy an alto and Esther a soprano. We all had acceptable to good voices. Collectively, we sounded smashing. And while we didn’t do patter in our act and no non-singing routines, I was a mugger and when needed, could draw a chuckle by contorting my face. There was something else about us as a collective: we were excited to sing together and that communicated to audiences. We were an attractive quartet of performers.
We found Diane Prentiss, who taught piano, to play for us. We rehearsed. We got gigs. I think we earned $25 for the biggest of our early gigs. Maybe $50. We weren’t about to give up our day jobs for that kind of pay.
The Stanley Theater, in downtown Utica, had recently been renovated. It had opened as a movie theater in 1928, decorated in a self-consciously ornate style called “Mexican Baroque.” By the 1970s, it had fallen into desuetude. A fund raising campaign and the work of hundreds of volunteers, a manager hired, and it reopened soon after we moved to the area in 1978. It was the de facto Big Box site for musical events in Utica –traveling company operas and musicals, concerts by performers big and small (more often big than small). We saw Roberta Flack and Tony Bennett there and the road company of Into the Woods.
We sang there. First on the main stage -which had appalling acoustics: it sucked up the sound– as one of several groups performing for I do not remember what charity. Probably a fundraiser for the State: there was always a sconce to put back in place on a wall or another railing to gild.
Our second time at the Stanley was our night. The chairman of the board, Mort R., approached us about putting on a solo show. It would be intimate, not in the main theater, which seated 2,963, but in the lobby, for an audience of 200. It would be set up with mikes, speakers and all, and there’d be volunteers serving as ushers. They’d pay us $500 –which meant a hundred for each of us. At $20 a pop, the Stanley hoped to gross $2,000 plus whatever they made from selling drinks and food.
We elected to appear dressed in black tux tops –a haberdasher supplied them to us for free– over clean pressed blue jeans. We each wore a different style of footwear, Esther cowboy boots, me high top black and white sneakers, etc. We would each sing four solos, plus we’d duet with each of the other partners. Esther, Cathy and I would harmonize on two songs, “Mister Sandman” and “Seven Bridges Road.” Throughout, as framing songs, the four of us would sing together — we started the show with “We’re Still Friends,” from I Love My Wife, and ended with Dan, Cathy and me harmonizing behind Esther on Marvin Hamlisch’s wonderful “What I Did for Love,” from A Chorus Line.
Here’s the type draft of the program:
We sold out that night and everything worked. We looked and felt great and sang that way. Everyone loved it, us most of all. Jeremy taped some of it –until the tape ran out. The recording quality was awful but it was an awful lot of fun to listen to. He was eleven then an on the tape, you can hear him interjecting comments –“Oh, wow,” stuff like that.
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When you’re singing and everything’s on –a song that hits you in your heart, an attentive audience, the piano accompaniment running smooth and your voice in order– you know why music is magic.
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This is the song that Esther and I sang as our duet.
Barbra Streisand-Neil Diamond: “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
“What I Did for Love,” from A Chorus Line (1975)
MUSIC & ME 