TONY's Legendary Ladies Honored at Annual TONY Viewing Party

THE ACTORS FUND

Cathy Rigby

Presents the

17th Annual Tony Awards® Party

An Actors Fund Special Event honoring

Tony's Legendary Ladies

With Host  and Nine Time TONY Winner Tommy Tune

Multiple Tony Award winner Tommy Tune will host The Actors Fund's 17th Annual Tony Awards Viewing Party, which will be held June 9 at the Taglyan Cultural Complex.

Produced and written by David Rambo, the event begins at 3:30 PM with cocktails and a silent auction followed by dinner and the live Tony broadcast at 5 PM.

The evening will also feature the presentation of the Actors Fund Artistic Achievement Award to several of Broadway's legendary ladies including Nancy Dussault, June Lockhart, Millicent Martin, Charlotte Rae, Cathy Rigby, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and a special tribute to Anne Jeffreys.

Sunday, June 9th, 2013 3:30pm -- Cocktails and Silent Auction begins

               5:00pm to 8:00p.m. -- Dinner and live telecast of the Tony Awards®

Charlotte Rae

Taglyan Cultural Complex (1201 Vine St, Los Angeles, CA 90038)

TICKETS: 
Individuals $275 and Tables of ten start at $3,000 by calling (323) 933-9244, ext. 123

or email cparrone@actorsfund.org (include name, address, phone, number of tickets and price level)

The Actors Fund is proud to announce that host of the 2013 Tony Party will be past honoree, Tommy Tune. 
Mr. Tune has received the nations' highest honor for Artistic Achievement, The National Medal of Arts, to add to his already unprecedented nine Tony Awards in four different categories plus, among other accolades, eight Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, two Astaire Awards, the American Dance Award, the Drama League Award, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement. This year's celebration marks a departure from the usual annual Tony party honoring one individual with a Lifetime Achievement Award, to instead offer a legendary roster of dynamic divas.  Among the TONY Award winners and nominees to be honored are Nancy Dussault (The Sound of Music/Side by Side by Sondheim/Into the Wood), June Lockhart (For Love or Money and The first ever TONY award winner - then know as thePeter Pan/Seussical/Jekyll and Hyde), Marissa Jaret Winokur (Grease/Hairspray), and a special tribute to Anne Jeffreys (My Romance/Kiss Me, Kate/Three Wishes for Jamie).

This years Sponsors include: Wells Fargo (Presenting Sponsor), Corner Bakery, DirecTV, Sextant Wines, Flourishing Art, Staging Techniques, and United Airlines.

June Lockart will be presenting

Antoinette Perry Award), Millicent Martin (The Boy Friend/King of Hearts/42nd Street), Charlotte Rae (Li'l Abner/Pickwick/Morning Noon and Night), Cathy Rigby (
Previous honorees have included Julie Harris, Gwen Verdon, Charles Durning, Rita Moreno, James Earl Jones, Tyne Daly, Lauren Bacall, Stockard Channing, Carol Channing, Liza Minnelli, Jerry Herman, Tommy Tune, Chita Rivera, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Hal Holbrook and Jason Alexander.

The Actors Fund is a national human services organization that helps everyone-performers and those behind the scenes-who works in performing arts and entertainment, helping more than 13,500 people directly each year, and hundreds of thousands online. Serving professionals in film, theatre, television, music, opera, radio and dance, The Fund's programs include social services and emergency assistance, health care and insurance, housing, and employment and training services. With offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, The Actors Fund has-for 131 years-been a safety net for those in need, crisis or transition. Visit www.actorsfund.org

Anne Jeffreys

Press Contact:  B. Harlan Böll / Tel 323/954-7510 / h.boll@dcpublicity.com

Anne Jeffreys seems able to be almost any place, any time, any guise-- So great is her versatility.
Starting her professional career when a teenager, Miss Jeffreys was a leading junior model for John Robert Powers in New York, while studying for an operatic career. She was offered and accepted a role in a musical review, Fun for the Money, to be done in Hollywood, which led to her winning her first movie role, it was I Married an Angel, with her idols Janette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.
Next, she was put under contract to Republic Studios and made a dozen films for them.

