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One of my rules is that if Lorraine Gordon calls I pay attention. She called in May 1990 and I did, but with misgivings. She said she’d booked Dorothy Donegan to play the Village Vanguard the following week and I should make an effort to come by, that Dorothy was playing better than ever, and I should consider her for the next Floating Jazz Festival.
I’d heard all the stories about Dorothy, and had read opinions of many different people. The showboating, the phenomenal technique that was frequently out of control, or was used for tricks and effects. Even her friends, such as Leonard Feather, were often dismissive, saying her appeal was not so much musical, but rather based on visual antics. I’d met her in passing a decade earlier, when Gus Statiras recorded her at Downtown Sound, but like many of the recording sessions at my studio, I wasn’t around for much of it, and paid little attention to what was going on.
I’d never really heard Dorothy in person, other than when she was in the studio working with Gus and I didn’t own one of her recordings, except for the one Gus made and this one was still in the shrink wrap, an unopened sample. So, Shelley and I went, not knowing what to expect. Shelley had no preconceived notions, she’d never heard of Dorothy Donegan, but was eager to get more female performers at the festival.
Simply put, Dorothy was phenomenal that night, and we hired her on the spot. We had no idea what the reaction to her would be on the S/S Norway, but we were so impressed with her performance that we didn’t think she could miss at our festival. Dorothy said she’d like to perform with the same trio she was working with at the Vanguard, so we hired Jon Burr and Ray Mosca as well. She worked with these two musicians for the next five or six years.
We didn’t know what sort of a crowd Dorothy might attract on the ship and we programmed her for the second night at sea. This is what I wrote about that performance and those that followed, in early 1991.
The second week of the Floating Jazz Festival had its share of great musical events, many special moments, but something happened during those seven days that had never happened during a previous festival: One performer literally stole the attention of everyone on the ship. And not just the attention of the passengers, but many of the performers as well. Dorothy Donegan was scheduled to perform four times over the course of the week. Her first performance was well-attended, but she startled an audience who knew little about her. The next evening it was impossible to get into her show; two days later people gave up their dinner to make certain they could find a seat, and at her final performance, on a sunny afternoon at sea, when most passengers usually soak up the blazing Caribbean sun, it was even more heated inside the Saga Theater, where 1000 people crowded into a room with 800 seats. At the end of the concert, Illinois Jacquet came on stage and announced “Dorothy Donegan! Dorothy Donegan! The world’s greatest piano player!” It is unlikely anyone in the audience doubted what he proclaimed with such confidence.
These comments were part of a CD booklet that accompanied Dorothy’s first Chiaroscuro CD. Her first performance was so remarkable, I decided it would make sense to gather up some recording gear and try to make a live recording. Dorothy was eager for me to do so; no US producer had bothered with her since the recording at my studio, a decade earlier.
It was a tough recording. We had a two track digital recorder, but no mixing console, since there had been no plans to do any live recording. Somehow, however, it all worked out, and a terrific CD came out in mid-1991. We were so happy with it, I told Dorothy I wanted to make another recording at the festival later that year. We had, of course, hired her to repeat the following year. The passengers would have thrown us overboard if we hadn’t.
The CD met with little response, positive, or negative. In fact, a friend at CBS, one of the few executives at the label who had any knowledge of jazz, actually told me he was shocked I’d recorded Dorothy. He said something to the affect that I’d made really good records for twenty years and it was a shame that I had this kind of artist on my label. Strangely enough, a couple of years later, CBS tried to steal Dorothy away from me, which they didn’t have to do, all they had to do was ask, but that’s another story.
In the early 1990s, Dorothy was simply phenomenal. She was always a bit eccentric, but once on stage, she was transformed from an eccentric to a certified genius, who could do anything at the piano, and no matter how complicated her attempt, she always managed to pull it off. Dorothy worked the mainstream, older jazz audience at our festival into frenzy like no one else we ever presented. If there was a little clowning, so what, it represented about two percent of her performance, and kept her adoring audience in a good mood. She was a consummate entertainer and the audiences adored her showmanship as well as her music.
