Another Dead Person, Another Story

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Actually, this is not completely about the person in particular. I just read that Tim Hauser, the founder of the Manhattan Transfer, died Thursday at the age of 72. OK, Name Drop away, but for a brief time in 1980, Rick & Ruby and the Transfer totally connected, and in various shifts, all four of them came to see us perform during the week we were the featured act at West Hollywood’s Studio One Backlot Theatre, and we hung out in LA at different times.

What surprised me was that with Hauser being such an afficianado of 50’s doo-wopp music, and us with an act that was conceived out of an appreciation for that same music, we didn’t connect with them further. Of the four of them, the one we connected with the most was Janis Siegel.

In 1980, we were doing a week at the aforementioned Backlot, and staying at the nearly legendary Tropicana Hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard. Next door was the greasy spoon diner known as Duke’s, where you could at almost any hour of the day, but particularly in early morning, see some Hollywood legend dining. Living at the Tropicana at the time was Tom Waits and his then-girlfriend Rickie Lee Jones, but enough name drops, at least until the next paragraph, let’s keep the story going!

So one late midweek morning, we were at Duke’s having breakfast with our manager, who had been friends with the Transfer for awhile, and on this particular outing, Janis Siegel had joined us. As we’re finishing up our meal, an acquaintance wandered in. He was a comic that we’d done a pilot for a TV series with, a really nice guy, but with a bit of a coke problem. He spotted us and sat down, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t really invited. He was clearly wired, and started doing all the Hollywood “things are going great” shtick. As he started running down his laundry list of the upcoming series he was up for, what commercials he’d gotten a call back on, what big cheeses had been at his recent gigs, etc. We listened and let him ramble.

Perhaps noticing that he was the only one talking, he paused briefly, then turned to Janis, and not recognising her, asked “Are YOU in show biz?” She said yes. He then asked what she did. By now, the rest of us remained silent, in great anticipation of how deep a hole he was going to dig. Janis said she was a singer. He asked if she was with a group. And so on, until she finally said, “I’m with the Manhattan Transfer,” and he looked at us as if to say “You guys were messing with me,” and laughed about it, then turned to Janis, and saved face by singing lines from some of his favourite Transfer songs. I’d have felt slightly more guilty if he hadn’t been setting himself up to be embarrassed. It reminded me so much of people I’d run into in LA, who, when you’d ask, “Hey, how ya doing,” they’d start running through their entire list of who they had development deals with. I remember one guy doing that with me, and I stopped him midway through just to say, “Actually I was just wondering how YOU were doing.” He was taken aback by that, but my point was made.

Now while I’m in my semi-bitter mode of opportunities lost, I’ll mention that the Transfer wanted us to tour with them, which included dates at Carnegie Hall. Unfortunately, we hit them at that little patch between their initial mid-70s success and their fey 1981 revival of “The Boy From New York City,” which became their biggest single US hit, though their 1977 revival of the 50s hit “Chanson D’Amour” hit #1 in UK, while not charting at all in US.  Otherwise, things weren’t going well in the late 70’s for them, so advance tickets on their tour dates were disappointing, to be kind. They were forced to scale down the size of their concert venues, and couldn’t afford to have an opener who actually needed expenses paid. Another of our many “almosts!”

I would encounter Manhattan Transfer one more time, at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan in 1988, and this is a story I told a few weeks ago when I was talking about Bill Murray. Of the four of them, the only one that really talked to me that night was Janis Siegel. But this whole blog was initially meant to be about Tim Hauser, so let’s bring it back to him, however briefly. My one full-on encounter with him in 1979 was really pleasant, and I only regret that I didn’t connect with him enough that I could have him over at my house to see my record collection.

October 17th, 2014



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