Charlotte Rae (born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky) is an American character actress of stage, comedienne, singer and dancer, who in her six decades of television is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life (in which she starred from 1979 to 1986). She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy in 1982. She also appeared in two Facts of Life television movies: The Facts of Life Goes to Paris in 1982 and The Facts of Life Reunion in 2001. She voiced the character of "Nanny" in 101 Dalmatians: The Series.
She was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Russian Jewish immigrants Esther (née Ottenstein), who was a childhood friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Meyer Lubotsky, a retail tire business owner.She is one of three sisters, along with Miriam and the late Beverly (December 21, 1921–June 2, 1998).
She graduated from Shorewood High School in 1944.For the first ten years or so of her life, Rae's family lived in Milwaukee, then moved to Shorewood, Wisconsin.
She did radio work and was with the Wauwatosa Children's Theatre. At 16, she was an apprentice with the Port Players, a professional theater company that came for the summer to Milwaukee, with several established actors such as Morton DaCosta, who would eventually direct The Music Man on Broadway.
Rae attended Northwestern University, although she did not complete her studies, where she met Cloris Leachman, who many years later succeeded Rae on The Facts of Life for the show's last two seasons.At Northwestern she met several unknown stars and producers, including Agnes Nixon, Charlton Heston, Paul Lynde, Claude Akins and songwriter Sheldon Harnick. When a radio personality told her that her last name wouldn't do, she dropped it, to her father's chagrin.She moved to New York City in 1948, where she performed in the theater and nightclubs. During her early years in New York, she worked at the Village Vanguard (alongside up-and-coming talents such as singer Richard Dyer-Bennett) and at the posh Blue Angel, home to budding talents Barbra Streisand, Mike Nichols and Elaine May. She moved to Los Angeles in 1974.
A stage actress since the 1950s, she appeared in Three Wishes for Jamie, The Threepenny Opera, Li'l Abner, and Pickwick. In 1955 she released her first (and only) solo album, Songs I Taught My Mother, which featured "silly, sinful, and satirical" songs by Sheldon Harnick, Vernon Duke, John La Touche, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and Marc Blitzstein (who reportedly wrote the song Modest Maid especially for Rae), among others.

She appeared in Ben Bagley's revue The Littlest Revue (and on its cast album) in 1956, appearing alongside Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes, among others, and singing songs by Sheldon Harnick (The Shape of Things), Vernon Duke (Summer is a-Comin' In), and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams Spring Doth Let Her Colours Fly), a parody of opera singer Helen Traubel's Las Vegas night club act), among others.
 Rae would later record Rodgers and Hart Revisited with Dorothy Loudon, Cy Young, and Arthur Siegel, singing Everybody Loves You (When You're Asleep) and in several other duets and ensembles for Bagley's studio. Rae received two Tony Award nominations during her Broadway career. The first was in 1966 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in Pickwick; the second came in 1969 for Best Actress in a Play for Morning, Noon and Night.
 In 1954, Rae made her TV debut on an episode of Look Up and Live. This led to roles on other shows such as The United States Steel Hour, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, NBC Television Opera Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The DuPont Show of the Week, The Phil Silvers Show, Way Out, The Defenders, Temperatures Rising, The Love Boat, The Partridge Family, Love, American Style, McMillan and Wife, Barney Miller, 227, Murder, She Wrote, St. Elsewhere, Diagnosis: Murder, All in the Family and Good Times. In 1993, Rae voiced the character "Aunt Pristine Figg" in Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
(Source Wikipedia)

 Cathleen Roxanne Rigby best known as Cathy Rigby, is a speaker, actress and former gymnast.

