Interview: Fred Barton of THE ELENA BENNETT AND FRED BARTON SONG SALON at Pangea

Fred Barton remembers a time when there were piano bars all over New York. Sure, we still have a few venerable spots that have survived, but there was a time when you could go to a piano bar practically every night and never go to the same one twice in the same week.

For two nights, at least, Barton and Bennett are bringing back their Song Salon - originated in the heyday of the piano bar scene at Eighty-Eights - to the front room of Pangea, on April 11 and 18th. There's no cover and no minimum and it promises to be a great time with these two singular talents at the helm.

I had a chance to sit with the wonderful Mr. Barton and discuss these coming evenings, his singing partner, Ms. Bennett, their album A Wrinkle in Swingtime, and about the things that make these evenings so special.

This article has been edited for length and clarity

Your Song Salon sounds as if it's filling a void. Are you trying to bring these evenings back? While we're at it, tell me about your history with Elena Bennett.

Yes. We were sort of the original Song Salon. There was no Cast Party, there was another event called The Salon, and (there are) all sorts of Open Mic nights now. Back then, it was a different age (we are talking the late 90's.) I met Elena at Eighty-Eights and she served me a drink. I was very depressed, and I didn't want to be there. In fact, the only reason I was there was because Debbie Reynolds told me to go out to piano bars - literally - THAT Debbie Reynolds. I went to Eighty-Eights and this person fed me this Scotch. I was miserable, and this waitress got up to sing (as the bartenders, waiters, and waitresses did at Eighty-Eights) and I rolled my eyes, thinking "Oh God. What is this going to be like?" Out came this sound, the likes of which I'd never heard in years; singing a song that was so fantastic (that I'd never heard) that I practically dropped that very expensive Scotch on the floor. It was Elena Bennett, as I found out later, singing " I'll Tell the Man in the Street" by Rodgers and Hart. I was open-mouthed and absolutely floored at how fantastic it was. It wasn't remotely what I was expecting.

She has a voice unlike anything I'd ever heard before. She has a sound that is not unlike Rosemary Clooney or Judy Garland. There were these singers of another age, where they sang in rich tones, where their speaking voice was. That's where their rich singing voices were. Elena, when she sang with that voice of hers, I was just floored, I didn't know what to say to her because she was so great. I also noticed that she didn't sing with a mic. Partly because she has what I've always described as an old piano sounding board built into her. From her waist to her head that sounding board resonates. She could just sing and traffic would stop. I started making a point of going out on Elena's nights.

One day, I got a phone call from Rochelle Seldin, one of the owners of Eight-Eights. She said, "We don't have a piano player tonight, would you do it?" I said, "I'm good for 10 minutes. I can't do 6 hours! I've never done that before. I can't." She begged, "Oh PLEASE come down and help us out - we are desperate!" I asked, "Who is the waitress? Who am I working with tonight?" She replied with two magic words: "Elena Bennett." I said, "I'll be there at 9." It turned out that Elena knew 5000 Songs, and I knew 4999. She taught me the other one.

I know she does so many wonderful songs, but my favorite thing that she does is the Elaine Stritch number "I Never Know When to Say When" from Goldilocks.

We will be doing that on Tuesdays. It's part of our repertoire. One of my little gripes, and speaking of the void we are trying to fill, there are some amazing songs and shows that are totally ignored by the current crop of cabaret artists and the piano bar, sing-along open mic world. You'd think a song of that caliber, made famous by Elaine Stritch, would be sung 2 or 3 times a night in every piano bar in the world. You won't hear it done. Elena and I worked up our version of it - and if I may be so bold, it's one for the ages. She frequently brings songs to me and says, "What do you think?" She showed me a song called "Save a Kiss," which I didn't remember. I looked at it and realized it's the second song in the overture for Goldilocks. Then we worked up our rendition. The way Elena and I work, and this was true of Eighty-Eights, is we don't rehearse. Something happens that's beyond us. I wish we knew what it was. We just start a song and the chances are very good that we both know all 10 recordings of the song that have ever been made. We've got the background that's sorely lacking today. We play with one another off the cuff, going from arrangement to arrangement. For example, she will start doing the Ella Fitzgerald version, I'll slide into the Nelson Riddle arrangement, and we go from there. It's just something that happens so infrequently between a singer and the musician. It's like Porter and Merman, Noel and Gertie - There's that... thing. We would make up arrangements on the spot. Almost always, we never changed it. It becomes the definitive Barton and Bennett arrangement that just came to us.

