You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (5 page)

The show also attracted an industry review, and the August 31
Variety
write-up specifically praised the show’s songwriters: “Cy Coleman and Larry Steiner, in the music and lyric department, respectively, show promise. Coleman, a nitery pianist and composer, has turned out a listenable score, while Steiner shines in spots with some clever wordage.”

Sadly, the script for the show has vanished, and even more distressing is that eleven of the show’s twelve numbers have shared a similar fate. The reviews give some titles and even a sense of what Coleman and Steiner wrote. “Daddy Why?” was a comic number in which a young woman asked about the nature of love and sex; there were also a ballad called “Strange How Love Can Last” and a humorous duet titled “I Love to Love.”

Allan didn’t recall these latter two numbers but remembered how infectious Coleman’s tune was for “Daddy Why?,” which Steiner filled with double entendres. “My mother used to sing it all the time,” she recalled, “but she didn’t know exactly what all of the lyrics were implying.”
14

Neither of the reviews—nor Allan—talked about the one number that does still exist from the show, “You’ve Got to Lose to Win.” The song, a bit of advice about how women sometimes have to take a back seat to the men in their lives, was presumably a song for the mother to sing to her daughter. Coleman took an interesting approach to the tune, writing a melody that almost sounds like an old hymn. The musical style ends up giving Steiner’s ironic lyric, which contains lines such as “Though we know too well we’re superior / There are times, many times, when we’ve got to lose to win,” unexpected gravitas.

You Got a Regatta
turned out to be a genuine crowd-pleaser and enjoyed a brief extension through the Labor Day holiday, even as Coleman was moving into his third month at his chic hotel gig. His engagement at the high-toned spot didn’t receive any official reviews, but in its listings the
New Yorker
was touting him with superlatives week in and week out. One lauded the “interesting experiments in pianoforte diatonics” that Coleman was offering.
15
Another commended “Cy Coleman’s virtuoso fretwork on the piano.”
16

Coleman’s work at the Sherry-Netherland also catapulted him into society columns, particularly after Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt attended his first performance there. Photographs of the twenty-year-old pianist and the Upper East Side dowager hit the papers. She was so impressed with his work that she invited him to tea at her Fifth Avenue mansion the next day.

In 1977 Coleman recalled the incident in an interview with Sheridan Morley for the
Times
of London: “I got through the door and they wheeled her over to me and she said ‘Who are you?’ and I reminded her that she’d heard me play the night before and asked me to tea, so that seemed to satisfy her and after another hour or so in the house they wheeled her over to me again and she asked who I was and I said I was Cy Coleman and playing piano at the Sherry Netherland [
sic
] and she said great, she must come and hear me sometime. That was my start in high society.”
17

And while it might seem as though Coleman’s sense of humor about his work in the rarified space might only have come in hindsight, it didn’t. In a column from the period, Leonard Lyons reported an encounter that Coleman had with his boss: “[Obolensky] visited the room where Cy Coleman, the 20-year-old pianist, entertains. Obolensky was accompanied by Artur Rubinstein. Coleman recognized the distinguished visitor, blinked, and then told his employer, Mr. Obolensky: ‘You’re sure going to a lot of trouble to tone me down.’”
18

The story is indicative of Coleman’s brashness with his employer, and it might even be considered the precursor to the conversation that brought Coleman’s work at the hotel to an end. As Coleman recalled, “I played solo piano at the Sherry-Netherland, and then I decided I wanted a trio. I went to Serge Obolensky, who had a room downstairs called the Carnaval Room, and I said, ‘Why don’t you put me in there with a jazz trio?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t want to put you in there. I like what you’re doing upstairs.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you put me downstairs or I quit?’ So I quit.”
19

Coleman wasn’t out of work for long. Within a month he had moved on to a brief engagement at the Hotel St. Moritz, where he got to work with the trio he had envisioned, and by November he was ensconced in the newly opened Shelburne Lounge in the Murray Hill hotel of the same name, where his performances were carried as live radio broadcasts throughout the country.

A script for the November 10, 1949 broadcast gives an indication not only of the songs he was playing (a quartet of songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s red-hot hit
South Pacific
, including “Bali Ha’i” and “There Is Nothing Like a Dame”) but also the charmingly laid-back public persona he was developing. At the end of this broadcast he told listeners: “We start ’round about ten every night. So . . . here’s an invitation. C’mon over . . . we’re at 37th Street and Lexington . . . and we set up shop at ten. And now . . . this is Cy Coleman returning you to our studio.”