In 1974, the producers of a showy, theater-in-the-round version of Peter Pan were trying to capitalize on her fame and skill when they offered her the iconic role of the boy who won't grow-up, Peter Pan. The painfully shy gymnast reports during the rehearsal process she was "scared to death". Only 20 and just a year into "retirement," she had no idea what she would be doing with the rest of her life when the role came along. To her surprise, she discovered she could not only pull off playing Peter Pan, but that she actually enjoyed doing it. (Wikipedia)

Marissa Jaret Winokur (born February 2, 1973), sometimes credited as Marissa Winokur, is an American actress known for her performance as Tracy Turnblad in the highly successful Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' film Hairspray, as well as her work on the Pamela Anderson sitcom Stacked. Some of her

Marissa Jaret Winokur

other TV Credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm, Moesha, The Steve Harvey Show, Just Shoot Me!, Felicity, and Dharma and Greg. She was a contestant on the popular reality competition series Dancing With the Stars and went on to host the similar Dance Your Ass Off. Most recently she was serving as a co-host on the daily daytime talk show The Talk, but did not return in 2011. Instead she would focus on her clothing line and a new cable TV show.

Winokur was born in New York City, the daughter of Maxine, a teacher, and Michael Winokur, an architect. She is Jewish.Winokur was a cheerleader and captain of her high school soccer team at Fox Lane High School. She later studied at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, graduating from the integrated program.

Winokur won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award, Theatre World Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance in Hairspray. After she started her run in Hairspray, Winokur was diagnosed with cancer, but she informed none of her cast-mates or any of the members of the crew to prevent them from worrying about her.She underwent the surgery later in 2003; after her recovery and declaration of being cancer-free, she wase healthy enough to return to Broadway. It is said that while traveling to and from her cancer surgery she sang Good Morning Baltimore, one of the musical's show-stoppers. She made her first appearance on Broadway after successfully undergoing cancer treatment. She had previously appeared on Broadway as "Pink Lady Jan" in the revival of Grease.
Winokur has also played roles in films such as American Beauty, Never Been Kissed, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, the send-up Scary Movie, Beautiful Girl (for ABC Family), Fever Pitch, and Fugly, and she provided one of the voices in Shrek the Halls, a CGI-animated holiday-oriented film.(Source Wikipedia)

 Nancy Dussault was born in Pensacola, Florida, her parents were George Adrian, a naval officer of French-Canadian descent and Sarah Isabel (née Seitz). She grew up as a "Navy junior". A former resident

Nancy Dussault

of Arlington, Virginia, she graduated from Washington-Lee High School (W-L) where she was an actress and singer in the W-L drama program under director Jack Jeglum and a choral singer in the nationally known Washington-Lee High School Choir and Madrigal Singers under director Florence Booker. She is an alumna of Northwestern University.

In 1962, Dussault stepped into the role of Maria in the Broadway production of The Sound of Music. She received a Tony Award nomination in 1961 for Best Featured Actress (Musical) for Do Re Mi and was nominated for her performance in Bajour (1965). Of her performance in Do Re Mi and later career, Bloom and Vlastnik wrote: "Confidently clowning alongside such pros as Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker...she never faded into the scenery. Equally comfortable as a pure soprano or a rangy high belter, her versatility was well captured on the...cast album...Well cast as a situation comedy wife, she spent much of the 1970s and 80s in California." Other stage shows included Quality Street in 1965 at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania.She also appeared in the City Center Gilbert and Sullivan NYC Company, directed by Dorothy Raedler, with such Metropolitan Opera singers as Nico Castel, Muriel Costa-Greenspon, and Frank Poretta, Sr. Dussault took over as the Witch in Into the Woods on Broadway (1987–89). 

On television, she was a regular on the 1970s series The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and played Ted Knight's wife in the role of Muriel Rush on the 1980s situation comedy Too Close for Comfort. She was the first anchor of Good Morning America, working with David Hartman, when the show started in 1975. She was the first actress to portray the character of Theresa Stemple, the mother of character Jamie Stemple Buchman, in season one of the NBC TV series Mad About You.(Source Wikipedia)

Millicent Martin

Millicent Mary Lillian Martin is an English actress, singer and comedienne.

Martin was born in Romford, Essex.She made her Broadway debut opposite Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend in 1954. Her additional New York theatre credits include 42nd Street, Side by Side by Sondheim, and King of Hearts (she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the latter two). 

Side by Side by Sondheim is a musical revue featuring the songs of Broadway and film composer Stephen Sondheim. Its title is derived from the song Side by Side by Side from Company.

