Bobby Short (b. 1926)
a.k.a.
Robert Waltrip Short
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT Bobby Short's Lifetime of Song
There are few more important fixtures on the New York musical scene than the singer and pianist Bobby Short. In 2003, he celebrated 35 years as a regular at the Caryle Hotel, where he performs two seasons a year. His celebrated joi de vivre and seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of American song is the stuff of legend…less is said of Short’s accomplished piano playing, as featured on his acclaimed 2001 recording Piano. Ted Panken spoke with the sprightly septuagenarian about his professional longevity and wide command of all things musical.
Barnes & Noble.com: Over the 35 years, has it always broken down the way it is now? You do a spring season and then a winter season that goes through New Year's Eve?
Bobby Short: Yes, that's the way it has been for at least 33-34 years of my tenure here.
B&N.com: How does the performance organization come to you? Is it a first inspiration and then things fall into place.?
BS: It's done quite scientifically. I was a child in vaudeville, you know, and I understood early on that a performer in a cabaret setting has to come out and take over. You've got to come and hit the audience with a pow! and hold their attention. You can't approach it as though you're playing in a lounge somewhere. I want people to put their drinks down and listen.
B&N.com: Did you have any particularly pianistic influence, or did your approach to playing develop in a more vernacular way?
BS: Well, I'll tell you. Growing up, I heard all the great jazz piano players on the radio and on phonograph records, and I was thrilled by them. But I was always a singer as well as piano player -- always -- in my childhood. So I incorporated bits and pieces from here and there, and as I had to accompany myself, I could not afford to be particularly florid in my accompaniment. As a matter of fact, one of the first pieces of advice that I received when I was 18-19 years old was to keep my piano playing down to a direct minimum, because "What are you trying to do here? Sell your voice or sell your piano?" The piano has to be secondary.
B&N.com: That being said, you have a two-hand style that's very reminiscent of the time in which you came up, and I guess people who come to mind for me would be Teddy Wilson somewhat. But I wondered if you had put a lot of thought into piano styles, or these were things you'd picked up along the way and organically developed.
BS: Well, we are what we've been exposed to, usually. And I was exposed to that tremendous, that overwhelming sound that came from the moving picture screen. That influenced me greatly. I wanted it to sound as though I had that many musicians behind me when I was just playing the piano for myself. I went about it in that fashion, with the same kind of chord structure.
B&N.com: Another thing that impressed me greatly was your projection. I was looking at you to try to ascertain signs that it was costing you great effort, and I could barely notice them, though I'm sure it's no small thing. I was sitting right amid the horns, but I could hear every word. Does that also have to do with the way you learned as a youngster?
BS: Well, I don't know. Singing is something that you never stop learning about. I received very little education in terms of vocal projection. That just came from school, when I sang in choirs. But you learn about those things as you go along. If you're a conscientious singer, you learn when to breathe. You really do. I'm still learning when to breathe, and learning how to breathe, and how to fit the breath in between phrases without destroying the line of the song. I'm still learning that.
B&N.com: Does being an instrumentalist have an impact on your phrasing? Does your singing have anything to do with your instrumentalism, or are they two separate things?
BS: They are two separate things. I am of two minds when I am performing. I am playing the piano, and unlike a lot of piano players, I do play a full piano when I am accompanying myself.
B&N.com: You're a very declarative singer and also subtle. You let the lyrics speak for themselves. You aren't a method singer, as it were. It makes the lyrics really resonate to me.
BS: I was taught that. When I was in my teens, I had that hammered into my head, that the words were important. I had to make great sense of the words when I sang them. I'd always had a very good head for understanding and explaining poetry, which I like a lot. So I didn't take the lyrics for popular song that seriously until one day somebody pointed out to me how important those lyrics are, and I began to apply my knowledge and sensitivity to poetry to those lyrics.
B&N.com: In your pantheon of singers, do you like the improvisers equally to the more or less straight-ahead deliverers?
BS: Well, you see, I am not an immediate champion of the pretty voice. I think a voice has got to have personality behind it. I love the sound of Lee Wiley. I love the sound of Billie Holiday and the sound of Fred Astaire. These are individual sounds, and I don't care if they sound like Juilliard students or not. They somehow get into a song, and they get those words across and get the song across to you, and you're amused, you're interested. Juilliard is full of good singers, if that's what one craves.
B&N.com: One gets the sense from some of your public statements that you have a certain ambivalence about singing certain songs you've done over and over and over in your career. You even made an offhand comment to that regard last night to the effect that "My audience demands Cole Porter, and therefore..." But how much of your repertoire comes from personal imperatives and how much is doing the gig, as it were?
BS: I have never just done the gig. I have never just done the gig. I don't sing a song unless I like it. I guess that gives me the right to call myself an artist. So I don't sing a song unless I like it, and it's never just doing the gig. Now, I have to keep inspiring my musicians around me to perform as though they're not just doing the gig.
B&N.com: Do your interpretations of the songs evolve over the years?
BS: Sometimes they do. But what I do for a living depends upon a kind of continuity, and there's not room for a lot of changing around. Those arrangements are etched more or less in stone, and you have to go out and do it every night. I look upon this as the same kind of rigid behavior as required in a Broadway show. In a Broadway show you can't go out and change the song every night. You cannot go out and improvise the way you'd like to do it. Because very often, in the old days, out in the audience sat Richard Rogers or sat Cole Porter or sat Andy Razaf or Eubie Blake or Arthur Schwartz, and they could say, "Just a second, now; I didn't write this song that way."
B&N.com: I was immensely impressed with the way you sing the blues. Is singing the blues the same process as singing the songbook repertoire?
BS: Oh, I think it's part of the overall me. I think it is part of what goes to make the whole me. I sing the blues. I've never considered myself a great blues singer, but I certainly admired great blues singers all my life.
B&N.com: Have you ever done an all-blues recording?
BS: Never been asked to.
B&N.com: Really?
BS: No.
B&N.com: Would you do it if someone asked you to?
BS: Of course I would.
June 1, 2003
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