Walking into Johnny’s is like walking into the forties. You step in from
the snow and a woman takes your coat as the owner, Johnny himself, sees you
to your table, dark suit and slicked black hair leading the way into the
dusky orange light of the dining room. Men in pinstripe suits and
gangster smiles line the bar on the far side of the room, their gruff
laughter splashing merrily off of the red, wood-paneled walls. Several
round tables spot the room’s other half, keeping the potential population of
the room down, giving it an intimacy. Spotless white lace drapes the bottom
of the windows, hiding the sidewalk, the traffic, but allowing glimpses of
the Terminal Tower, Cleveland’s only skyscraper, all lit up in red and green
for Christmas. The cheer of the New Year is everywhere. Black and white,
orange and red, the colors of old history and a feeling of warmth, and the
fingers walking up and down the piano in the corner.
There’s a smile on Mike Petrone’s face while he plays, a smile he wears
every night without ever wearing it out. It’s a smile of contentment, a
gentle smile that lets the world know that he is at ease, comfortable in the
moments he spends crafting the atmosphere of the restaurant with his music.
You can see his muscles move under his grey jacket, his right foot pressing
the pedals while his left grooves with the beat. There’s that sheen of
sweat you get when you’re throwing yourself into your passion, his neatly
combed hair threatening to slide into disarray in the dusky air of the bar.
He’s cool and in control, the piano a familiar landscape after all his years
of playing. Showy without being flashy, entertaining without being the
center of attention, he’s a sophisticated and experienced performer. Mike
pours soft splashes of piano over the evening, and at the bar, the citizens
of this timeless place begin to look up from their drinks.
Every once in a while, when the men at the bar recognize the tune trickling
out of the piano, they begin to sing along, fitting the words into their
homes in the music. Those are old homes, the same they’ve had since their
birth back in the big band days, the jazz days, the days that Johnny’s is
built on, the days that Mike was raised on and the days that his music
conjures in the warmth of Johnny’s Downtown.
If you’re going to play in Cleveland, Johnny’s is the best place to do
it, Mike says later, slouching at the bar. You get a good crowd every
night, and it’s a changing crowd, too. We’re right near the airport hotels
here, so you get a lot of people on business dinners, you get a lot of
travelers that hear about Johnny’s and drive on in. It’s not like that
neighborhood club where you get the same guys in every night, so it doesn?t
get boring.? He smiles at me gently. There are regulars, though.
One of the singers, his song more enthusiastic than skilled, walks over to
the piano with drink in hand and leans on the wall. As soon as Mike sees
him approaching, his eyebrows go up and his face opens: they know each
other, they are friends. Mike’s gotten friendly with quite a few customers
after playing in Johnny’s for over twelve years. The singer reaches the
piano just in time to join in on “The Lady Is A Tramp”, a classic that makes
you want to grab a girl and sway. Mike is jiving this way and that on the
bench and his friend croons his heart out, his chest swelling theatrically
as he makes grand, sweeping gestures with his glass, sloshing some of his
gin on the floor. The singers like the old standards, the jazz classics,
and Mike is happy to oblige them.
The sound of a jazz record is piped softly throughout the gold-glow of the
dining room of Johnny’s Downtown while Mike takes his break. “They take
real good care of me here. I get paid well, I get insurance, I get
benefits,” says Mike as he drains his glass of Coke and puts it down on the
counter, the ice tinkling musically. And then, without a task at hand, Mike
‘s hands don’t know what to do. They disappear in and out of his pockets,
drum on the counter top, alight on his knee and then fly to the comfort of
the other, fold spastically in his lap. Eventually, they come to rest on
the bar, and he asks if I mind if he smokes. Patting himself down, turning
his pockets inside out, wrinkling his pants, he eventually finds the
cigarette he’s seeking, and he relaxes in the distraction it provides. His
hands are clearly searching for a home, but they won’t find it anywhere but
on the black and white of the piano; music is too much a part of him for his
hands to rest for long. He’s a part of Johnny’s, and he wouldn’t change a
thing. He is bound heart and soul into his jazz, his piano, his music, and,
for four hours every night of the week, he can get paid for it.