It didn’t take long for critics to pick up on Coleman’s presence at the Shelburne, and less than a month after he started there his work prompted a rave from Douglas Watt in the
New Yorker
. “Master Coleman whizzes off infernally complex treatments of such numbers as ‘Just One of Those Things’ and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You,’ and manages to be interesting about it, too.”
20

Watt went on to complain about the noise in the room and his annoyance with the crowd’s potential inability to hear Coleman and his unnamed trio-mates before concluding: “My point is that Coleman is very, very good, and I feel that any pianist who takes the trouble to carefully crack open a nightclub chestnut like ‘Just One of Those Things,’ break it into a lot of little pieces, and put them all back together again in a more daring shape at least deserves to be heard.”
21

The management at the Shelburne and broadcasting executives both agreed with Watt’s assessment. Coleman continued at the Shelburne well into 1950, even as his career branched off into new realms.

4.
“Be a Performer”

As the new decade dawned, Coleman remained a fixture at the Hotel Shelburne, even as the performers around him rotated on and off the venue’s bill of entertainers, which had started singer-guitarist Josh White and vocalist Patricia Bright. Among the people who entered Coleman’s sphere were Juanita Hall (who would come to the club after she had performed in
South Pacific
on Broadway), comedienne and singer Kaye Ballard (who would retain a fondness for Coleman’s music throughout her career), folk balladeers Josef Marais and Rosa de Miranda, singer Jane Harvey, flamenco guitarist Carlos Montoya, mentalists Lucille and Eddie Roberts, and the Golden Gate Quartet, the acclaimed African-American spiritual group.

With each change reviewers would return and find new ways to praise Coleman’s contributions to the entertainment. When Ballard joined the roster at the Shelburne, a reviewer in
Variety
offered this assessment of the space and Coleman: “The Shelburne Lounge is continuing to purvey an adult brand of entertainment. Policy is apparently paying off as this spot is one of the sleepers around town. Located out of the theatrical district in a room which has tried a multitude of policies, it is getting into the tall coin with moderate priced talent. Show, as well as the Lounge, appears to be on solid ground. . . . Cy Coleman’s pianistics give the room no lulls. His work is interesting enough to command attention at all times.”
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As Coleman’s engagement extended further into the year, the critics’ compliments became more profuse. The February 22
Variety
review described Coleman’s group as “a versatile combo that gets plenty of music out of an aggregation of piano, guitar and bass. Coleman is a pianoforte virtuoso who specializes in intricate melodic patterns.” On March 25
Billboard
’s Bill Smith delivered this high praise: “The Cy Coleman group (Coleman on piano) is rapidly becoming one of the best show-cutting outfits around. The Boys are all young and work with an infectious enthusiasm.”

With the arrival of spring there was still plenty of praise for Coleman and his fellow musicians, but concern among the critical community began to surface about the venue’s overall programming philosophy: “The Shelburne is still enjoying lush business on the strength of tasty presentations with standard talent. The Lounge, now a click in after-dark entertainments, has been remiss in one respect. Spot has been loath to take a chance on new talent. Regular patrons at this spot deserve a chance to get in on some discoveries. Under current conditions, the boite is a good exhibition hall, but it’s shamefully neglecting any creative flair.”
2

The snipe at the programming choices had no effect on Coleman, who continued to play and broadcast from the venue through the middle of the year, when it shuttered for the summer season. But even if Coleman had been rotated off the bill at the Shelburne, he would have remained a busy performer, because in February 1950 he’d also begun his first stints on television.

It all started when the DuMont Network—a national broadcaster that at the time had the potential to rival CBS, ABC, and NBC—entered the realm of programming daytime television with a show called
Shopper’s Matinee
. The two-hour weekday broadcast was divided into fifteen-minute sections featuring a wide range of performers. Coleman’s trio occupied the first slot, and the February 22
Variety
review assessed the inaugural broadcast:

Trio’s TV booking gives combo its third current showcase via three different mediums. Group, besides appearing on video, is also spotted at the Shelburne Lounge, N.Y. from whence WNEW picks it up for three 15-minute airings a week.