We rarely had major artists like Dorothy year after year at the festival, but she quickly became a notable exception, and she was featured for four consecutive festivals, and recordings were made during three of the festivals, each one more exciting than the last.
An unexpected by product of the festival appearances and recordings was the word got out and Dorothy began to receive recognition from other quarters. There were grants, honorary degrees, lectures, even a performance at The White House. CBS also came sniffing around; they wanted to record Dorothy as part of a series of neglected masters, but it never worked out. Perhaps it was for the best, because they wanted her to do novelty songs with silly vocals, instead of featuring her as a dynamic pianist.
The noted photographer/filmmaker, Arthur Elgort was on board during the 1990 Floating Jazz Festival, and recognized Dorothy would be an excellent subject for a documentary film. He worked on it for three or four years and shot a great deal of footage, primarily at our festivals. He captured the essence of this wildly talented woman, but the film remains incomplete. It ultimately just became too difficult to deal with her, which is also why it became impractical to keep inviting Dorothy to the festival, or continue the recordings. Unhappily, no one really picked up where we left off.
My last face to face encounter with Dorothy was in September 1994. She telephoned and asked if I would take her to Haywood Henry’s funeral. She didn’t want to go by herself. It was a perfectly reasonable request and I was happy to go with her. I didn’t know Haywood well, but I knew him well enough to be respectful.
Dorothy was camped out uptown at the Marriott Marquis, in a room up high. She always stayed at Marriott Hotels because she got a rate. As a bonus for checking in year after year, they gave her a large room, a room with plenty of space to make a mess. This time it was no different. When I arrived, Dorothy was perfectly outfitted, Chanel from head to toe, ready to make a grand entrance at St. Peter’s Church. Her room, on the other hand, was upside down. Three or four open suitcases spread all over the floor, the contents emptied in piles. Just like her cabin on the ship, where, unfortunately, she had less room. One year it was so bad that after she’d vacated her cabin, the ship had to throw away almost everything in it and install new carpeting as well. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper.
We didn’t stay long; there was no place to sit except on a pile of clothes, so we headed downstairs. We strolled through the lobby to a waiting taxi. The doorman rushed towards Dorothy, greeted her by name and helped her into the taxi. Once seated, but with the door still open, Dorothy opened her purse and reached inside. The doorman waited, expecting a tip. Dorothy then removed half a banana, complete with peel, and handed it to him. It probably gave him something to talk about for a week or two. I took care of tipping the driver when we reached the church.
Dorothy continued to play at top form for a couple of years, but eventually health issues began to make a difference, at least so I’m told. I never heard her when she was anything other than exceptional, and didn’t want to hear her any other way. I always had the feeling that if she wanted to, she could have played anything, from the classics to any kind of jazz. Her technique was formidable, similar to her two favorites, Art Tatum and Vladimir Horowitz, but it was a bit on the rough side. She was also musically adventurous.
Dorothy Donegan could play anything and organize any musical thought, but couldn’t organize her life and was often her own worst enemy. To add to her problems was a son who was always in and out of trouble and this concerned her greatly. She was also frustrated because she hadn’t achieved the kind of success she deserved, but the antics described by Leonard Feather were a problem. When Horowitz acted in a peculiar fashion for a decade in the 1950s and 1960s, he had the good sense to stay out of public view. If he’d performed and made faces at the audience, his reputation might have suffered. Dorothy didn’t shrink from public view.
I always felt many of her eccentricities in the years I knew her were related to chemical or metabolic imbalances. All I knew was that when these difficulties were under control, with or without medication, she was just fine. When Dorothy was just fine, and playing at her best, I’ve scarcely ever heard anyone as exciting.
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Dorothy Donegan, Aboard the S/S Norway, October 27, 1992