Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999 | 9:55 a.m.
-- "The Lady is a Tramp," interpreted by Buddy Greco
Buddy Greco
What: "Las Vegas Live!" with Buddy Greco and Lezlie Anders.
When: 8 to 11 p.m. Fridays.
Where: Flamingo Hilton Main Showroom. Shows simulcast on KJUL 104.3-FM, hosted by Duke Morgan and Frank LaSpina.
Required dress: "Casual elegant" or "cocktail attire."
Cost: $24,95.
Information: Call 733-3333.
Steve and Eydie are naked in Buddy Greco's front yard.
And they're angry. (Well, wouldn't you be angry if you were naked in Buddy Greco's front yard?)
Squawking furiously -- off-key, no less (scandalous!) -- Steve and Eydie demand to be heard. Hey, This Could Be the Squawk of Something Big.
"They're wonderful protectors -- they sense people before dogs do," a fully-clothed Greco says, gazing fondly at the cuddlesome crooners that aren't always so cuddly. After all, Steve and Eydie did get a bit snippy with Bill Acosta (professional jealousy?) when the Luxor's impresario of impersonations visited the nearly 3-acre Greco ranch off the Strip.
"They came out and took a nip out of his shoe," Greco admits. Acosta was also fully clothed at the time. (We don't want you to think it's that other kind of ranch.)
Shame, Steve and Eydie. Nice geese don't nip -- not at Bill Acosta, not if they ever expect to play the Luxor, anyway. But they could probably score a Friday night gig at the Flamingo Hilton, given that they're tight with the headliners -- as long as they don't poop on stage (the geese, not the headliners).
For the full poop, you'll have to check out Greco and his wife, singer Lezlie Anders, as they kick off a 12-week, Friday night big band engagement this week at the Flamingo. The Las Vegas couple will front an evening of swing music and dancing -- they're just rarin' to resurrect the glamour of "old Las Vegas" -- every week. It will be simulcast on KJUL 104.3-FM -- dubbed "Las Vegas Live!" -- with hosts Duke Morgan and Frank LaSpina, starting at 8 p.m.
More about that later. But first, how about a tour of Old MacBuddy's Farm? Steve and Eydie have a bang-up back-up band.
And, oh yeah: one Greco.
"I'm from South Philadelphia," says the dapper, somewhat bewildered Greco, surrounded by chicks and ducks and geese that don't quite scurry (this is Las Vegas, not Oklahoma -- although a surrey with a fringe on top wouldn't be out of place here.)
"What I know is the street, concrete and fighting. She really did all this," he says with pride, pointing toward his blonde, jean-clad wife, exuding relaxed glamour as she bends down to heap affection on a pot-bellied pig. "She's really incredible." (The wife, not the pig.)
And in case you're wondering, Greco sets the record straight on Steve and Eydie, doing sentry duty in the front yard. "The geese are so beautiful, the prettiest things out here, that we thought we would name them after two beautiful people, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme." (When the namesakes visit, they DO wear clothes. ... we assume.)
The New York Times, in a 1998 review, called him "about as pure an example of the lounge-music esthetic as you could find, a genial hard-boiled swinger and custodian of Frank Sinatra's tough, high-rolling showroom style." Noting the sometimes "campy, retro-hip" embrace of lounge music by contemporary audiences, the Times added: "There is nothing campy or retro-hip about this chipper singer and pianist, who will give his 10,000th performance during his (New York) run. He is the real thing. In fact, he helped invent it."
The career is long and legendary, launched with a stint as pianist/singer/ arranger with the immortal Benny Goodman band, with which he was traveling when he first arrived in the desert oasis he has called home for the past eight years. "They had the Flamingo and El Rancho," he says about early '50s Las Vegas, "and the rest was dirt."
Hits? Rattle off "Oh Look at Her, Ain't She Pretty," "Around the World," "The More I See You" and his signature song -- about some dame who gets too hungry for dinner at 8 -- called "The Lady is a Tramp" (a rip-snorting version of which jumps off his latest album, "Like Young.") High-powered pals? Some motley bunch named the Rat Pack.
Imagine your newspaper getting all squiggly in one of those classic TV-style flashbacks (add a WHOSH of harp chords, just for effect) as Greco goes back in time: "In 1955 I was working the lounge at the Sands with my trio, before I had any hit records," he recalls. "I look at the front and who walks in? Francis Albert Sinatra. And I just went, 'Wow -- he's for real!' I'd only spoken to him on the phone. He liked the way I played and sang.
"After my show I used to go back to the Copa room and watch Nat Cole play. Beside the curtain was this huge booth that was Sinatra's booth, with all his cronies, Dean and Sammy and Peter and Joey. Frank says, 'Hey, Dag!' (short for the usually-offensive-but-in-this-case affectionate 'Dago') and I said, 'Hello Mr. Sinatra.' He said, 'First of all, my name is Frank to you. Come and sit with us.' I was in absolute heaven.