That's another thing that a lot of people do not necessarily know about you is that you are quite well-known as an arranger. In fact, your arrangement of Cabaret was used in Marilyn Maye's Carnegie Hall debut. That's a very interesting gift: to be able to write for the entire orchestra.

When I was 22 years old, I started in Forbidden Broadway. There was something about my playing (and I had been doing it since I was 13, so I didn't think twice about it) that was noticed in all of the reviews. The reviews told me what I was doing. Jack Kroll from Newsweek said: "Fred Barton and his 10-fingered orchestra." I grew up on the recordings of Ella Fitzgerald singing the George Gershwin songbook. My mother happened to have those records. I used to play George Gershwin from his own songbook. I'd look through the records and wonder: "Who's Ella Fitzgerald? Who's Nelson Riddle?" I was 13 or so, and I put on the records and heard sounds I'd never heard before. Nelson Riddle isn't just a big band guy - He had French impressionism... I mean he had so much going on, of the highest order, both musicologically and intellectually. I heard an entire world of sound I'd never heard before. One of his secrets is that he used big band trivialities from the 40s. He slowed them way down and they became shattering. That was Nelson Riddle transforming old licks. he did it for both Frank Sinatra and Ella - he was their arranger. I heard that and I went to the piano. I didn't want to play like some piano player playing from the vocal selections. I wanted to sound like that Broadway album. I wanted to sound like Nelson Riddle. My mother would buy me the complete Piano Conductor scores (which they used to sell) and I would play, say, Camelot. I didn't want to play it like a piano part - it's usually written out to symbols. The Gypsy score - arranged by Robert Ginzler and Sid Ramin - their second assignment for Jule Styne; they created an entirely new Broadway sound, thanks to Jule Styne and Gypsy. That's when Broadway Brass came into its own. The piano conductor score to Gypsy is written out for, like, one finger. The famed trumpet solo in the overture that drives the audience wild is written out for one finger. No. No. No. No. That's not the way it sounds. It sounds BIG. I would drop the needle, listen to eight bars, run to the piano, which was 3 rooms away, and I trained myself, by osmosis, to sound like the album eight bars at a time. I couldn't imagine playing the piano any other way. I play show music like the album. A lot of singers appreciate that - especially in auditions.

How did the album come about?

It began as a joke! Elena and I would do a song and it would be a great performance of a great song and we'd look at each other and exclaim, "That goes on the album!" It was a joke. One night, it was raining and we came up with some fabulous arrangement that nobody heard but us, and we did our shtick and said, "THAT goes on the album!" Then, between the two of us, we kept saying, "Why don't we do that album?" We had terriffic musicians and the best engineer and contractor. Elena produced the whole album, I produced the individual tracks. Not to be immodest, but I think it's one of the best albums of its kind. The album is still streaming, it's still in print.

Back to the Song Salon. You're scheduled for two consecutive Tuesdays -April 11 and 18th. Do you have plans for the show beyond that?