Millicent Martin starred with Paul Scofield and James Kenney in Expresso Bongo at the Saville Theatre.

During the early 1960s, Martin became known to British television audiences as the resident singer of topical songs on the original British version of the weekly satire show That Was The Week That Was (1962–63). One of the songs she sang on the show, the John F. Kennedy tribute In the Summer of His Years, was released as a single and 'bubbled under' the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No 104 in 1963 (but was outcharted by a cover version by Connie Francis, which reached Number 46).

She also appeared in the 1966 film Alfie.

Martin had her own BBC television series between 1964 and 1966, titled Mainly Millicent for the first two series, and shortened to Millicent for the third and final series. In one episode, Martin and guest-star Roger Moore performed a comedy skit in which Moore played secretJuke Box Jury.

In 1969, Sir Lew Grade wanted to make a comedy film series that would appeal to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic starring Martin.

Lew Grade, Baron Grade (25 December 1906 – 13 December 1998), born Lovator Lev (Louis) Winogradsky, was a Ukrainian-born British media proprietor and impresario.
He sent six comedy sketches of Martin to producer Sheldon Leonard and he came up with the premise of From a Bird's Eye View.The series was not a success and was cancelled after 16 episodes had been filmed.

In London's West End, she starred opposite Jim Dale in The Card in 1975. In 1988 Martin joined the London production of the Sondheim musical Follies starring with Eartha Kitt.

Martin appeared as Gladys Moon in 13 episodes of Moon and Son, a 1992 BBC detective series created by Robert Banks Stewart, and co-starring John Michie.
In 2005 she had a small part in the film, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont which starred Joan Plowright.

Her later television roles include Gertrude Moon, Daphne Moon's Mancunian mother, in the American sit-com Frasier. She has worked for the Disney Channel, starring in the shows The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, JONAS, and in the movie Return to Halloweentown. Other performances include guest roles in The Drew Carey Show, Will and Grace, and Days of our Lives. She also had a small role on an episode of Gilmore Girls.(Source Wikipedia)

Tommy Tune

 Tommy Tune: Broadway Icon: Director, Choreographer, Performer and NYC Living Legend.

Over the past 50 years he has enchanted audiences and critics with his charisma, vision, and innovation. A native Texan, he began his Broadway career as a dancer in three musicals, Baker Street, A Joyful Noise, and How Now Down Jones. 

A Joyful Noise is a musical with a book by Edward Padula and music and lyrics by Oscar Brand and Paul Nassau. The 1966 Broadway production was a flop but introduced choreographer Michael Bennett in his Broadway debut.

Tommy would soon step out of the chorus and into a principal role in the Broadway musical Seesaw which garnered him his first Tony Award for Best Featured Actor. 

Seesaw is a musical with a book by Michael Bennett, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

Less than a decade later, Tommy won the Tony Award for Best Actor in the Gershwin musical My One and Only co-starring Twiggy. However, Mr. Tune's talents are not limited to his onstage performances. Throughout his career he has won seven more Tony Awards for his directing and choreography of such shows as the Will Rogers Follies, Nine, Grand Hotel, A Day In Hollywood, and My One and Only. He has collected eight Drama Desk Awards one year winning both, The Best Director of a Musical (Nine) and Best Director of a Play (Cloud Nine). He is the recipient of the country's highest honor for Artistic Achievement, The National Medal of Arts, presented by the President of The United States in a private ceremony in the Oval Office. 

The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and ceremoniously presented the award by the President of the United States. The medal was designed for the NEA by sculptor Robert Graham.

He has been honored with his own star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame and on November 4th, 2009 he was officially designated as a New York City Living Landmark.

Thank you to all of these artists for the gifts they have given to the world and will continue to give!


 With grateful XOXOXs ,

 

Check out my site celebrating my forthcoming book on Hello, Dolly!
If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with YOU!




If you have anything to add or share, please contact me at Richard@RichardSkipper.com.



NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.  FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY! (Most photographs supplied by Harlan Boll)

“When it comes to the history of Jerry Herman’s brilliant production, beyond the 5000+ performances of my own, even I turn to Richard Skipper when I have questions about the remarkable ladies who followed me in the role that the world fell in love with over 50 years ago.”-Carol Channing

              

My next blog will be...My exclusive interview with Director David Armstrong on Hello, Dolly! (He directed Mimi Hines AND Jenifer Lewis as Dolly)


Thank you, to all the mentioned in this blog!

  

TILL TOMORROW...HERE'S TO AN ARTS FILLED DAY

Richard Skipper, Richard@RichardSkipper.com                            

 

This Blog is dedicated to ALL THE DOLLYS and ANYONE who has EVER had a connection with ANY of them on ANY Level!

Welcome back, Abbe Buck!

Abbe Buck

Good times and bad times: I’ve seen them all and I’m here.

-Carlotta in Follies

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

-Beautiful Boy by John Lennon

“Abbe Buck is a traditional jazz and popular vocalist. She reminds one of the smooth stylings of Jo Stafford, Doris Day and Julie London. 

Her voice is a refreshing echo of the past when singers sang and understood the words. Dance or sit back, and enjoy!” – T. Stephen Eggleston

I have made myself familiar with the lives of great men and women; I have met and interviewed many outstanding men and women in all lines of human endeavor; and I have often wondered just what it was/is that took them to the top. ALL of them have had a profound effect on me. Abbe Buck is one such person. She is a singer of jazz standards. She brings the verve of a band singer to her vocals, along with an infectious

sense of humor.

Abbe’s mother died very young. She was thirty eight when she passed. Abbe had just turned sixteen and she had three younger siblings that she had to take care of a while and it was very tough. They were urban kids in Chicago land. Abbe has been fortunate to have mentors her entire life and one of them was Tony Perkin’s Mom, Janet Rane. Everybody called her Jane. She was a very strong personality. Some even said that the bond that Tony had with her was not dissimilar to Norman Bates and HIS mother in Psycho! She started an email correspondence with Abbe and it helped Abbe with her survival. She told Abbe that she needed to “buck up”, that she basically had to stay on her toes. Abbe’s father was very much a ne'er-do-well. He didn’t desire to take care of four kids. It was very tough. 

It also had a big impact on Abbe and she lost a lot of the things she desired to do.  

Remember, she was very young. They still managed to make it. They really did. A lot of that had to do with adults that cared for them and “Jane” was one of them. That was very fortuitous for them. She began to listen to the big bands of Woody Herman and Gene Krupa in Junior High. She subsequently worked with several big bands including the Marie Landis Big Band in Philadelphia during the 1980s, and several trios and quartets in the Philadelphia and New York City areas. She learned how to by listening to the phrasing and ''storytelling'' on the albums of Rosemary Clooney and other singers of the boomer generation, such as Bea Wain, Margaret Whiting and Bob Stewart, all who became friends of Abbe Buck. Throughout the eighties and nineties, Abbe and Rosemary were good friends.
This was around the time that she made frequent appearances at Michael’s Pub and Rainbow and Stars and her appearance at the Kennedy Center in DC up until Rosemary’s death. Rosemary mentored Abbe and was the one who encouraged her to go out and make a CD. That CD has been on Amazon for twelve years! It is still selling strong and Abbe remains in a perpetual state of shock over that. AMAZON Editorial Reviews...Abbe Buck's ''Songs from a Bygone Era'' celebrate the true ''swing'' idiom ...traditional jazz...pop...). Rosemary along with other coaches helped Abbe to get rid of her regional Illinois accent. Rosemary liked Abbe’s voice and taught her about tone. She told Abbe to never quit. She told her she may never be famous but it didn’t matter. Abbe should be doing it for Abbe. She will never forget that. Rosemary was also very encouraging for Abbe to be in the Society of Singers. Rosemary was honored by them before her death. Abbe has also known Mercedes Ellington and the later Sy Kravitz (Lenny’s father) and Marlene Ver Plank. She also got to work with many of them on the public relations side. When there was the Society of Singers, Chapter East, they did a very big event for the late Bobby Short. That was a wonderful event that took place in 2000.

Abbe takes where she learned how to sing very seriously, by keeping the genre of true traditional pop and jazz alive. 

