Nov. 11, 1972: Lounge singer Barry Dale

 

I inadvertently ruined the living arrangement for the subject of this article, who was sharing an apartment with a young elementary grade teacher in a suburban school district. Although she is not named here, someone knew she was dating this singer, put two and two together and decided she was violating the morality of the day. 

Nov. 11, 1972

He Moves From Song to Song

And the Crowds Like ‘em All 

WHAT’S A Barry Dale? Ask your waitress, the card on the table says.

        And here we’d been figuring a Barry Dale was that dark-bearded bear cub of a guy over on the little stage here at The Canterbury out on Niagara Falls Boulevard, playing guitar and doing songs to the never-fail beat of an electric drummer. Goes to show you never can tell …

        OK, we say when the waitress arrives, what’s a Barry Dale?

        “It’s one part vodka, one part Galliano, one part orange juice and one part lime juice,” she offers.

        It comes in a big planter’s punch glass and, like one old drinking buddy used to say, it tastes like two. After two, the world is definitely not what it used to be.

        Ask the waitress another week and chances are the concoction’s been changed. The bar makes at least four different Barry Dales, one of them a mixture of six liquors reputed to be as potent as the guitarist’s old-time rock ‘n roll set.

        What’s a Barry Dale, really? “It started off as a joke,” the explanation goes. “I took off for Florida this summer and my chick says to me: ‘Gee, what’s a Barry Dale?’ I said: ‘That’s me!’” He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

* * *

“WHEN I CAME back to Buffalo in August, I thought it was kind of a catchy thing. Alice Cordolano, the owner’s wife from The Canterbury, did that drawing. I think it’s wild. It’s not a typical posed thing.

        “For the TV commercial on Channel 29, we put it on a color wheel. No, there wasn’t anybody else behind that, I did that myself. That one cost me $500.

        “It was on for one week from (blurred number?) in the evening until signoff. You can imagine some little kid asking his parents: ‘What’s a Barry Dale?’ So maybe they’d come to the club to find out.

        “It got a lot of response. You know Rudi Bersani from The Three Coins? Next time I saw him, he yells from the end of the bar: ‘What’s a Barry Dale?’”

        What’s a Barry Dale in the daytime? It ain’t easy finding his apartment in the newly-sprung sprawl of town houses near Eastern Hills Mall this rain-soaked afternoon.

        The number on the building is different from the address and a check of mailboxes shows no B. Dale at all. But then he knocks from an upstairs window, smiles and waves.

* * *

ANSWERS THE door in a blue corduroy robe with red piping, barefoot in the fresh green shag rug. Yes, Barry Dale’s his real name. It’s someone else’s apartment.

        Want a cup of coffee? Everything looks new and Spanish Mediterranean. There’s a cloud of mobiles in the bedroom and, in the dining nook, a china cabinet with Barry’s collection of frogs.

* * *

“I USED to tell jokes in between songs until I started to think they were too risqué,” he says. “One of them was about a frog and so my friends got together and gave me this big frog over here with the punchline on the name tag. That’s what started me collecting them.”

        He takes the chair by the window, lights a filter cigarette. He hasn’t eaten yet. Since he works nights, his days are free for business and promotion.

        When we finish, he’ll move his equipment from The Yankee Whaler at Main and Transit, where he plays Tuesday, to The Canterbury, his Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night setting. On Sundays and Mondays, he’s at The Circle of Thieves on Eggert Road off Millersport Highway.

        He’s his own equipment man and manager and booking agent, always has been except for when someone else was managing him his first few months in Buffalo. All 11 pieces of equipment fit into his purple and white Dodge Dart, including that Rhythm Ace.

        “That’s the big one,” he says, “the Cadillac. My first time in The Three Coins, I took a look at the room and wondered how I was gonna fill it with my little mike and amplifier. I’d seen organists use these things, so I got a little one and tried it out.

        “This big one you can hit one or a blend of beats. It makes it sound like there’s more than one person up there and it lets me get off stage and dance with the people. Sometimes I’ll get them all lined up and we’ll do a bunny hop, you remember that?”

* * *

WHAT’S A Barry Dale on stage?

        When Barry auditioned at The Canterbury more than a year ago, the place had a five-piece band and it was plainly too loud. The guitar, the Rhythm Ace and the voice fit just right.

        At first, the Rhythm Ace kinda puts you off with visions of syrupy Muzak organists, but somehow you wind up forgetting about the thing.

