Thursday, April 2, 2009 | 12:14 p.m.
Keyboardist/vocalist Joe Darro heads up a jazz group performing at Ollie’s Tavern from 7 to 10 p.m. Mondays.
The combo also includes Bob Sachs on bass, Jimmy Racey on drums and Mike Brown on sax.
The club is at 8075 S. Decatur Blvd. The gig is free.
Darro is one of the classiest entertainers in town. The 62-year-old keyboardist arrived in Vegas in 1962. He was one of the entertainers who opened the Plaze in 1970.
Darro, a native of Albany, N.Y., has been singing and playing piano professionally since age 16. In 1960 he toured with Bobby Sherwood, who made a name for himself as a big-band leader in the 1940s.
Sherwood was Darro's mentor.
"Bobby did a little bit of everything," Darro said. "He was a great teacher."
Sherwood's band settled in Nevada in the early '60s, working at casinos in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Reno.
One of Darro's closest friends was jazz vocalist Joe Williams, who died in 1999. The annual Joe Williams Scholarship Fund concert will be held at 2 p.m. April 26 at the South Point.
"I talked to him when he was in the hospital, four days before he died," Darro said.
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