I turned 65 on April 25 and since then have been doing a lot of reflecting about everything.
When glam/rock star Brett Michaels suffered a brain hemorrhage last week, I recalled interviewing him in November, 2008 to advance a performance at the Aliante.
It was a decent interview. He played up his charming lover-boy role, a good-time guy with lots of girl friends, etc., etc.
A couple of months later I bumped into a couple of his band members. They didn’t know who I was. I asked what he was really like. They said he was one of the nicest guys you ever want to meet – his private persona is totally different from his public one.
The last word was that the former Poison lead singer and was still in critical condition.
Michaels’ condition made me think about all the entertainers I have interviewed who are no longer with us.
GEORGE CARLIN
The irascible and irreplaceable comedian died on June 22, 2008.
My final interview with him ran on June 10 in the Las Vegas Sun. I was the last newspaper reporter to talk to him.
I saw Carlin perform on June 7 at The Orleans. His final performance was on June 15 on the same stage.
During his June 7 show I noticed he paused to take a pill, which caused me to wonder if he was having health issues.
Fifteen days later he died of a heart attack.
The last interview was typical Carlin. He didn’t care for stupid questions. Didn’t have a lot of patience for small talk, Spoke his mind.
He repeated one of his common complaints – Vegas was not a good city for him.
“It takes a lot out of you spiritually,” he said.
DANNY GANS
I interviewed the impressionist many times over the past 10 years.
The last time was in January, 2009, at the Encore Theatre.
He had just left a long-standing engagement at the Mirage, lured away by pal Steve Wynn, who had lured him away from the Rio to the Mirage (which Wynn owned at the time).
Gans was excited about the new venue, full of energy, full of stories.
He had found the place where he said he wanted to remain.
“There’s no upper move,” Gans said to me. “This is as good as it gets. How could I do any better than this?”
Gans died suddenly on May 1.The Clark County coroner said it was accident caused by a combination of underlying health problems and pain medication.
FRED TRAVALENA
Travalena was an impressionist in Vegas when Gans still had pro-baseball aspirations.
He died of cancer last year at the age of 66.
I interviewed him in 2008 when he talked about a return to Vegas as a headliner. He was excited about returning to the city where he was a fixture in the ‘70s and ‘80s, pals with the likes ofFrank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine and many of the other.
He hadn’t performed here in six years and hoped a weekend engagement at the Suncoast would mark a new beginning.
He blamed his long absence on changes in the Vegas scene.
Travalena was upbeat and spoke freely about his brushes with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2002 and 2003.
“When (the doctor) told me I had cancer , I left the room,” he says. “I was physically still in the seat, but I left the room mentally. You can’t believe he’s talking to you, telling you you have cancer.”
He said diet and chemotherapy saved him.
BERNIE ALLEN
One of the funniest people I ever met was standup comedian Bernie Allen, who was still getting laughs in his 80s, often performing at the Riviera.
The last time I interviewed him was a few weeks before he died in 2003.
He was in a nursing home, where he had taken it upon himself to become entertainment director, inviting his show business friends to come by and entertain the residents.
Allen, for awhile, worked with Steve Rossi, who is best known for partnering with Marty Allen.
After Rossi and Marty Allen broke up, Rossi went with several other partners – including Bernie Allen.
“Bernie was one of the funniest guys I ever met in my life,” Rossi told me.
Allen says he was almost homeless when he was a young man in New York City. After World War II he owned a luncheonette for about 10 years, but gambled it away and was forced to drive a cab to feed his family.
One night in 1957 he picked up Rocky Graziano and took him to the Sugar Ray Robinson-Carmen Basilio bout. En route Allen, a natural comedian, kept Graziano laughing.
Graziano introduced him to Martha Raye, who helped him get his start in show business.
Allen spent almost 10 years working security for Raye and performing in nightclubs in and around New York. In 1966 Frank Sinatra caught his act and arranged for him to sign a contract with the Sands in Las Vegas.
Allen says he never looked back.
“Just think,” he said. “If I had gone one second faster in that cab and missed picking up Rocky Graziano, I don’t have a story to tell. It was all in God’s split-second timing.”
