This week I'm proud to introduce a Vegas Veteran as a guest blogger. Andrew Yoelin has been going to Las Vegas for 50 years and has provided me with some fantastic stories and memories. I wanted to share them with you all, and he has graciously agreed to let me do so. Here's Andrew's first installment; I hope you enjoy it!
My earliest Vegas memory would be having my fifth (5th) birthday at the Dome of the Sea Restaurant, free-standing really, at the base of the Dunes Hotel. I remember my mother ordering me Chicken Kiev and when it arrived, she said, “Watch this” and she cut into it and it spurt butter and cheese. Come on! It doesn’t get any better than that. Well, yes it does. We left dinner and went to The Sands and saw Sammy Davis, Jr.
Let me tell you how talented Sammy Davis, Jr. was: many people don’t even know he played the drums but by the time I graduated high school, I’d seen all the great drummers of the day: Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Joe Morello, Jon Bonham, Ringo, who am I leaving out? Sammy was better than all of them. All of them. No, I never heard Sammy Davis Jr. play “Stairway to Heaven” but judging drummers for drumming, Sammy was better than all of them....
One night, if it wasn’t my 5th birthday trip, it was soon after, the whole family walked out of a Judy Garland show. I think this was at The Sands. If I knew who she was at the time, I might have recalled more, but I was a little kid, unimpressed; she didn’t look a lot like Dorothy in Oz, but she was so blitzed, slurring her words, so out of her mind that my Dad said, “Let’s get the hell outta here. She’s a mess.” And she was. Bad night for Judy.
I remember lounge shows. Back in the sixties, the major hotels had “the big room” and “lounge shows.” Younger readers shouldn’t confuse these lounge shows with today’s definition of “lounge singer=bad.” Back then, you could catch rising stars in the lounge. I saw Don Rickles in a lounge show. Later, of course, I saw Rickles in the big room; he made a big deal about the “move.” I saw Rich Little, the best impressionist in a lounge show. I saw Lou Rawls in a lounge show with about 10 other people. And instead of being bitter or taking it out on the audience, he was a real pro. He sang for over an hour and at the end of the show, since he hadn’t sung my favorite, “Dead-End Street” and yelled, “Oh! Mr. Rawls. Pleased don’t leave with singing Dead-End Street! He stopped, I mean he could hear me even with all ten people clapping, turned around, the band automatically followed him and by God, they sang the song. Then he came over with a huge smile and shook my hand. What a gentleman!
I saw “Fat” Jack Leonard, an Ed Sullivan regular in a lounge show. He was funny. As a matter of fact, I saw Ed Sullivan playing blackjack; I never know how small he was, like five feet tall.
From the Lou Rawls lounge show, the same night, we grabbed a cab to see Tony Bennett. What was Frank Sinatra’s quote about Tony Bennett? Something like, “For my money, he’s the best in the business” and he certainly was for 50 years.
After the show, that same night, I was on the house phones making reservations at The Bacchanal, a great restaurant in Caesar’s Palace. “An orgy of food and wine” they would say. Walking alone, I would suppose on his way to his room was Tony Bennett. I was vastly over-served, threw down the phone, scared the hell out of Mr. Bennett just trying to say a drunken “hello.” He was glad to get out of there.
And I saw Shecky Green, a brilliant stand-up comic, in a lounge show, about 50 or 75 times. Sometimes we’d go to the early show and the midnight show. Every show with Shecky was different. He may well have begun a “bit” the same but he would switch-up and start talking about a whole different subject, ergo: a whole new bit. Shecky was sort of like Don Rickles except most of the fun being poked was at himself. A little of the audience but far more self-deprecating.
One summer, must have been 1969 or 1970, we saw two shows a night for three straight nights. Laughed our asses off! I remember in between shows ordering an “Irish Sanka”, laughing myself silly because of the lack of caffeine. Who cares?
I’ve met people through the years that didn’t “get” him, didn’t find him funny. Probably the same guy who booed Santa in Phili. He was a great comic that never made the move to movies.
Next week: more on Andrew's take on entertainers and hotels in Vegas. Stay tuned!
Viva,
Mike
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