I began teaching voice after a night singing
at The Horn, in Santa Monica, where Rick
Ricardi held forth as a former Vocal Coach
for 20th Century Fox. I had sung a couple of
sets when a tall, well built young fella-older
than I was at the time-approached me and
asked if I would teach him how to sing. As a
natural singer, I hadn’t been challenged to
discover exactly what it was I did to make
my voice what it had become; a sound with a
fairly good delivery system that always was
well received by the audience. I declined
and tried to dissuade him from his pursuit
but he persisted with “... well, you do it a
lot better than I do ... and I’ll pay you
five dollars!” Since, at that time, $5
equated to 2 ½ tanks of gas and further,
since Rick never paid me a dime for singing
three sets, seven nights a week-my reward
for my being able to hone my craft, before a
live, critical audience-I acquiesced. I
taught him to sing for about $100 ...
Skip over about two years of a National Tour
with Music Man, singing Stock Baritone at
the St. Louis Muny-the grand-daddy of all
Summer Stock venues-and having just sung my
first leading role with the New York City
Opera, Giuseppe in the Gondoliers, by G & S.
I was working with Beverly Johnson in New
York and she suggested I should be teaching
again, saying in essence, “... if you become
a teacher by your students you’ll be
taught!” ... no small thanks to “King and I”
for that.
Some years later, Constance Towers, whose
voice I had recovered, called and told me
that Howard Keel-of Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers movie fame-was in trouble and asked
if I would work with him. Howard hadn’t sung
above a middle C in seven years! I’d heard
him 14 months before at the Bohemian Grove
and knew that he had lost his support. In a
rehearsal room at the N Y City Opera, N Y
State Theater, I brought back his voice to a
dozen high G’s ... in thirty minutes! No big
deal ... I just reminded him what he used to
do when he did it right ... with a few
refinements and out came his magnificent
voice. He had been singing Man of La Mancha
down a fourth on a Bus and Truck tour and
three weeks later he call to say ... “I’m
sangin’ everthang in key now!
I’ve been blessed with the technical ability
to teach all my students to do and to sing
with the technique I have refined over fifty
years of singing/teaching. When Peter Mark
Richman called and told me he had
recommended that Pat Boone-who had been in
vocal distress for some years-call me, I put
Pat’s voice back together in nine sessions,
reminding him of what he used to do when he
did it right! No magic ... just technique,
the most important part of which is “what is
support and how does it work?” Pat and I are
in our fifteenth year ...
Four years ago, Pat called me to tell me
Andy Williams’ voice quit in the middle of a
singing “Jean” at a Julie Andrews Gala. I
brought Andy’s voice back to operatic size
and timbre, on a high A ... in twenty
minutes. Support! Georgio Tozzi, Jane
Powell, Ann Blyth, Jerry Vale, Renata
Scotto, ad infinitum. All of them ... lost
the body’s muscle memory, over time ...
until the voice just quit. I identified what
it was they had lost and showed them how to
bring their respective voices back with the
“flexible breath-pressure on demand!”™ I’ve
taught lessons to a billionaire, heir to the
Cinzano family, Paris Hilton, Todd Buchholz,
Economic Advisor to George Bush, the elder
... and oohh so many neat people.
To be able to do this, consistently over the
years ... has been the most energizing and
rewarding thing I have ever done in my life!
To have brought Andy Williams’ voice back in
six days, when he was getting ready to
cancel a seventeen week season, close his
theater, lose the twelve shows a week in his
2000 seat theater-not incidentally, at $40 a
ticket-and let his entire staff of
thirty-five people go. He got two more
year’s outta his voice and we were working
on a third year-on Skype-when he didn’t come
back from a break. He stopped singing and
revealed he had prostate cancer, to the
world. We lost another great singer last
year!
Now, on the flip side of the coin, I have
been “giving back” to the profession that
has been so wonderful for me ... for many
years. Lots of talented kids/professionals
have been in dire straits and I have been
known to “assist” them.
