The memory of Kay Thompson’s nightclub act, however, is in good hands. Today, the Rose Club occupies its place to the left of the Plaza’s Fifth Avenue entrance. The Persian Room closed its doors in 1975, as nightlife turned toward discotheques and more relaxed jazz clubs. The slacks were later sold at Saks Fifth Avenue as “Kay Thompson’s Fancy Pants.” By the time Hilary Knight visited the Persian Room, Thompson was a sensation in scandalous, sometimes zebra-print slacks that she designed. Thompson’s specialty was stamping popular songs with her own brand of “bazazz”: adding a verse to “Basin Street Blues” (“got my traveling shoes with the traveling shoelaces, ready to go places”) or revamping Irving Berlin’s ballad “How Deep Is the Ocean” with a jazz beat and a scatty riff. They sang and danced to lightning musical arrangements, created by Thompson herself, who only a few years earlier had been MGM’s top music arranger and vocal coach. Instead of standing still by the piano, as club entertainers of that time usually did, the quintet hung microphones from the ceiling, allowing them to race across the floor. In 1951, she and the Williams Brothers (“Moon River” singer Andy Williams and his three brothers, Bob, Don, and Dick) were booked at the Persian Room for four weeks, after Thompson’s successful nightclub tour of America and Europe.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |