Music Before the Money

In my many years in the entertainment business I’ve seen many impersonators come down the pike. The most common were Elvis impersonators and a lot of them were really good! But outside the Legends show in Las Vegas I’ve never seen anyone do Marilyn Monroe until my last birthday.

Marilyn Sang At My Birthday

For those of you who may think me downright odd (and many do!) you may also admire my wife, Heather, for being very liberal thinking. You see, she hired a Marilyn Monroe act to sing Happy Birthday, Mr. President to me. This came with a white, tight dress and a feather boa around my neck . . . And I wasn’t the one wearing the tight dress! The entertainer’s name is Donna Scaglione and she is not only one of the the top Marilyn acts around, she is also a fine entertainer on her own. And if that’s not enough, her middle name is Marilyn!

Life-Long Trooper

The words of her mother sum up Donna’s earliest ambitions: “You were vaccinated with a phonograph needle!” From then on she performed the classics in musicals like The Sound Of Music, Funny Girl and Brigadoon, to name a few, and began a professional singing career that mirrored her 23 years in emergency dispatch. In recent years she sang national anthems for the local pro hockey team and headlined local functions including the Tsunami Benefit Concert the Mayor’s Tea. This even included a duet with the famous Celtic singer, John Allen Cameron.

Hardworking Entertainer

When she is not working her full-time gig as police and fire dispatcher and 911 operator - jobs which takes an amazing discipline and skill level - she works the mike doing news on-air and does commercials with Seaside 94.7 FM. And if that’s not enough she is the vocalist for The Aviators, doing big band tunes and popular standards, and also works in a duo with Alex Vaughn. In addition, her work as an MC has landed her the prime spot at The Maritime Beatle Event for the third year in a row.

So, if you are looking for that extra jump for your party give Donna a call . . . but make sure your wife knows about it!

Here is her email: donna_marilyn@yahoo.ca

In 1932, during the first rough throes of The Great Depression my grandfather bought a 1928 Gibson L-5 in a pawn shop in Calgary. I don’t know how much it cost him but I do know he was playing it the day he died in May, 1970. He used it regularly at gigs with his Italian friends playing at weddings and parties and the instruments would have come out while camping and other family get-togethers as well. It must have cost him a lot to get the guitar because, at the time, even miners like him earned pretty low wages. But he was lucky to have had a job during those times and it was the only source of music in the house, sort of like an expensive stereo today. Later, in the late ’40’s, he bought an accordion and used it more.

The Gibson L-5 guitar was first produced by the Gibson Guitar Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1922 by master luthier Lloyd Loar who was also an acoustic engineer. An accomplished musician as well Loar wanted an instrument that could hold its own against the louder brass instruments and other stringed ones. So, he took the f-hole tops of the violas and violins and fashioned them first for mandolin and then guitar. Later on he produced the first amplified instruments.

My grandfather’s L-5 went to me after he died. It was not in top shape because heavy picks had worn the area on the body above the strings and cracks ran from the end of the f-holes along ther body. So I decided to have it refinished.

Guitar purists (the same guys who belong to folk clubs where they gingerly take out their polished Martins that have never seen the inside of a club) chided me for it. “Now it’s devalued, Man! It’s only worth a quarter of what it would be if you had left it!” (These are also the same people who have toys in their original packages because they wouldn’t let their kids play with them.)

Yeah, but it looks great. The heavy-dark-brown sunburst and back is true to form and you can’t see where they fixed the cracks. Now it probably looks like it did when my grandfather first saw it in the pawn shop 75 years ago.

“The doors opened and he was carried into the store by the mad rush of crazed women, fighting, screaming, clawing, scratching - all to get the coveted Cabbage Patch Doll.  Dolls were literally flying overhead as the women were screaming that they wanted a blonde, or blue eyes, or a redhead.  Fights broke out as 2 or more women all wanted the exact same doll.”

- Cabbage Patch Memories
http://collectdolls.about.com

I remember the Cabbage Patch craze and I really thought it had been brought on by the times. The early ’80’s was a time of uncertainty as the overspending and overbuilding of the ’70’s caught up. Bruce Springsteen wrote, “Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back” And what time of year do you suppose that the bean counters with the large companies chose to lay off thousands of workers? You guessed it: Christmas. The Christmas of 1983 saw frenzies for Cabbage Patch dolls never before witnessed and this added to the aura of depression that hung over the Christmas season.

