I Can Hear The Music: The Life of Gene DiNovi

Chapter Twenty One

Playing with Lena Horne at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles.

The location of Harrah's Club at the south end of Lake Tahoe meant, of course, that it was in Nevada. Since the state line between Nevada and California ran through the middle of the lake, the geography placed the lake's north end in California. This end was home to a huge casino and hotel called the Cal Neva. After Peggy's run at Harrah's, while she went home to Kimridge Drive, the rest of us were booked for a two-week gig in the Cal Neva lounge. It was actually Jack Costanza's gig, but he took along the whole band. At the same time, while we played the lounge, Lena Horne was featured in the Cal Neva's main room, accompanied by an orchestra, which her husband Lennie Hayton conducted.

    During those two weeks, Lena and Lennie stopped by the lounge more than a few times to have a drink and listen to our band. I had the idea they were concentrating on my playing, giving me a kind of audition. If they were, it wasn't the first time I'd auditioned for them.

I originally met Lennie about three years earlier, not long after I bought my XK120. I was driving the car along 56th Street in Manhattan, and when I stopped for a red light, I noticed Chico Hamilton and a man I knew to be Lennie Hayton on the sidewalk. Chico was a drummer I'd run into in clubs and studios a few times, and I knew he'd been playing the previous couple of years in Lena Horne's accompanying trio.

    Chico waved me over. He introduced Lennie who gave me a very nice smile that may have had something inquiring and whimsical in it. I learned later he too drove an XK120, and I guessed, in retrospect, he might have been wondering who this young whippersnapper was in the smart little English car just like the one he owned. The three of us chatted back and forth, ending with Chico telling me to be at the Nola Studios the next day at one o'clock. Lennie wanted to hear me play.

    I kept the appointment. Chico and Lennie were both there, and Chico set up his drums, ready to accompany me. Lennie, obviously the guy in charge, asked me to play something, leaving the tune selection to me. I chose Come Rain or Come Shine, a song I loved to mess around with. Chico gave me a nice swinging rhythm, and I played a few choruses, developing whatever ideas occurred to me.

    "Very tasty," Lennie said when I finished.

    That was that, a one-tune audition, but it was enough to draw a phone call a week later asking me to come around to a brownstone on 36th Street where Lennie and Lena were renting for a few months. Lennie took me upstairs and showed me the piano part for a song from Lena's show. It had three lines to it, treble, treble and bass. All the information for the orchestra was in those three lines. It was actually a piano and conductor part, and as the pianist, I would have to decide almost instinctively what I should play and what I should leave out. I would be hearing the whole orchestration, and then I'd have to make my decisions. Right away, looking at those lines, I knew I wasn't ready to handle such difficult parts. I couldn't read fast enough. Not yet.

    Lennie told me to wait downstairs in the kitchen. Somebody would serve me a cup of coffee. He'd talk to me later. First he had to audition another pianist who was arriving in a couple of minutes.

    I did as Lennie asked, and he was right about the woman and the coffee. There was a woman in the kitchen, and she poured me a cup of coffee. But the woman wasn't a maid or some other hired help. The woman-I couldn't believe this-was Lena Horne! One of the most beautiful women in the world, one of the most famous entertainers, and the first time I met her, she was serving me coffee!

    I thought I might spill the coffee all over myself.

    From upstairs, somebody began to play the piano. It was the pianist Lennie was auditioning.

    Lena listened for a moment, then she said to me, summing up the pianist. "Julliard."

    One word nailed the guy's style at the piano. I laughed, and the ice was broken. I relaxed with this amazingly beautiful and famous woman, and Lena and I chatted until Lennie came downstairs. I told him I wasn't the pianist he was looking for, not right then anyway. He nodded, said something about keeping in touch, and we parted on amiable terms.

Now and again over the following couple of years, I ran into the pair of them, Lena and Lennie, at different gigs I played. Lennie seemed always to listen carefully to my playing.

    One job where they heard me came just after I left Tony Bennett and was working solo in a club called the Show Spot on 52nd off Lexington Avenue. Mabel Mercer sang upstairs, a woman who had an uncanny way with lyrics. She was the big attraction while I played solo in the bar downstairs where customers had a drink and a snack while they waited for their tables upstairs. Lots of famous people came through my bar. Lena and Lennie more than once. David Wayne, the actor, was another regular. Frank Sinatra often strolled in with his pal, the songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen. Sinatra would either say to me, "Nice piano," or he'd be silent and sullen.

    One night while I was playing, somebody at a table talked in what I considered an overly loud voice. I flashed a sharp look in the direction of the loud talker. I was annoyed. Then a booming voice came from another direction.

    "People who play the piano where food and drink are served," the voice boomed, "shouldn't be offended if people talk! It's the nature of the beast!"

    There was no mistaking who owned the booming voice. It was Orson Welles.

Then, another year or so further on, Lena and Lennie heard me at the Cal Neva. By then, I thought I was ready to play with Lena. I knew I'd still need plenty of guidance from Lennie, but now I had the experiences of accompanying Peggy and Tony under my belt. My reading had improved; my confidence was upgraded. I was ready to take on Lennie's fearsome three-line piano parts.

    Playing with Lena, I knew, would be a tremendous responsibility. She was the number one nightclub performer in the world, and working for her was the choice accompanying job in the entire business. All the other pianists who did my kind of work said to me, oh man, if you go with Lena, you'll carry a heavy weight. But I was ready for the load.

    Lena and Lennie must have thought so too because, right after the Cal Neva gig, their man Ralph Harris phoned me. Ralph wasn't Lena's manager; he was more her general factotum, the guy who handled a thousand duties that kept the operation turning over smoothly. Ralph's phone call was to say, in effect, welcome aboard. That was followed by his instruction-or maybe more like an order--to see Lennie right away.

    I knew then that Lennie was going to hire me. A very nice pianist named Gerald Wiggins had been with Lena for much of the previous couple of years, and fairly often Lennie himself played Lena's accompaniment. But Ralph Harris's call told me that my own immediate musical future would be with these two hugely gifted people, Lena and Lennie. In personal terms, they were still pretty much strangers to me, but that wouldn't last long. In professional terms, I was in for a fascinating ride.