To keep his set fresh for his devoted audience, he tries to learn six new
songs a week, three to play, and three to sing. By now, he’s got his
routine down cold. He should, too, playing in bars and restaurants since he
was fifteen. “When my father left us, I needed to help support my
family,” Mike explains, looking around the bar and fiddling with his drink.
Mike’s father is also a jazz pianist, and it was from him that Mike learned
his love of music. ‘People ask me if I feel like this just fell into my
lap, if I was just born into this, and in some ways I was, but there’s also
a lot of ten-hour a day practices that go into this, a lot of work and
effort.”
He’s one of the few that can truly say that he loves his job, and he says
it all the time. “I do feel very lucky, to be able to do what I like, to
live like this. There are a lot of people that aren’t happy at their jobs,
but there’s nothing that I would change. It’s never boring. I mean, I don’
t just play here. I have my own band, the “Mike Petrone Duo”, or “Trio”, or
however many there are at the time. It’s usually the same group of guys,
but I do fire them every once in awhile, to keep it fresh and interesting.
I guess I’m lucky that they keep coming back, huh?” Mike smiles
mischievously and continues to play. “I’ve played a bit of everything; rock,
blues, classical. Do you know who the Funk Brothers are? They were the
performing musicians on every record Motown Records ever put out–yeah, they
‘re a pretty big deal. When they came through a few years ago to play at
the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame, their keyboard player had died. Now, that’s
terrible, but they called me up, and I got to play with them. It was
great.”
Mike has lived by his own love and labor for his entire life; he’s never
had a job divorced from his music, and that’s earned him quite the
reputation in the musician’s world. He’s the founder and co-owner of Goblin
B Records, a label that promotes the art of many Cleveland-area talents; he
has been the musical director for the Cleveland Playhouse, and written music
for several productions performed there; he has released over fourteen
albums’ worth of his own material, and produced the work of many others.
One of those others is, in fact, drinking right there at the bar.
Mike points and says, “That one, there…a short, older man with skin like
pale leather, dressed in a black pinstripe suit and fedora …that’s
Cleveland Bob.” Bob smiles at something one of his companions says, shows
his crooked teeth, and lets out a barking laugh that calls to mind the gruff
pipes of Louis Armstrong. More so than any of the other characters that
populate Johnny’s, Cleveland Bob is a relic from the past, when men were men
and women were dames. That gleam in his eye isn’t just the candlelight
playing off his glasses; he’s sharp as a tack, a successful lawyer with time
to kill and a voice to kill it with. “Mr. Freeze, let’s go!” he calls at
Mike. Mike’s more comfortable at the bench anyway, and he excuses himself
from the bar, his black polished shoes clicking on the tile floor as his
hands head on home.
“Turn that off, I’m back,” he says to the bartender. The lush twinkling of
the record stops as Cleveland Bob lurches over to the piano and his friends
turn on their stools to watch. Bob was born from a crumpled black and white
photograph, the handkerchief in his coat pocket, the cigarette smoldering by
his wedding ring while a drink keeps his other rings young and cold, the
silver hair. With Mike’s help, Bob has put out a few albums of old jazz
tunes, polished up and toughened up with a Cleveland edge. Bob always comes
in this time every week, brings some of his friends along and brings down
the house with Mike providing the soundtrack. It’s his hobby. He’s damn
good.
With Mike leading the charge through the past, Cleveland Bob softly growls
out the stories of the lives he has lived: “It Had To Be You”, “Where or
When”, “Luck Be A Lady Tonight”, and more, a parade of the greats, and he
does them all justice. My mom, my sister, and I are the only people utterly
bewildered at the perfect duo’s energy, performance, the sheer style that
they hang from every chord and harmony, because it’s just another night in
Johnny’s to everyone else.
At that moment, outside, a horse-drawn carriage picks up a couple from the
snowy streets and gallops away. They’re already snuggling and kissing
before they turn the corner, seeking refuge from the cold night in the
warmth of their moment. The December air blows flurries in fairytale shapes
and Mike provides the background music for the romantic moment.
Mike has found his moment and held onto it. Bob too, and all the rest of
the bar singers, drinkers, and faces craggy with heartache and bittersweet
memories. Regardless of their lives outside of Johnny’s, in here, they are
kings among men. They are the inhabitants of a dream that America has long
since left in the dust between the skyscrapers, but they have dusted it off
and kept it safe and golden warm inside these walls. It’s an age that the
outside has no use for, but they’re keeping it alive with their toasts,
their throats, their bare hands.