She last sang in New York in the late 1980s, and is leaving Virginia to sing in NYC once again! 

Abbe did supper club, piano bar and light jazz, the kind of songs that Sylvia Syms sang with the great pianist Art Tatum in the 1940s, or that Lee Wiley sang with her then-husband, pianist Jess Stacy. Abbe was also on the Board of the Society of Singers, Chapter East in 2000-2002.That led to Abbe meeting Jenny Mancini and many others in the music world from the main chapter on the West Coast. The Society of Singers has an annual award every year. For more information, please visit http://www.singers.org. 

What the Society does is help singers in need. Those that are infirmed, those that need help,those that need social workers. It does a great deal. The Society of Singers or “SOS” as Abbe affectionately refer to the organization “is dedicated to assisting vocalists who are in their twilight years or are infirm, who had never received royalties for recording during the big band or rock and roll eras. Proceeds from Buck’s CD ''Big Band Swing and Saloon Style'' go directly to the Society of Singers organization. In the eighties, she was really thriving.

Everything was going along swimmingly and then it just stopped around 1989. She was appearing at Upstairs at Greene Street to a stellar crowd. Among the luminaries was Ben Bagley, known for his "revisit" albums.

It totally came to a halt. She gave birth to her boy and she started doing public relations. It went in stops and starts throughout Philadelphia and Washington DC. She stayed in touch with the DC Cabaret Network. She did public relations and came back with a big roar. 

She also started working with Edmund Charles and that aspect of her career also started to come back with a big roar over the past two years. It had been dormant for a long time. It has been a big miracle. It is almost as if she is having an out of body experience observing it all. She looks at it all and wonders “What is going on?”

Abbe’s husband believes in reincarnation and Abbe is beginning to because of all that is happening in her life right now. 

It is like having a second chance to do what she has always desired to do and it may now be her time. She now is beginning to believe that she must have been alive in the 1920s because everything she does seems to be channeling from that era. She seems to know the cadences and the pitches and even playing a kazoo from that era of the twenties and thirties. She seems to know the ways and wherefores of every aspect of that era even down to bootleg hootch. She just knows it. There is something about it. She told her husband just a few days prior to this interview that she feels like she was born in 1906. He just said, "There are second lives.

   

The biggest change that Abbe has seen in the industry since last appearing in NY is that everything is now electronic! She misses the camaraderie and the closeness that was prevalent in the cabaret scene in the late eighties that she remembers. 

She used to be able to call someone on the phone and say, “Hey, what’s going on? Let’s go have a cup of coffee and talk about music. What key do you sing that in? Can I share music with you?” 

Now her show, (the music) is on an Ipad. Everything is electronic. It’s getting to the point when it is rare to see written out arrangements. Some of the older “old school” singers still do, but there is a whole new crop of singers going the electronic route. Everything is electronic from e-mail on down. Aspects of that are fine, but human conversation is so needed. The art of communication still belongs to live performance. She doesn’t desire to see that lost by any stretch of the imagination and what she is seeing is that the art of communication is becoming more and more drowned out by a lack of communication. Abbe is someone who does Facebook and Twitter a great deal but she also picks up the phone to call someone. She’ll ask permission to call someone to have a conversation with someone.

The flipside of that coin, however, is that BECAUSE of Facebook, Bernie Furshpan, booking manager of The Metropolitan Room in NYC, found her and booked her for her upcoming performance. Also, if it weren’t for electronic media, we would not have had our interview this morning and this subsequent blog. She knows it is a contradiction in terms. It also has contributed to the other side of her career, public relations. She deals with press releases and the like on a daily basis. She has also taught people how to have a career in social media. She owes a lot to it but she does miss the days in 1987 and ’88 and when she was just starting out in 1985 when the big deal was to reach someone by phone and have a conversation and how hard it was to do that. When she reached someone by phone, she was thrilled!

Coming back to New York, Abbe will only be spending a few days here. She will be visiting her in-laws in New Jersey and seeing a lot of her old friends.

