Neil Stevens

I Love a Piano

One of life's great regrets, mostly due to lack of ready cash - I never learned to play the piano. We had an upright in the parlour, crammed with 6d music song sheets but the instrument was never tuned and stayed put. hi later years I was surrounded by pianos working as I did for Chappell and Co and Steinway.

Irving Berlin's I Love a Piano introduced by Ethel Levey in 'Follow The Crowd', Empire, Leicester Square 29 Feb 1916, brings all this on hearing it again, then that great showman Al Jolson on the verve of The Piano Player.  Jimmy Durante too, seated at the piano finds the Lost Chord ("funny, I usually play by ear"), not forgetting tongue tied terrific Victor Borge piano frolics.

So many piano styles, popular pounders some of them including Winnie Atwell, Russ Conway, Charlie Kunz, adorable Gladys - Mrs Mills, and, Les Dawson scoring with all the wrong notes.   Nat "King" Cole sang a lot but getting back to musical roots - "and now a little piano", ran fingers over keys with ease. So too Bill Snyder and his so called 'magic' piano making much of Richard Rodgers' 1940 Pal Joey delight: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - and how about Pee Wee Hunt making a zing with a revival of I2* Street Rag. Pee Wee on trombone; jaunty, jolly Joe 'Fingers' Car on piano!

More piano playing Bill's - Evans, Mayeri, Munn and, before a solo career, with the BBC Show Band in the 1950s, Scots-born Bill McGuffie.

Rightly Knighted this year, the truly remarkable, likeable Sir George Shearing, blind from birth back in England from America this summer - recalled for a best ever Lullaby ofBirdland among much else.

American resident long loved at London's Savoy Hotel - music-making Carroll Gibbons,   whose   band   still   sounds superlative and sparkling. Recently found a Video of The Eddie Duchin Story pianistically portrayed by another expert Carman Cavallaro, his Chopsticks worth catching, no Oscar for Tyrone Power as Eddie, but let's not forget piano men Oscar Levano and Oscar Peterson.

Swing and the Jazz sections parade then- own keyboard kings and Count Basic, Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Fats Waller and the man who makes merry sounds while playing, one and only Errol Gamer. 1 know I'm missing a few out doing all this from musical memory you see, but there's a rosta of duettists: Rawicz and Landaeur, Fen-ante and Teicher and Ivor Moreton and Dave Kaye.

Last but by no means least, as the saying goes, a double one each from both sides of the Atlantic.   In London the expansive career of arranger-player from dance music to big orchestral sound, much missed Stanley Black, and from the West coast with his very special sound, another much missed Henry Mancini. All and sundry complete keyboard exponents, small wonder then I'll always love a piano!

 Copied from Greater London Pensioner - Article by  Neil Stevens -