24 Years Later

In the past few years we have seen the rebirth of this odd social phenomena in the shape of Tickle-Me -Elmo-Dolls and PlayStation2. An employee of Toys ‘R Us in Mic Mac Mall during the Elmo craze, Kailin Glasgow, has a personal rendition of New York Yankees great Yogi Berra’s statement: “It’s deja vu all over again!” He lived through the Sesame Street puppet’s popularity and, this week, witnessed the Nintendo Wii madness.

“At Toys’ R Us,” Glasgow remembered, “we had a security gate that lifted up when we opened up in the morning. There was a large crowd waiting and, when they saw us in the store, some middle-aged ladies started shaking the gate. I thought it was going to come down on them!

Elderly Ladies Crawl After Elmo

“When the gate started to lift two of the ones up front got down on their knees and crawled under to be the first ones in. And they had dresses on!  Others tried to claw past them and then it was a stampede!”

Let’s fast forward two years. Glasgow now works for Best Buy and was tipped off that 60 of the Nintendo Wii’s were coming in and to be ready in the morning for a rush. When he left the store at 9:00pm the night before there was a long lineup already started in the cold temperatures. He arrived back to the store at 8:30am  and the line was three times as long. Many had stayed the whole night in sub-freezing temperatures.

Worse than Elmo!

“I remembered the Elmo thing,” he said, “so I was prepared for the worst. But it was even worse!”

Glasgow said the store had given out tickets to the first 60 people in the lineup to make sure they got a Wii. However, disgruntled buyers who never got tickets rushed the doors when it opened. “Cashiers were only supposed to cash out guys with tickets but some were intimidated and so guys without tickets got out with Wii’s.” So a few of those who had braved the elements, stayed all night and got a legitimate ticket came up short and left empty-handed.

Extortion

And there were others without tickets who used another method. “Some of the ones without tickets who rushed in and got to the Wii’s first, ” Glasgow went on, “grabbed a Wii and then told tickets holders who didn’t get one fast enough that they would only give it to them (the ticketholder) if they handed over some cash.”

FYI: Nintendo Wii’s will be available in larger quantities in mid January.

What Were They Thinking?

To these weird and frantic buyers who bullied other patrons using physical and mental intimidation to get a Christmas present I ask you to ponder some thoughts:

1. What ever happened to “peace and goodwill toward all men?”
2. What ever happened to, “It is better to give . . .”
3. What ever happened to Christmas?

I was never a bonafide jazz person. I like it but never to the extent where I had to listen to 2 sides to get me going in the morning like my old friend Sheila. She was an Esther Phillips fan and had everything (I think) by the great jazz singer.

But Oscar Peterson was someone who transcended the lines between popular, blues and jazz and had fans who loved different genres than jazz; just like someone who is not a hockey fan will appreciate Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby.

He was a Canadian, born in Montreal in 1925 and was originally trained by a classical teacher. While he was still a teenager he got a job playing piano on radio at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A National Film Board short on Oscar and his trio landed them a spot at Carnegie Hall and the rest, as they say, is history.

My favorite memory of him was a radio interview when he recalled when his father, a CPR porter, brought an Art Tatum record home one day and put it on the phonograph. When Oscar heard the music coming from the next room he asked his father, “Hey, who’re those two piano players?”

A favorite of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, Peterson recorded more than 100 albums and won 3 Grammy’s. His achievements in his home country did not go unnoticed and he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1985, his country’s highest honor.

There is no doubt that every serious performer needs a website. Gone are the days when a CD, tape and a glossy picture will do it. One of the facts is that people lose things . . . and that includes promo kit. Oh, as I said before, you need a promo kit but you also have to get that kit online.

Global Promo Kit

Websites are a necessity because it becomes your global promo kit. For example, if you are speaking with a club owner on the phone you just give him your site info (URL) and he or she is eyeballing you and your track record while you are engaged in the conversation. After you are finished speaking the manager can then click onto a sound or video clip of your act. This spontaneity is a very powerful and professional statement of you as both a performer and business person.

For those of you who do not have a site just ask around or go online and send a few emails out. To get a decent one with video clips, mp3’s and your promo kit up and going shouldn’t cost more than $500, including domain and hosting charges. If you have a friend who can set one up this, of course, will be much cheaper. But make sure that the designer knows what makes a good website. Remember, your name is on it and you only get one crack at first impressions.

The World is Your Arena

Now that you have a site up you can search the web for jobs in all areas of the world:

1. Cruise ships
2. Resorts
3. Ski Resorts
4. Clubs

There are many websites for these venues but my choice would be to contact a good agent. When you have you act together contact this guy:

The Entertainment Agency

http://www.entagency.com

But before you contact these guys make sure you’re ready to go!