Went to Arturo's on Houston St. to hang with band members Tracy and Paul, former bandmember Lara, Tracy's friend Jason and the guy in the string quartet Ethel, whose birthday it was. Everyone was eating pizza and drinking carafes of red wine. Arturo's is a weird combination of 2 throwbacks in one — it's a jazz bar, where regulars sing standards and musicians often stop by after a session or gig and sit in. It's also a neighborhood pizza restaurant (the pizzas aren't bad) that is friendly, noisy and slightly chaotic.
The owner, whom I've never met, fills the walls with paintings. Some odd-looking portraits and some typical Greenwich Village scenes. His daughter Lisa is often there and says hello — I asked her what's up with the funky airplane models hanging from the ceiling and she said her dad decided no more paintings; he’s going to do airplane models now.
The place is a neighborhood joint. There are a lot of regulars. It's not the sort of place that would get reviewed or mentioned in the trendy guides to NYC. The piano sits smack in the middle of the front room, the upright bass player squeezes into a corner and a drummer plays a rudimentary kit made out of a snare, hi-hat and one cymbal. He almost blocks the entrance to the kitchen; he's wedged right against the piano. Singers grab a hand mike and have to dodge waiters and folks who want to use the restroom. The bathroom has a bathtub in it. A big one. I wonder how many people have fallen in there, or if the staff sometimes decides to have a hot bath.
A pear-shaped woman begins to sing to enthusiastic applause. Someone mentions to me that she is the mother of Savion Glover, the famous young tap dancer. I can see the resemblance, in the face at least. Her hair is a mixture or black and gray and is wound in a tight vortex, like Kim Novak's in Vertigo. She sings a standard and she's great, astounding.
She sings another and then sits down at a nearby booth with some friends. The pianist shows Paul from my band some chord charts then he sits at the booth behind the singer, near the kitchen door. He begins furiously focusing on some music scores he has with him, spreading them out across the tabletop. He's oblivious to the scene.
A man named Jimmy takes the mike. He had introduced himself to me earlier — "I do Thursday nights" was how he put it. Jimmy's hair is hard to describe. It's like a combination of a mullet and a Mohawk, but super slicked back. He's got on a black jacket and a tie with big yellow trumpets on it. He sings a standard (they all do, except Paul, who does Stevie Wonder) — he puts his heart and soul into it.
The audience at Arturo's, which not a very big place, are usually a mixed bunch — some are paying attention to the singer, some are shoving food into their mouths and some are talking to friends. Not an ideal audience by any means, but it doesn't seem to deter anyone here.
Jimmy disappears for a second. He has an Asian pianist who has his eyes closed and maybe he doesn't notice Jimmy’s absence. Jimmy immediately reappears in a cream-colored jacket carrying a matching cream-colored umbrella. He immediately launches into "Pennies From Heaven", and one gathers these are the props he keeps on hand for this number "Ev'ry time it rains, it rains...pennies from heaven" — and up goes the umbrella, in the middle of this crowded room. Pizzas being served up and folks ordering wine using hand gestures. No one here seems fazed or the least surprised by the umbrella gag. Jimmy's jazzing up the song, scatting and improvising — it's almost unrecognizable at times. He sometimes acts out the lyrics at the same time — holding his hands in a praying gesture or grabbing Mrs. Glover to dance a step or two. They make an improbable couple. Now he's got a little black hat on too. At one point his singing is so impassioned that he abandons the mic on the piano near the tip jar and begins hopping, really hopping, around the room singing at the top of his lungs.