Mike has had his brushes with the upper tier of the music industry, the
legends and founding fathers. Johnny’s has too, framed and autographed
celebrities arranged on the wall behind the bar. There’s probably a picture
of the Rat Pack in there somewhere, the blueprints and the blues that
evolved into Mike, Bob, and the others. History hiccups when one of the
singers turns to Mike and gleefully shouts, “We could be the new Rat Pack!”
Suddenly, the singers, the bar, the restaurant, seem a little bit nobler and
a little bit sadder. A somber-voiced man in a blue suit is helping Bob
sing out that “You?re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You”, and those words might
just be their lives.
Mike asks me if I’m a tenor or a baritone, his words helping to bring me
back to a moment that almost escaped out from under me. “You said you were
in a band, you sing?” He leans in toward me, his fingers flattening on the
keys. Cleveland Bob lights up another as he finishes the song and cocks his
head.
“Well I’m in a punk rock band, sorta, a metally punk band. I mostly just
scream and stuff.” I’m wondering where this line of questioning is going,
but I think I can see it, and I’m hoping.
“Punk rock? I sometimes play with Johnny’s,(the owner’s) kid’s punk band,
“The Potato Bugs.” Yeah, but you can sing, right? Here, sing this, I know
you know it. Terry will show you how.” The somber-voiced man, Terry, turns
to me and smiles.
“I don’t really know jazz or anything, though,” I warn them.
“Jazz? This isn’t jazz, these are the standards!” And the opening bars of
“High Hopes” kick in and Terry starts singing.
“Just what makes that little ol’ ant, think he’ll move that rubber tree
plant… They’re all smiling when I falter with the syncopated rhythm in the verses, snapping their
fingers, nodding in delight when I manage to hit the right notes.
Mike is beaming at the last lines of the chorus when my voice cracks, and
so I get bolder and louder. Soon, the song is over and they are applauding
me with hands that draw me close and pat me on the back and make the moment
mine, too.
“Wow thanks that was awesome,” I say to Mike.
“Hey, kid, that was pretty good,” rasps Cleveland Bob. “Got time for
another?”
“Unfortunately,” I say, looking at my mom who’s looking at her watch and
smiling at her son singing with these grizzled antiques, “No.” Though it
looked a fairytale from the inside, the streets of Cleveland were growing
icy as the dark pressed in close, and we were all going to have a hard time
getting home.
“Too bad,” wheezes Bob. Terry’s gone to get his coat, and most of the rest
of the drinkers are gone now. “How about one for the road, then, from me to
you?” Bob gazes knowingly at Mike and Mike’s eyebrows shoot up in
understanding. A slow arpeggio begins, and I know the tune but lack the age
and the voice and the experience to sing along with it, so I listen to Bob’s
voice and Mike’s experience, and Johnny’s breathes a lullaby for an age gone
long before I knew enough to miss it.
“I see trees of green, red roses, too,” Cleveland Bob turns slowly in
place, rocking back and forth on his heels as he beseeches his audience with
his arms. “I see them bloom for me and you, and I think to myself, ‘What a
wonderful world.’” Terry’s got his eyes closed; he’s shaking his head with
the ebb and flow of Armstrong’s words from Bob’s raspy pipes. ” I see skies
of blue, and clouds of white. The bright, blessed days, the dark, sacred
nights, and I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.” Mike too is lost
somewhere on the cadence of good will, his playing majestically slow.
Johnny’s is almost empty now. Most of the patrons have gone back to the
roads, braving the storm on their separate ways home, but Mike still has
about thirty minutes left until quitting time, and he isn’t counting down
the seconds. It’s his time to play, it’s his life to play it with, it’s his
chunk of history preserved in chords and smoke. “The colors of the rainbow,
so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of the people going by. I see
friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do! ‘ ” “They’re really saying ‘I love
you.’ ” ” I hear babies cry, I watch them grow. They’ll learn much more
than I’ll ever know, and I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’ ”
Monday through Friday, six to ten, forever.