A personable lad, Coleman conducts the show with ease in addition to offering some firstrate musicalizing. Composed of Burt Kent on the electric guitar, Jerry Wolff on the bass and Coleman at the keyboard, trio’s handling of the various tunes offered on the show heard Monday (20) was melodic and entertaining. Branching out from straight instrumentalizing, program offers Holly Harris in the vocal department. Gal did okay with “Falling in Love With Love” and “I Don’t Want to Be Kissed by Anyone But You.” Trio gave solid backing to both numbers and also came through effectively with [a] hep arrangement of ‘Adios’ and another tune in the samba vein.

Show impresses as being a smart entry since it doesn’t necessitate concentrated viewing. Innocuous chatter between Coleman and Harris served as an okay padder on Monday’s show. Trio is also set as a permanent fixture for Bill Williams’ “Welcome Mat,” another segment in the two-hour program series.

For anyone considering this show and the nature of its importance to Coleman’s career from the perspective of 24/7 television programming, it’s vital to remember that someone turning on a television set in the middle of the day in the first months of 1950 did not necessarily expect to find anything airing.

Just a few weeks after DuMont launched
Shopper’s Matinee
, an article in
Variety
described how broadcasters were “gradually spreading out into daytime television.”
3
Not only was the network filling previously unused air time; it was providing a new kind of programming, shifting away from public-service segments (such as tips on housekeeping and cooking) to ones that were more entertainment oriented, thanks to its use of artists like Coleman.

Even as DuMont was breaking ground with its programming, NBC was looking toward launching a daytime lineup in May, while CBS had yet to decide whether or not it would air anything. Given all of this, Coleman’s inclusion on the show, regardless of critical reception, meant that for a time he was among a select few performers who would be seen by a majority of home viewers during the afternoon hours.

Coleman’s seeming omnipresence as a performer on television and radio and at the Shelburne even attracted the attention of the
New York Times
, and on March 19, 1950 Jack Gould, while writing in the newspaper about a resurgence in the popularity of straight jazz as compared to bebop, assessed Coleman and his work:

There also is another young practitioner in the field who is decidedly worth a hearing. He is the twenty-year-old pianist named Cy Coleman, who with his trio appears several nights a week on WNEW (10 P.M.) and also is a weekday afternoon feature (2:30) on the local DuMont television station, WABD.

Mr. Coleman gives the symphonic touch to jazz and occasionally his arrangements may be almost too elaborate, but his mastery of counterpoint and contrast on the keyboards is self-evident and his enthusiasm is highly contagious.

The powers-that-were at DuMont certainly recognized Coleman’s popularity with critics and audiences alike as they moved to strengthen their position in programming for Sunday evenings. To that end they developed a new two-hour musical revue series,
Starlit Time
, once again giving Coleman a prominent role.

But the show failed to impress the critics. A review in
Variety
on April 12 reported that
Starlit Time
was “a modest-budgeter that stretches its talent too thinly over such a long period.” DuMont attempted to revamp the program quickly, cutting it back to a single hour but not removing Coleman from the lineup. According to a
Variety
review on May 3 of the program that aired on April 30, Coleman had offered only an “interesting arrangement of ‘Bali H’ai.’”

Ironically, this last review ran just as Coleman had begun working for a different network: NBC, which had launched its daytime programming on May 2 and hired Coleman for a show called
Date in Manhattan
. The variety program was broadcast live at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time weekdays from Tavern on the Green. The show also featured Ed Herlihy, a familiar voice—if not face—thanks to his narration of countless newsreels, and Lee Sullivan, who had starred in
Brigadoon
.

The debut of the show and NBC’s other daytime offerings that began alongside it prompted John Lester, in a May 3
Long Island Star-Journal
column, to extol a new era in television programming: “This also marks near-round-the-clock telecasting, in which further strides will soon be made, and now, for the first time, viewers can have something on their screens from 3:30 A.M. through midnight, merely by switching stations.”

The show’s diverse elements (many of which would be used by later network morning programs like
Today
and
Good Morning America
) garnered praise. The May 3
Variety
review described it as “breezy, lightweight entertainment,” and “a candid clambake of music, celeb interviews and aud participation games.” Overall, the reviewer said, “this airer manages to maintain a good pace amid a completely informal atmosphere. Hausfraus will find it easy to take without, at the same time, any compulsion for attentive viewing.”