We are going to run it up the flagpole. The thing that's different about our Song Salon is, originally, it was just another night at Eighty-Eights. But when Elena and I realized that we had this incredible rapport, and this mutual meeting of ideas and arrangements and songs and the way her voice matches my piano playing... you cannot plan these things. I mean, I couldn't go out into the world and say, "I have to find me an Elena Bennett." It just happened. We knew each other. It was like the old Harold Arlen song "Fancy Meeting You" or Jule Styne's "Long Before I Knew You." That's what it was like. What we eventually did was, we got in another person to wait the tables so that Elena could just sing. I played the piano for 6 hours, Elena sang for six hours, I'd sing, people would get up and sing. We led the evening with our repertoire. Some of our guests included Liza Minnelli, who sat for two hours and watched. She gave me a huge hug afterward (you know she LOVES her pianists.) We had Phyllis Diller spend an evening with us once. Once, Elena sang one of her hits, "I'll Tell the Man on the Street" by Rodgers and Hart, and there was a woman who had just come into the room, and she stared at us. Almost to the point of being uncomfortable. After Elena finished, she walked up to her and said, "I want to thank you for one of the most beautiful renditions of my father's song." It was Mary Rodgers. I had a wonderful singer named Kimlee Hicks who did a stellar rendition of "Happily Ever After" from Once Upon a Mattress. She killed. Then, there was a young gentleman who approached me and said that his friend would like to sing with me. I looked over and saw this very elderly gentleman, and I wanted to find out what he wanted to sing. He said, "He'd like to sing from the show he wrote, which you are playing now." It was Marshall Barer, the lyricist of Once Upon a Mattress. He got up and sang "Sensitivity" - The Queen's song. I'd known Once Upon a Mattress forever, and nobody does those songs now. That was the fun of the old piano bars. What we have now, and they are all wonderful, the difference with ours is that we lead the evening with our repertoire and Elena's formidable voice. Of course, we invite our friends to perform. This is in the FRONT room of Pangea, with no cover or minimum, and the food is really good. We're creating an evening that hasn't existed for quite some time. You can have a cocktail, come in go out, mill about. It's a party.

What is missing today that was prevalent in the days of Eighty-Eights?

It's almost like cable TV. When I was growing up, there were 4 stations and 2 UHF stations. There was a common body of culture. A common audience. I don't think a common audience is a bad thing. Many people believe it is now. We need 700 cable stations, one for every flavor. Everything is on its own station. Broadway is very much the same way. We need to find our common ground, a common culture. What's different is that at Eighty-Eights we were the flagship, the top-of-the-line, most popular piano bar/cabaret room... and I saw them all.... well, at least since 1977. Upstairs was a beautiful cabaret room and downstairs, a beautiful bar. You could hang out at the bar, and not participate. That was OK. There was a whole restaurant area with food sometimes, sometimes not. Then, there was this giant piano in the center of the place. It was the nerve center of the entire place. On Saturday nights, the place was so packed. Mostly gentlemen, but not entirely. It was a mixed place. We all came together with what we had in common. We all loved The Wizard of Oz, we all loved Mame. There was received culture in common and we were all there to celebrate what we had in common - and NOT our divisions.

On our night, Elena and I did Swing, we did Broadway, we did Hollywood - which was actually not so common. We did Busby Berkeley and MGM stuff. We were all over the place. What I find lacking - and there are some great times to be had- but there is a rigidity now that used to not be so prevalent. Yes, everyone has their specialty, everyone has their preference, but why not let's all get together and have a grand old time? You do what you love, I'll do what I love, and you may not like all of it, but we can all be together in a relaxed atmosphere. Want to get up and sing? Get up. If you don't, then don't. If you want to chat at the bar and mingle, then do it. That spontaneity, I find, makes for a party. I'm trying to recreate the old-fashioned New York piano party.

Thank you, Fred, for spending some time with Broadway World, and best of luck for your Salon!

Fred Barton and Elena Bennett will be hosting this evening of music on Tuesdays, April 11 and 18, in the Front room of Pangea - 2nd Avenue at 12th Street. No Cover or Minimum for these evenings which run 2 hours from 8:30 through 10:30 pm. Learn more about this and other great evenings on the Pangea website HERE.