Allen (whose real name was Kleinberg) died of apparent complications from falling off his motorized wheelchair at the Rose Cottage Assistance Living. He was 87.
CARL FONTANA
Also passing away in 2003 was legendary jazz trombonist Carl Fontana, who died at a Las Vegas Alzheimer’s facility listening to the music that was his life.
Playing at his bedside was a CD he recorded in Las Vegas in 1999, “Live at Capozzoli’s,” featuring Fontana and fellow trombonist Andy Martin playing such standards as “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “Only Trust Your Heart.”
The 75-year-old, internationally acclaimed musician — called “a trombonist’s trombonist” by several jazz historians — followed his heart from the time he was a teenager growing up in Monroe, La., performing in his father Collie’s band.
His heart took him down a musical path that would earn him the respect of legions of fans and eventually, in 1957, lead him to Las Vegas.
University of Nevada Las Vegas music professor Ken said, “There’s always an argument over who is the greatest, but I would tell you, he would be among the top five greatest jazz trombonists of all time, and many people would tell you he was No. 1.”
Hanlon said Fontana was known for many things, among them his impeccable sense of timing.
“Everyone in the band honed in on him because if anyone was going to be right it was going to be Carl,” Hanlon said. “He was an amazing man. I have never heard him make a mistake.”
Fontana’s signature tune was “Emily,” and “his most famous solo was one he did on Stan Kenton’s ‘Intermission Riff,’ a very simple tune, just three chords, but the solo he played on that was such a musically intelligent solo. It was a landmark.”
GENE PITNEY
Pitney died on April 5, 2006, at the age of 66.
He passed away in Wales in his hotel room at the end of his last concert.
He ended the show with his signasture song, “Town Without Pity.”
I interviewed Pitney, who skyrocketed to fame in the ‘60s, in 2003 before an engagement at the
He recorded 16 Top 40 hits from 1961 to 1968, among them “Town Without Pity” (’61), “(I Wanna) Love My Life Away” (1961), “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (’62), “Only Love Can Break a Heart” (’62), “Mecca” (’63) and “Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa” (’64).
I interviewed Pitney in 2003, advancing an engagement at the Stardust – his first headlining experience in Las Vegas.
He says there was no particular reason for not pursuing venues in Vegas.
“It was my own fault,” Pitney said. “I’m one of those who said, ‘Not me.’ ”
LOU RAWLS
I had the opportunity to interview Lou Rawls twice before he passed away in 2006.
He had one of the most unmistakable voices of anyone I’ve ever interviewed.
The occasion was before his engagement in August 2000 at the now defunct Blue Note Jazz Club..
“If any place in world should have a jazz club on every corner it’s Las Vegas, but there is such a lack of it here,” Rawls told me in a phone interview. “Hopefully, the Blue Note will turn that around.”
It didn’t.
The club only lasted a couple of years.
Rawls became a mainstay on the Las Vegas entertainment scene following his 1962 solo debut album, “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water,” and the international hit “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing.”
“I played the Hilton, Caesars, Harrahs, Bally’s, Desert Inn,” he recalled. “I went all the way back to the Thunderbird. I played the Fremont and Golden Nugget. I was at the Orleans last November with the Fifth Dimension.
“I played the old MGM Grand and the Flamingo. The only place I didn’t play was the Stardust.”
ROBERT GOULET
One of the nicest guys in show business, if not the nicest was Robert Goulet.
I bumped into the amazing bariton many times over the years, interviewed him a couple of times – including once after a show bombed at the Venetian in 2001.
He had four-walled the venue and found the terms so draconian he couldn’t afford to continue the show and closed it after a couple of weeks.
After that he rarely performed in his hometown, instead going on the road.
He performed in Syracuse , N.Y., on Sept. 20, 2007 and became ill on the flight home. Because of the severe lung ailment , Goulet canceled a mid-October show in Denver.
He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was sent Oct. 13 from Las Vegas for an emergency lung transplant after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis.
by Jerry Fink
|
|
|
|
|---|