Sam Chase, reviewing the hourlong show for
Billboard
ten days later, was less charitable than his
Variety
colleague: “It was so typical an audience participation airer that by catching only the audio portion, one could imagine himself back in radio’s heyday. Ed Herlihy is, like the man says, genial. There’s lots of hearty laughs, gags with gals in the audience, stunts and contests, Lee Sullivan singing (sometimes to a female from the audience) plus some good music from the Cy Coleman trio.”
4

Assessments from the general press were equally dismissive of
Date in Manhattan
: “Central Park’s famed Tavern-on-the-Green locales the 11 to noon hour with a show called ‘Date in Manhattan.’ The entire morning built fairly well to this point and should have continued but I’m afraid ‘Date’ will be the weakest link unless quickly re-worked and improved.”
5

The show endured nevertheless, and while it did Coleman and his trio, astonishingly, managed to work mornings while still performing their late-night gigs around New York. Coleman also managed to find other outlets for his work and creativity, essentially developing an around-the-clock work schedule.

Coleman recalled one particularly difficult morning when exhaustion did indeed set in: “I fell asleep during the show. It was New Year’s. We were out New Year’s Eve, and we said why bother going to sleep. So I was still in my tux. I was out formally, and I leaned my head on the piano. And they kept shooting me all during the thing, saying, ‘The day after.’”
6

For some it might have been the sort of life that would inspire exhaustion and irritability, but Coleman appears to have been energized by it all, and traits that friends and colleagues often remember about him (throughout his life) shone through during this period.

Drummer Charlie Sheen, who had led the dance band Coleman had played in during high school, recalled how loyal Coleman had been when opportunities had started coming his way. In a 1977 interview about his own career, Sheen mentioned getting a call out of the blue from Coleman: “The next week I was at NBC doing 11 television shows a week as a freelance.”
7

A member of Coleman’s trio on the show, guitarist Mundell Lowe, remembered both the demanding schedule and an exceptional kindness from Coleman: “When we were working on
Date in Manhattan
, I got married, and Cy went to Bell and Howell, which [was] one of the sponsors on the show, and talked them into giving me a wonderful movie camera as a wedding present. Just on his own. And then he very quietly presented it to me after he got the camera. And I thought, ‘What a nice thing to do without being asked.’ He was that kind of a guy.”
8

Coleman’s loyalty and thoughtfulness remained intact throughout the unforgiving schedule, as did his sense of humor. During his first year on
Date in Manhattan
a producer, believing that people didn’t want to sit and watch a guy just play piano, asked him to attempt some tricky keyboard work on a toy piano. Coleman described his reaction: “It was news to me as I’d been playing concert halls for 17 years, with folks paying good money to sit and just watch and listen.”
9

Nevertheless, Coleman agreed to do what the producer asked, and it turned out to be such a hit with audiences that it started to be Coleman’s signature on the show and in clubs. There was, however, a downside. Coleman had been working on an album of classics when he started doing the bit on the mini-keyboard. Given the acclaim this bit of gimmickry garnered, the label decided to scrub its original idea and instead asked him to do a novelty recording. As Coleman wryly put it, “that damn toy” was enough to sink the deal.
10

Coleman did stick with the toy piano, however, and as late as 1957 he was playing it on television on
Art Ford’s Greenwich Village Party
, clips of which still circulate online. He even wrote a number specifically for the children’s plaything, “Toy Piano Blues,” recorded in 1958 by pianist Mitt Mittens.

Despite the setback, Coleman made strides as a recording artist in 1950. He was signed to Decca’s Coral Records label, which gave him his first commercially released recording.
Billboard
took notice of the single and, in its weekly roundup of new records on May 6, 1950, labeled him a “brilliant young pianist” who delivered the last of Paganini’s Twenty-four Caprices in “a pulsating samba tempo.”

Coleman’s relationship with Decca deepened over the course of the next year, and by September 1951 the company had signed him to an exclusive contract as it worked to adapt to the recording-buying public’s changing tastes. News of Coleman’s deal was carried in a front-page story in
Billboard
about how major record labels like Decca—along with RCA Victor, Capitol, and MGM—were all investing huge portions of their resources into developing and promoting younger artists in an attempt to attract the youth market. Sales of records by well-established names like Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters had cooled considerably during the first two years of the 1950s, while others, from the likes of newcomers Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, were among the top-selling records for the period.