The Copa (10 page)

The first time I ever went to the Copa I must have been about fourteen or fifteen years old. There was a little schoolgirl that had a crush on me and her father had a connection at the club. One day he took us there to see Jimmy Durante, who was headlining the Copa at
the time. The act was billed as Clayton, Jackson and Durante, but Jimmy Durante was the true star of the show. To this day, it is still one of the greatest performances I've ever seen in my life. We went backstage after the show was over and Durante was very nice to all of us. I was just a little boy in awe of how great the show had been and I remember thinking to myself I want to do what Jimmy Durante does—be an entertainer. That really got me motivated to start thinking about a career in show business.

The first time I played the Copa was in 1952; I was on the bill with the great Joe E. Lewis. He was a special man; he was so wonderful to me. I was just starting out and very naive at the time; Joe was already a superstar in the nightclub circuit. Joe would ask me how the audience was before he went on and I'd say they were a little
noisy on that side or they were talking during the act and he'd say, “Don't worry, I'll take care of it.” He also gave me some tips on how to handle the audience that I still use to this day. I mentioned to Joe that after the engagement I was going to work in Dallas and Houston. He was such a gentleman that he wrote to the reviewers ahead of my visit and told them how much he enjoyed my singing. That was all it took; the reviewers were great to me because of Joe's letter. I'll never forget that he was such a wonderful man to me, especially when I was just getting started in show business.

Coming from Astoria, New York, and being a hometown boy, so to speak, I can't explain what a thrill it was to play the Copa; it was really big-time. Sinatra, Martin and Lewis, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole—all the greats played there. The Copacabana and the Paramount Theatre were the two great venues to work in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. The Copa was unique because it catered to the money crowd, the gangsters, and the regular people…just like New York.

I remember plenty about Jules Podell. He was always a gentleman to me whenever I appeared at the club. I learned to talk with him before 3
P.M.
if I had any questions because after that he'd start getting ready to open the club and began drinking and his mood might vary. He had a ring that he would tap on the table
if he wanted to get the attention of his staff and everyone would jump when they heard that tap.

I first played the Copa after I had a few hit records and was first starting out in the business. I hadn't really learned how to perform yet; it takes about nine to ten years before you can become a consummate performer and learn how to adapt to the audience. That's what regretful about today's kids in the business, they don't have the time or places to hone their crafts like my generation had years ago.

For my annual engagements at the Copa I would have new orchestrations written by people like Neal Hefti, Don Costa, Marion Evans, and Torrie Zito. I tried to do the material I had just recorded or was about to record. I remember doing an engagement at the Copa in early 1958 that featured famous musicians Herbie Mann, Candido, and Sabu because we had just recorded the album
The Beat of My Heart
and I wanted to feature some of that material in the show. Once I established myself, I played the Copacabana regularly for almost twenty years. The Copa would book me a lot for prom season—that was one of the busiest times of the year for them. It was great because my shows all got wonderful reviews and whatever entertainers were in New York at the time would stop by to catch our show. I always made it a point to introduce the visiting celebrities to the audience sometime during the show.

The house band at the Copa was always good, but like other acts, I'd bring along key members of my group and usually had Ralph Sharon with me on the piano.

The shows at the Copa were actually like revues—the Copa Girls would open the show and a comedian and then a headliner usually followed them. It was wild because you'd have to do two or three shows per night. If you did three shows you wouldn't get out until four in the morning and you'd be numb.

Besides other fellow entertainers who would come by and see
the show, the audience seemed to be made up of Jewish and Italian mobsters on the weekends.

Then the whole era of nightclubs began to die—there were so many places to play, but in the late 1960s things began to change. Many of the clubs couldn't compete with the salaries the casinos in Las Vegas were offering to entertainers. Times changed
and people would be content to stay at home and be entertained by watching television. It was the end of an era. the Copa was glamorous.

The Copa was very intimate; it was basically a saloon. Frank Sinatra would say he and I were saloon singers. Clubs like the Copacabana were the greatest school for learning how to perform. It teaches you how to be very flexible since anything can happen. There can be all kinds of upsets: either someone is drunk and disrupts the whole audience, or a tray drops. All kinds of incongruous things can happen in a club because you are battling people who want to dance, who may have a business deal going…all kinds of interludes besides the actual performance going on. It takes about ten years to learn how to deal with these things because every night is different; you never know what's going to happen, so you have to quickly adjust to what the scene is that evening.