Before doing a show, there are a lot of songs that she listens to in her head. She doesn’t know if other vocalists do this. Abbe loves music by Mildred Bailey and Annette Henshaw from the twenties and thirties. It’s like an earworm in her head. She hears their songs and voices over and over in her head. She hums those songs and whistles them before going on... but no whistling in the dressing room! She’ll step out of the dressing room for that. She also sometimes works with a kazoo!

The singing career has come back like a happy “accident.” That is why she is doing this. Abbe does a lot of work in music therapy. She is a music therapist although it is going to take her a few years to get certified. She does a lot of work in assisted living centers. She works with Alzheimer and hospice patients. She was a patient herself and that is not to say that that is good, bad, or indifferent. She has had spinal fusion and she has a prosthesis. She does not walk with a cane and is not in a wheelchair. She walks perfectly straight and there is nothing wrong with her. She takes no pain killers. Music is what keeps her out of pain. That has also worked with her voice. What she does to stay out of pain is to work with other patients. When she sings to a patient that has lost a lot of their memory, it is like Oliver Sacks from Awakenings, the story that was made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. The patient actually responds to older music that they know. What Abbe does is go into assisted living facilities and sing to “clients” and suddenly what started happening to her is that her voice started to come back and she started singing professionally again.

She has a vocal coach that she works with in Virginia but is not currently studying by rote. She has had the same pianist for thirteen years.  She mainly performs with Edmond Charles on keyboard and his jazz combo, staffed with talented musicians of alto saxophone, trumpet, upright bass and drums. He will be traveling to New York with Abbe for her Metropolitan Room debut. He has a style like Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum.

Abbe is a big band/supper club singer and goes back to an earlier era. The singer today is aided by amplification and will lip-sync off of a recording. Not Abbe. She evokes the feeling, sense of style, and sensibility of such singers as Mildred Bailey and Connee Boswell, and Lee Wiley. Abbe is proud to have cared about many of the vocal giants that have come before her. Abbe has a very smooth sound like those vocalists from the forties. At The Metropolitan Room, Abbe will be singing traditional pop and jazz of the twenties, thirties, and forties AND she will be singing it the way that it was written, thirty-two bars in and out as they say in the trades. She will be singing these songs the way they were meant to be sung. She knows the genres well. She has known these since she was a little girl. Her musicians are going to play the songs as they were written. She is going to sing them as they were originally sung in saloons (as bars were originally called and supper clubs. She is treating this show as if she was singing in a supper club. This music must pass on and be enjoyed by new generations.

After The Metropolitan Room, Abbe will be performing in Blues Alley in the DC area on July 21^st. She has some other things that she is lining up now and she is going to be singing with Vince Giordano and his band the night after her Met Show. Please note that she is just sitting in on a couple of numbers. This will be at Sofia’s Restaurant. This is the band that plays on Boardwalk Empire soundtrack and Abbe is thrilled to be sitting in. This is her era! Oh My God!! She is like a kid in a candy store. She is bringing Let’s Fall In Love and Ain’t Misbehavin’ which she is doing at The Metropolitan Room. She has these arrangements with horns and just desires to be there. This is not a real gig but just an opportunity to sing with such a great band.

This is a very surprising time for Abbe. Abbe is equally comfortable in a room of fifty or an audience of twenty five hundred plus. She is now creating the foundation for a five year plan. What she would like to do is perform six to eight times a year in Chicago, New York, Branson, Washington DC, Palm Spring, Las Vegas, and in Boston; basically one time in each city.  Big or small, she lives to entertain. She calls herself, “the last of the throwbacks” from the days of the Hollywood Palace, when entertaining as well as the voice meant something to the audience. She also would consider cruise ships. Having the audience go away happy is what Abbe strives to do every time she sings. She desires to do the genre of music that she loves in all of these cities. She desires to find an agent, if she can, or else she will represent herself to venues that will be open to this type of genre. Doing what she does, which is traditional, is now a little different from what is being booked out there. It is a throwback to the actual era. In her show at the Metropolitan Room, she has a soprano sax. Abbe seeks to keep an era alive that is leaving us very quickly. She will also have a muted trumpet. This will be like a concert, in a way. She takes her audiences back in time. Hopefully, this will happen beyond the Metropolitan Room whether she succeeds or “fails.” At least she would have tried. She is not worried about failure. Failure is not an option. Everything happens for a reason. Abbe’s eyes are wide open and she is thrilled.

