April 3, 1971: Linda Price and the Pipers

 

Linda Price and the Pipers were not local folks, but for a couple years they were incredibly popular here. 

Saturday, April 3, 1971

Linda and Pipers Heading for Philharmonic 

It’s the last day in Buffalo for Linda Price and the Pipers, but instead of getting ready to leave, they’re rushing all over to make arrangements for coming back.

It won’t be long. Before you know it, those two weeks in Columbus, Ohio, and the two weeks in Canton, Ohio, will be gone and it’ll be time for their biggest show here yet – with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra April 29 in Kleinhans Music Hall.

That’s where Linda and pianist Jimmy Ryan are. Meeting with Melvin Strauss and the gang to work out the program and when they’d rehearse.

* * *

MEANWHILE, back in the Executive Motor Inn dining room across from the airport, bass guitarist Pat Padula sips his second cup of coffee and looks up at owner Jimmy Constantino, who has some news:

“You know, tonight we got 300 reservations.”

“There’s only 200 seats,” Pat says. But that’s before they put tables on the dance floor. No dancing tonight. A change from Friday night when the room was full of stags. All ready to dance, but much too cool to respond to the show.

“My voice is shot,” Pat confesses. “We’ve been going for about a week straight and it’s really tough on it with all that shouting I do in ‘Proud Mary.’”

* * *

“PROUD MARY” is one of the high points of the first show. It’s a revival-style thing and Pet prowls the front of the stage. Friday night he had to work hard to get back some emotion.

“Do you get the feeling?” he’d ask. “What about you, brother, do you have a feeling? Now, you either have a feeling or you don’t have a feeling.” And like that.

“It’s a weird thing. They’ll sit there and be digging what you’re doing,” he says, “but they won’t get involved. Saturday night, people come out more to be entertained. And since it’s our closing night, we want to do a fine thing here.”

* * *

ONE OF the finest things they do is the wind-up doll bit, all in jerky mechanical motions, while they play a tinkly “Love Is Blue.” It comes in the first show and it’s one of their oldest routines.

“You might go through a whole show and the crowd might not understand quite what you’re doing,” Pat says, “but when we get to that, we’ve got them. It’s one of our bread-and-butter things.”

* * *

IF THAT’S bread and butter, the rest of the show is orange marmalade. The instrumental work is pure quality, much more precise than most groups that ply lounges and clubs with what they call “commercial rock.”

The harmonies have a trace of Sergio Mendes, but just a trace. Medleys click confidently from song to song. “Theme From Love Story” goes from schmaltz piano to cha-cha so smoothly you wonder how it happened. And surprises. Who would expect Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart?”

* * *

PAT EXPLAINS that the present format dates from when rock drummer Tom Markem joined the group 15 months ago. “The rest of us had a jazz background and we starved at that,” he says.

“None of us really played this type of thing before, but rock music today has gone into a more sophisticated kind of thing. It’s not so much noise and hard rhythm any more. With Tom coming in, adding those extra beats, this helps us.”

The style suits Linda’s voice fine. It’s high and clear and it lets her sing as boldly as she plays flute.

“She’s essentially a small-town girl from Ohio,” Jimmy Ryan will tell you. “And she’s really like the way she is on stage. She’s a little ding-y on the outside, but she’s really intelligent.”

* * *

AFTER THE Philharmonic date, they’ll play six nights – April 30 to May 5 – then head to the Cotton Carnival in Memphis before a swing out West. The Frontier in Las Vegas, Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe and all. Bookings extend into November.

Buffalo, however, has been the seat of their success. They’ve packed clubs here that have never been packed before and they’re commanding four times what they got before they came here around Thanksgiving 1969. And like a lot of good things, it was all unexpected.

“We heard the saying around the country that Buffalo is a hard city to play,” Pat says. “It’s not so for us. I feel so close to the people here.”

* * *

JIMMY’S back from the Philharmonic now and things are shaping up even better than they imagined.

“I had a talk with Melvin,” he says, “and he turned out to be a groove. He just said how much do you want to do.