        And you wind up dropping whatever defenses you might have put on when you first heard him doing something like his medley of “The Letter” and “Mother and Child Reunion.”

        Guitar’s far from flashy, but it’s adequate and then some. His tenor voice comes smooth – one doesn’t shout in intimate nightspots – and not overly expressive, but there’s a sunny crystal of charm in it which invites you to roll your reservations back and have fun.

        People dance when he does a mellifluous “Proud Mary” and for some of his more spirited stuff, like “Joy to the World” or “Midnight Hour,” the waitresses hand out beer-can maracas for the table-dwellers to shake.

* * *

“I USED to pass out real instruments,” he says, “but they’d get broken or lost. Now I have people save beer cans for me. I need new ones every week. I fill them up with popcorn and tape the tops.”

        He moves quickly from song to song, pausing only to punch a new beat into the Rhythm Ace and coax some response from the crowd. Some of his sets last more than two hours and he invariably plays late.

        “Why should I quit at 1:30 if people are having fun?” he proposes. “After all, where have I got to go at that hour?”

        His favorite is Neil Diamond: “I love his work. My voice quality is about the same and though I don’t copy him, it’s easy to sing his stuff and the music pertains to my lifestyle in a way. I like Kristofferson too, for his loneliness.”

* * *

WHAT’S BARRY Dale’s future?

        Early in December, Barry expects to record a song he wrote a couple years ago, “Living Together,” doing a duet with Jill Pellis (“She’s got a very unique voice”), who sings at Buffalo’s Anchor Bar.

        He also wants to do an album live from The Canterbury, maybe in February. Unlike the … (blurred line) … to lease to a major company, the LP would be for his club fans only.

        The benefit he’s planning for “around Jan. 21” grew from him and another solo performer, Frank Mayo, who appears at The Dover Castle, talking about doing a show together sometime.

        “It’ll be on a Sunday from 1 p.m. till maybe 2 a.m. and we want to get some of the Buffalo Bills and some local performers and whatever big names are in town that weekend.

        “We’ve been promised a room that’ll hold 1,000 and we’re trying for live TV coverage. I still have to talk with the charity, but I’m sure they’ll go for it. The only trouble is, Frank and I’ll be so busy there we won’t have much chance to play.”

* * *

WHAT’S BARRY Dale doing in Buffalo?

        “When I came up here from Florida, I had no intention of staying more than two months,” he says. “But last summer, when I took an 11-week break and went back to Fort Lauderdale, I couldn’t wait to get back to Buffalo.

        “It’s the people here, they’re so warm and fantastic. In Miami or Fort Lauderdale, they come on and brag about how much money they have.

        “My folks came up for the Dolphins game and they felt the same way. The people here have been my inspiration.

        “My mother’ll be flying up for a week at Christmas with my two kids. It’ll be the first time they’ve seen snow. That’s the one thing I miss here, seeing my kids.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Always a Choice 

        “I’ve always worked with people,” Barry Dale says, “in the boutique business, in the shoe business, whatever I was in. I’ve gotta be before the public.”

        He only decided to get back into music a couple years ago and then at the urging of a friend from New York City who heard him play and sing one night in his Miami home, then called him the next day and told him to show up for a night club audition. He got the job.

* * *

“I HAD a wife, two kids, two cars and a mortgage,” he says. “I was working in the boutique until 9, then rushing out to be on stage by 9:30. The way it ended up, I was making more money at night, so I figured what am I knocking myself out for.”

        He’d grown his beard and hair already, the result of his rapport with the young customers of the boutique he managed. “It won’t change when I’m 30,” he says. “I’ll be like this when I’m 65.”

        It was always a choice between music and business. Born April 10, 1943, he grew up in southwestern Miami, entering talent shows and playing guitar for a rock band for three years in high school.

* * *

HIS FATHER, who has a shoe warehouse in Miami these days, was running clothing stores then. Barry started working for him when he was 12, was managing a store when he was 16.

        After a stint in the Air Force in Germany in the early ‘60s, he came home to his father’s businesses again, was married, settled down.

        “In the boutique,” he says, “I went from a straight dude to a hip guy. I figured I must’ve missed what was happening those three years overseas.

        “When the music thing came up, my wife just figured my exposure to women would be too great. We split as friends. She’s glad I’m doing well.”

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: In October 1974, Barry was back in Florida, performing at a place called The Cracked Crab in Coral Gables. But after that, hard to say. The trail on the Internet disappears.