"He came to see my shows for years and years and years. I went to his house, wrote arrangements for him. We drank. We caroused. We stayed out till 6 in the morning, played golf at 10, half ripped. Then knew about my episodes in this town, which were really strange. I was with them when the Pack was in its full blossom."
Many of the memories -- scheduled to be revisited in an autobiography and TV movie about his Vegas escapades -- blossom anew on the wall of his office, which fronts a small recording studio and rehearsal room. It's a pictorial potpourri: Buddy with Dino, Frank, Marilyn, Lucy, Rickles; Buddy with Buddy (Greco and Rich); Buddy kissing his star along hometown Philly's Walk of Fame.
And speaking of stars, Buddy, what's with the animal monikers?
His wife expands: "People say. 'There's no place to go, nobody dresses. Why can't it be like the old days? Remember when at 3 in the morning you couldn't get in to see Keely (Smith) and Louie (Prima)? This is about the closest thing, and Buddy is really the only person left here who knows how it was, who could do it. And it allows us to work in town on terms we're choosing. There are people in the big rooms now, we don't even know who they are."
They even -- talk about nerve! -- instituted a dress code: "casual elegant" and "cocktail attire." Translation: No shorts, cut-offs, sneakers or tank-tops, gang. They're looking to revive a taste for a long out-of-favor flavor: Class. And in a town where a couple of hours with a waterlogged circus troupe goes for, "O," a hundred bucks or so, the $24.95 tab seems tame, doesn't it?
"This is almost like a challenge to the local people," Anders says. "Now you've got a place. Will you support it? They say, '$24,95? Do we get two drinks with that?' I can't go to Walgreens without blowing $25 on something I didn't intend to buy. What more could you possibly want? You've got 13 men on stage in this beautiful room and three hours of music from this man -- and you want two drinks?"
Professionally and personally, Anders -- an ex-corporate warrior in mergers and acquisitions who spurned the suits for the stage -- is fiercely devoted to her man, whom she met in 1992 while opening for him at the Desert Inn. "I was not in the mood for another romance -- I'd had it," Greco says, recalling his post-divorce funk. "But I kept hearing this voice from back stage. I saw this lady and it's like, 'Wow, I want to meet her.' Everything kind of clicked. She started off calling me Mr. Greco. We started to go out and she called me Buddy. Now I'm her 'piano player.' "
As a central component of her husband's shows, Anders knows she's fighting negative nepotistic perceptions. "Immediately, people think you're 'the girlfriend,' " she says. "They immediately make up their mind about why you're in the show. Reviewers have actually said, 'Surprisingly, Lezlie Anders did not sabotage the musical content of the evening.' You gotta be good, but I do prove myself."
They've been making marital music together for five years now, and his wife remains Greco's greatest groupie. "If we were in Australia, his biggest fans would be 20-year-olds," she says. "If he appears in Melbourne, at the Continental Cafe, these kids pay $10 apiece just to stand six deep in the back of the room and they know every lyric of every song. They say, 'Buddy taught Bobby Darin how to swing.' "
Sounds like they go hog wild. Speaking of which ...
Question: Shouldn't a photo of His Haminess hang in the pigpen?
First there's the sad story. (Imagine your newspaper getting all squiggly again.)
"We were sitting in Frank's bungalow having breakfast at the Cal-Neva," he recalls. "A car pulls up and this lady walks out with a green scarf, green shirt, green slacks and green shoes. I'm looking down and it's a girl I met in 1952, when she auditioned for our band. And Benny Goodman said, 'You're beautiful, but I think you should try to find another means of working.'
The girl who came out of the car was Marilyn Monroe. I went up to her and said, 'You don't know me but I was the piano player with Benny Goodman when you auditioned for the band.' And she hugged me. Six days later she was dead."
Then there's the embarrassing story (cue the squiggles and the harp WHOSH).
"I'm rehearsing for a command performance for the Queen of England, at the Prince of Wales Theater," he says of the show in which he shared the bill with the Beatles, who were still two months shy of their hysteria-fueled landing on American shores. "Melody magazine followed me around for a couple of days -- 'Lady is a Tramp' was a big hit at the time -- and they said to me, 'Mr. Greco, what is your impression of the Beatles?'
"And I very smugly said, 'If I know my music, they're going to be around for about a year.' And George Harrison, many years later, called me up and said, 'Boo-dy! Boo-dy! -- (for those of you raised in the Colonies, that's Brit-speak for 'Buddy') -- what did you mean, a year?' I'll never live that down."
You can tell by the way that Lorenz Hart/Richard Rogers classic -- even with lyrics they never intended but would surely condone -- sticks to America's ribs:
"She don't know the reason for cocktails at 5; she don't like flyin', she's glad she's alive; I crave affection, baby, but not when I drive; that's why, that's why the lady is a tramp."
That's assuming you can hear it over the two geese, 10 roosters, 12 hens, four horses, two burrows, four pigs, four goats, one sheep, four dogs and one cat. ... Plus the stray chicken lounging out by the pool.
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