July 11, 1970: Diane Taber
Diane Taber never gave up music. She now lives in
July 11, 1970
Cheerleader to Club Singer
Diane Taber Keeps on Move
Unless you measure with Diane Taber. Then it’s five years.
And no matter what anyone who used to know her might think, she doesn’t believe
she’s become all that different.
“All the kids I went to high school with looked down on it,”
she says. “They wanted to think there was something bad about working in night
clubs.”
If there’s something bad about it, it doesn’t seem to have
affected Diane. After five years, she still exuberant and as real as her long
auburn hair.
* * *
ACTUALLY,
she first sang in a club when she was 14. It was at the old Town Casino. She
and a young comedian gave altered ages to Harry Altman and did a couple nights
for free before he found out how old they really were.
Then she was part of a jazz trio which tried in vain to be
another Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. And she put in a year at
* * *
HER REAL
start came by way of her high school chorus teacher, who got her into the Big
Apple in
“As full of music as I was and as big a ham as I was,” she
recalls, “I had to drive around the Big Apple three times before I got the
nerve to go in. Opening nights are still a very scary thing for me.”
She was there six months, backed by a female organist,
singing old standards she loved.
“It was still a time,” she says, “when a vocalist could get
up and do a straight-type song like ‘I Got Plenty of Nothin’. With the old
songs, the words meant a lot more.”
* * *
AFTER THAT,
she did about two months in The Andante, when it was THE club, and she met some
Diane and the trio hit the road, first east to
When Diane left
Next she worked at Val’s Lounge in
Now she’s at Jack’s Cellar,
* * *
SHE’S HAPPY
with her present trio – pianist Bill Maggio, bassist Dan Palazzo and drummer
Don Willo – but all are in their early 30s, married and settled in
Bill (“the best pianist I ever worked with,” she says) has been
with her the longest – 10 months. Dan joined in May, replacing a bassist who
couldn’t work six nights a week.
“The voice just cannot do in two nights what it can do in six
nights,” Diane says. “It took me a week just to get my voice open and keep it
open.
“To be able to sing a note and control it, it’s beautiful.
I’m a little hoarse now – it was worse last night – but when I’m singing, it’s
different.”
* * *
DIANE’S
auditioned for the Merv Griffin Show and cut a demonstration record which is
somewhere with RCA Victor.
It’s a ballad called “I Came Runnin’,” written by Bob
Armstrong, an arranger and conductor at RCA who has given Diane vocal coaching.
He originally thought of sending the tune to Peggy Lee.
Armstrong wanted a breathy vocal and on Diane’s well-worn
acetate copy of it, she winds up sounding like she’s a lot older than 23.
She doesn’t sing that one in clubs. She’s afraid people
wouldn’t like it and that would jinx the number.
Besides, night club audiences don’t sit back and mellow up to
a ballad any more. They want something modern, something with a beat. Most of
Diane’s songs bounce somewhere between light jazz and bossa nova. But no rock
‘n roll.
“I love a lot of rock music,” she points out, “but, well, the
voice is kind of lost in the shuffle. I have thousands of rock albums, but it
doesn’t have what I wanted to get out of music.”
* * *
A RECENT
Gabriel’s Gate set began with “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” and included a
medley of “Both Sides Now” with “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” a
collection of hits from “Hair” and a medley of “Light My Fire” and “Eleanor
Rigby.”
Diane chooses the songs, borrows some of the medley ideas and
thinks up others as she goes to sleep at night.
“You’ve got to grab that audience and you’ve got to hit them
hard,” Diane says. “You can’t expect a concert-hall reception in a night club
full of people.”
* * *
DIANE AND
the trio found Gabriel’s Gate had a few extra drawbacks. First, they played
right to the bar. Second, they couldn’t play as loud as they liked.
“Playing to the bar is hard,” she says. “Instead of the
sit-down audience, you have to control the bar first and that’s where all the
activity is. Then you’re missing the people sitting behind you. I’m lucky I
like to move around.
“The first two nights we were there, we were really into it,”
she adds. “These are very heavy-sell commercial songs, but we had to bring them
way down. The owner insisted we were too loud for the bartenders.
“But you have to go in there with the idea it’s a night club
and people come there to enjoy themselves and meet people.
“Most of them go out with the idea: ‘I’m going to have a good evening.’ I’m from the old school that believes people deserve to be entertained. If I can have them listen to a song, I’m happy.”
Onward to the box/sidebar
Marriage Next
Photographer Joe Bongi Jr.
met Diane Taber for the first time at The Andante about four years ago and ran
right into her personal policy of not dating people she met in clubs.
“The first time, I didn’t like Joe,” she explains. “I liked
him as a person, but not to get to know better. But by the third time I ran
into him, it hit me that I really liked him. And then I guess I really fell.
“I appreciated him for his talent as well as his personality.
And he had to be a free-loving person for him to understand me and for me to
marry him.”
* * *
THE WEDDING
will be Sept. 12 in
Meanwhile, Joe has become Diane’s promotion and booking
agent. Her father, Gene Taber, once a professional singer himself, is her
business manager.
* * *
WILL IT
affect her career?
“I don’t plan on giving up music,” she says. “I still want to
be a star. It may sound corny, but I want to have a TV special. I think you can
make both things go very successfully.”
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