Nov. 16, 1974: Jon Kondal

 

My next-to-last musical feature of 1974, a year when record reviews took over that showcase page in TV Topics more and more frequently. 

Nov. 16, 1974

Singer Jon Kondal Can Do Really Dreamy Things 

THE WAITRESS kids Jon Kondal about not knowing there’s soup at the salad bar. Isn’t this virtually his second home? Well, yes, he grins, but he’s never eaten here before.

          Indeed, the main deck dining room is the only room in the revitalized Showboat in the Niagara River at the foot of Hertel Avenue that the sandy-haired singer hasn’t played. The starring attractions here are strictly culinary.

          But during the past three years, Jon’s hit all the other decks, literally working his way up from the Engine Room, which is now the raucous habitat of X-rated pianist John Valby.

          These days Jon Kondal pilots the big bandstand in the main deck’s Silver Dollar Lounge Wednesdays through Sundays, a task occasionally too large for seven-man groups, with nothing more than his voice, a guitar and an electronic rhythm box.

          He sings like a nice guy, the kind mothers want their daughters to bring home. His wide-ranging repertoire, which spans the past 25 years and then some, has a little something for everybody. He can rev you up for dancing or croon you down for dreaming.

* * *

SOME PEOPLE compare him to Johnny Ray, though he doesn’t have that tear-choked catch in his smooth voice. The reason they do is because of the mood he can create. Jon Kondal can take a ballad and make it gently weep.

          “People like me for that,” he says, “the cryin’ type of music. One reason is because I tend toward the dramatic. I mean, I’ll go to a sad movie and I’ll cry myself.”

          Jon was ready to study acting in New York City after he finished four years of clerking in the Air Force, but it didn’t work out. But one thing he knew for sure was that he wanted to be an entertainer.

          “I tried a couple 9 to 5 jobs and I just couldn’t do it,” he says. “My wife’ll tell you I can’t pound a nail in the wall. I’m a real diehard entertainer. If I’m only singing a couple nights a week, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

          So he stayed in his native Kenmore, contacted his current booking agent, Mary Stock, for a singing job and started taking lessons.

* * *

HE STUDIED at the Studio Arena Theater for a year, studied movement with dancer Renee Strauss, wife of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra associate conductor Melvin Strauss, and studied voice with Sam Herr, formerly of the Community Music School.

          “That’s where I really learned how to sing the right way,” he explains. “Like pronunciation. You sing ‘any’ like ‘annie’ in Annie Oakley. Before that, I’d sing two nights and I could barely talk for the rest of the week.”

          His love of singing developed three years after he took up guitar at the age of 13, when he got a chance to do “I’m in the Mood for Love” with the trio he was in.

          There was precedent in his family for both vocals and instrumentals. His father plays banjo. And his aunt – Adeline Phelps – once sang in the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

          “When I got into singing,” he says, “I kinda lost my love for the guitar. One of the reasons is you’re trying to do two things at once.

          “The handicap of being a single is that sometimes I feel tied to the guitar. I like to get out on the floor and move.”

* * *

IN A WAY, Jon would like someone backing him up. For a while he had a band called the New Experience. And before his most recent road trip, he’d worked with guitarist Rudi Casper, doing more of a nightclub act, working with wireless mikes.

          “I’ve always wanted a group sound for dancing,” he says. “But I like to work one-to-one with the audience too and I never really program my sets in advance.

          “With a group sometimes it’s like working by numbers and if it’s like that you might as well stay home. What’s nice about doing a single is that I can sing four songs in one song and not worry about the changes.”

          The singer who inspires him most is Frank Sinatra. For his voice, yes, but also for his uncanny sense of drama.

          “You seem to get a feeling that you know what it’s like to be there where he is,” Jon says. “You can actually feel the vibrations, the presence. Though I haven’t had Sinatra’s experience, people say it seems like I take them there too.”

* * *

HE PLANS to transfer that feeling onto tape in a month or so at Buffalo’s Trackmaster Audio on a song by Lee Carroll and Evelyn Erbes called “A Quiet Place.”

          The flip side will be Richard Harris’ “My Boy.” Jon, at 29, hopes it will give his career that elusive big break.

          “When I first started,” he says, “I wanted to make it so bad I couldn’t stand it. I had pains all over. Then I came to the realization that I had my music and nobody can take that away from me.

          “In this business, you have to believe in fate and you have to believe in yourself. I love my life and I love my music. I think that kinda sums it up.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Jon Kondal at the Showboat.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: My colleague Mark Sommer wrote in The Buffalo News in 2001: “Jon Kondal is an entertainer in an era when they are in short supply. A little dancing, a little conversing, a lot of singing – it’s something the native Buffalonian has pursued with passion on Western New York stages for the past 40 years. Kondal works as a real estate agent with Hunt Real Estate in Tonawanda by day, but can often be found interpreting other artists’ material in his own inimitable style by night. … This weekend, it’ll be Neil Diamond, as Kondal puts his stamp on such songs as “Sweet Caroline” and “Kentucky Woman” at the Montrose Lounge in Tonawanda.”

           Jon still performs occasionally and you can still buy a house from him. He’s in his 33rd year as a real estate associate broker with Hunt ERA, where he spells his first name with an H. His booking agent Mary Stock is listed as Jon’s aunt in her death notice in 2013.