One day over two years ago, a young man
awkwardly walked into my studio... on feet
that reduced his gait to a “shuffle!” He was
a slender, handsome young man of 26 ... who
apparently had his legs pulled out of their
sockets at birth. His mother was an
addict/alcoholic and the circumstances of
his birth were vague at best. The reality is
that his condition-due no doubt to his
mother’s financial straits, at the time-was
not diagnosed ... until he was 22 months
old.
He came in and handed me a small packet of
cash and said, “I want to learn how to
sing.” In the interest of time, he had
minimal natural talent, but I discerned
there was probably a voice of some good
quality hiding in there. He was minimally
educated, his social skills needed
attention; when I took him to a restaurant,
he appeared somewhat unfamiliar with
conventional table manners including the
proper use of a knife and fork. With gentle
guidance, he proved to be a fast learner.
Before long, his cash ran dry and I carried
him, for a time. A couple of months later,
he brought in some more money ... and that
was the end of that! I subsequently made the
decision to give him something that no one
else could give; a very special voice, so
that he would have something to hang his hat
on, head held high, a voice that might
render the problem with his feet,
essentially meaningless. Frankly, he would
obviously be limited in staged productions,
so I cited to him the phenomenon of Thomas
Quasthoff, the wonderful German
Bass-baritone, who is a dwarf, but who
regaled tens of thousands for years, with
his beautiful voice, on the concert stages
of the world. This is reality!
I then contacted, Robert Klapper, Chief of
Orthopedics at Cedars Sinai-who had done my
two knee replacements and right hip-asking
if there was some philanthropical medical
team that might be able to address my
student’s feet and Bob-typically-said ...
“Yeah. I’ll do it!” He has been laying the
ground-work for the last year.
I have continued to work with his voice, for
the last year and a half-of really hard
work-and eventually have brought out a
baritone of some consequence, culturing his
tightly, driven sound into an increasingly
fuller, ringing, more mellifluous sound,
with operatic quality and soaring high A’s.
He is singing O du mein holder ... from
Tannhauser, Vision fugitive ... from
Herodiade, bringing the Figaro aria into
full bloom and singing musical theater
pieces such as On a Clear Day and They Call
the Wind Maria. It has been painstaking
effort, but ultimately he progressed ... to
where, when he sings now, people’s heads
turn, looking around to see whence cometh
the impressive sound.
In the interest of where this is going, I
feel it necessary to fill in a few blanks
such as, every time he came over, I always
fed him something, sometimes breakfast
before we worked and then a large glass of
grape juice afterward and sending him on his
way with something in his pockets, always a
couple of snacks and quite often something
to make his lot a little easier to bear. His
Christmas gift allowed him to buy his winter
coat ... that kinda thing ...
He recently moved from, his hotel in
Hollywood (from whom he will soon be getting
a large settlement from a class-action suit
involving bed-bugs) to here in Culver City,
to be closer to me and his singing, joining
the Hare Krishna where they give him a bed,
two squares and he works off his keep, doing
odd jobs around the facility.
I had mentioned to him recently that, now
that he is making such a good
sound-literally comparable to my own-he
would be a target for other voice teachers
who gobble up people who sing well ... to
enhance their own reputation, by taking
credit for the singer’s vocal prowess! I had
also shared with him that there is always a
risk for me, that my students might take
what I have given them, in the building
their voice of quality … and then move on.
However, with the student’s welfare always
foremost in my mind, I’ve taken the position
that part of my “giving back to the
profession” assumes that risk and that risk
is worth taking! I can always give a student
a voice much better than the one with which
they came in the door … but I can never
presume that I’ve also given them the
judgment with which to employ it wisely.
A couple of months ago, he told me he had to
talk to me about something important. I gave
him the go-ahead and he said, “I sang for
Gary Catona a few days ago ... and I thought
I might take a few lessons from him. You
know he has worked with a lot of great
stars, Whitney Houston etc. ...”