The advice that Abbe would give to anyone desiring to follow in her footsteps is to “Know your craft. Know what you are doing.” Abbe heard a story about a vocalist that made her shudder. She shares this story with anybody that desires to pursue a singing career. There are a lot of shows on television now like The Voice and American Idol. This female vocalist went into a recording studio and for six hours she tried to sing jazz. She worked and worked until she got her CD “right”. She then went out and tried to get work and could not sing one song in her key because everything was done electronic. She presented herself with her CD telling everyone that was how she sounded. When she went to sing LIVE, she couldn’t. Everything was manufactured. Every singer must have an “instrument”. They MUST be able to perform and they must be able to engage an audience. When a singer can’t, it’s not going to work. This is advice that Abbe takes to heart herself.

I asked Abbe what her biggest vice and greatest virtue is. Her biggest vice USED to be that she beat herself up terribly. Now she doesn’t. She would say that second guessing is now her biggest vice. “Can I do it?” She is, however, a little braver. Her greatest virtue is that she loves to give back. She is giving more and more, especially to her patients and clients. Whenever she sees a patient, one, in particular, a Mr. Morris, for example, at one of the assisted living centers, come to life when she sings Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable, she gets just as much, if not more, of a kick out of that than she does out of being in front of an audience of a hundred or more because she has reached somebody. That is a huge WOW for her and fixes any second guessing that she may have otherwise had. It is phenomenal that this is a person that has an incurable dis-Ease and just to reach him for five minutes is a blessing. It’s wonderful.

Just before Abbe steps on stage, she feels like a race horse with blinders on. She feels like she is in safe hands with her pianist and musical director. People are there to see a performance and to be entertained. She is going to give them EXACTLY what they are there for. She is extremely grateful when they like her and have invested their time and energy and she is going to give her all.

Abbe still considers herself to be a good student.

Her favorite TV show is Vegas, which may be going off the air, unfortunately. Abbe like it. It was a great period piece. She really likes the relationship with the Sheriff, who is the rancher, and the mobster! She really likes this show! She also likes CSI: New York because she likes seeing New York. She loves crime shows.

Anita O’Day is a role model for Abbe along with Rosemary Clooney. Her role models are mostly older singers. Mildred Bailey and Lee Wiley and a lot of vocalists also come to mind.

Abbe Buck is seeing success in having people coming up to her after her shows saying, "Thank you! THIS is the show we've been missing. We desire to see you again."

I'm convinced she is going to achieve that success!   

  And watch what happens after you have a chance to meet Abbe Buck.

Contact: William Hann   1-800-380-2825

e-mail: abbe@abbebuck.com

Abbe Buck, “Saloon Songs, Vintage Style”, Metropolitan Room

Sunday, May 19, 2013, 9:30 PM. Reservations: (212) 206-0440

Links:  www.metropolitanroom.com  - http://metropolitanroom.com/show.cfm?id=95626


Thank you Abbe Buck for the gifts you have given to the world and will continue to give!


 With grateful XOXOXs ,

 

Check out my site celebrating my forthcoming book on Hello, Dolly!
If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with YOU!




If you have anything to add or share, please contact me at Richard@RichardSkipper.com.



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“When it comes to the history of Jerry Herman’s brilliant production, beyond the 5000+ performances of my own, even I turn to Richard Skipper when I have questions about the remarkable ladies who followed me in the role that the world fell in love with over 50 years ago.”-Carol Channing

              

My next blog will be...My exclusive interview with Director David Armstrong on Hello, Dolly! (He directed Mimi Hines AND Jenifer Lewis as Dolly)


Thank you, to all the mentioned in this blog!

  

TILL TOMORROW...HERE'S TO AN ARTS FILLED DAY

Richard Skipper, Richard@RichardSkipper.com                            

 

This Blog is dedicated to ALL THE DOLLYS and ANYONE who has EVER had a connection with ANY of them on ANY Level!