“They’ve changed the start to 8 o’clock. The orchestra will do ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Mrs. Robinson,’ ‘An American in Paris’ and some light thing from ‘Carmen’ – it’ll be a real exciting thing for the people.

“Then we’ll come out and do a couple things with the orchestra. ‘Beginnings’ from Chicago and the Elton John thing.

“Then the orchestra will leave and they told us you can go on as long as they want. They were saying primarily that the people are coming to hear you.

* * *

“AND I’M gonna conduct, man. Are you ready for that? They asked do you want to conduct and I said yeah. We’ll work it out at the rehearsal. They said I could do it from the piano.

“Melvin said the one thing I don’t want you to do is go conservative on us. He said if you can bring the strobe, they’d set it up. He said we could do anything, absolutely anything. Boy, it’s gonna be a gas!” 

The box/sidebar 

Exciting Group 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Linda Price and the Pipers:

Linda Price, 23, vocals and flute, native of Monroe, Ohio, just outside Dayton, single.

Jimmy Ryan, 29, piano, harmonica and vocals, native of Chicago, single.

Pat Padula, 36, bass guitar and vocals, native of Warren, Ohio, former department store ad manager, married, two daughters.

Tom Markem, 25, drums and vocals, native of Rockford, Ill., married.

* * *

PAT, WHO went on the road six years ago, and Jimmy had traveled with a comedy group until late 1968 when their agent in Dayton, Ohio, proposed that they add this girl “who played flute and had a lotta talent.” Tom came in early last year.

The group, until recently, was making a push to record. In fact, a Cleveland production company has something the group would like to release.

It looked real fine at first – a new energetic crew and no long-term contracts – but now the producers want to solve their money hassles with an advance from a record company. But record industry money is tight these days, so nothing’s happening.

* * *

“WE WERE all rushing to record last year,” Jimmy says, “but now if it happens, it happens. Sometimes it starts to look like it just isn’t worth it.

“A year ago,” he adds, “I think we were more musical. We’re more into exciting people now. It seems like the more hell you raise, the more money you make and the more money you make, the more hell you have to raise.

“We had a version of Chicago’s ‘Wake Up, Sunshine’ that was in six-eight time. It was a fast jazz thing and it really changed the song. All the musicians would come around to listen.

“Now it’s harder. After hell-raising, you think you can do anything and win them. You can, to an extent, but it’s not that easy. What I’d like is to really stretch out.”

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Linda Price and the Pipers didn’t get much past the end of those dates that stretched out to November. A column in the Dayton Daily News on Nov. 17, 1971, notes:

“A capacity crowd welcomed Linda Price and the Pipers Monday night when the talented foursome opened their farewell engagement at Springfield’s Scot’s Inn.

“Linda & Co. will be at the Springfield dinery-hostelry for the next two weeks after which they’ll do a three-weeker out of town – then disband. That’s a shame – but a sad fact.

“There was no sadness in Monday night’s opener – just lots of music and mirth. And a most generous (over an hour) first show. They pulled out all the stops, and didn’t stop till the sweat ran freely. These kids work hard and fast.”

A guy from the Cincinnati Enquirer caught up with the band in August 1970 and did something I didn’t do – he actually talked with Linda. Turns out her hometown is halfway between Dayton and Cincy. The write-up also observes that Jimmy Ryan gave up his pre-med studies at Xavier University in Cincinnati in favor of playing jazz piano in the local clubs.

Linda shows up again in 1995 in the Los Angeles Times in a notice about the 25th annual Orange County Musicians’ Association’s Bash, a big-band jazz affair where she sang and fluted with Les Brown and His Band of Renown.

And then there's a review in the L.A. Times in 1975 by the esteemed Leonard Feather. It begins, “Linda Price is more than just another pretty voice” and goes on to praise not just her singing, but also her flute playing. He declares her “one of the most promising newcomers to hit the local scene lately. With that magic flute as added ammunition, she is a natural for television and records.”

He further notes that she's backed by a quartet “with her husband Jimmy Ryan as pianist/arranger.”