{"id":470,"date":"2013-06-28T02:41:21","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T02:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/?p=470"},"modified":"2013-07-18T06:04:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T06:04:45","slug":"billy-anderson-live-at-house-of-embers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/?p=470","title":{"rendered":"Billy Anderson Live at House of Embers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Music_002\"<\/a>

The great Billy Anderson (Photo by Paul Natkin)<\/p><\/div>\n

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis.\u2014Someone calls out a request for \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d from a dark corner of the lounge at the House of Embers.<\/p>\n

It is early on a cold December night in Central Wisconsin but that doesn\u2019t prevent house entertainer Billy Anderson from wearing a short sleeved brown print Hawaiian shirt.<\/p>\n

He smiles brightly and launches into the Louis Armstrong classic, his brown hands gliding across his vintage Hammond B-3 organ like skis on snow.<\/p>\n

The request has come from one of seven middle-aged women from the Wisconsin Dells who are celebrating a birthday in full cruise ship mode. One woman works for a local real estate company. It is said another woman\u2019s husband runs a circus. After Billy Anderson is done singing \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d the women approach him.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go sit on Billy\u2019s organ!,\u201d one declares.<\/p>\n

Billy Anderson still smiles brightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard that a few times,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The women know Billy Anderson because he has been appearing at Wisconsin Dells supper clubs since 1966.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I play five different places,\u201d Billy says over a soft drink at the bar. \u201cHere. Trappers Turn for Sunday brunch, which is a golf course here. Over at Glacier Rock in Baraboo. I work at Spring Brooke. And Ishnala in the summer. I started there in 1966. I left for a while and I\u2019m back. It\u2019s the same thing as here. Happy hour crowd, they go home at 8:30 or 9. That\u2019s my age group. That\u2019s the type of songs I play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billy Anderson is to the Dells what Jimmy Buffett is to Florida.<\/p>\n

He has appeared on Friday and Saturday nights at (Wally\u2019s) House of Embers since 1998. \u201cIn this supper club where I get an older crowd, I start around 4:30, 5\u2019o clock,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s standards; Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a rap place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellen Weiss of Baraboo seems to be the ring leader of the playful posse. She sits down on a piano bench next to Billy Anderson and the other women quickly assemble behind the organ player. The scene resembles a saucy 1970s photo shoot for an Isaac Hayes album cover.<\/p>\n

Weiss later reflects, \u201cOne thing about Billy is there could be a whole group of young people in here and he would play exactly what they want. He is the most amazing musician I have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Music_005\"<\/a>

Billy Anderson fan Ellen Weiss (right). Photo by Payl Natkin<\/p><\/div>\n

House of Embers is a special place for Weiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2006 my husband asked me to marry him at this restaurant,\u201d says Weiss, who works at the Great Wolf Lodge Resort in the Dells. \u201cIt was right around the corner from where we are sitting. Someone was playing the harp. A waitress wrapped the ring in a tissue and he handed it to me. I opened it up and said \u2018Yes.\u2019 My husband and I come here every year for our anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is where you begin to understand the sound of the supper club.<\/p>\n

Supper club musicians perform in an arena of meaningful tradition. They are not lounge singers, heavy on the shtick. And supper clubs are not piano bars where people drink all night long and sing along to \u201cNew York, New York.\u201d This is Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are eating,\u201d Billy says. \u201cI do quiet dinner stuff. I take requests. My favorite songs are \u2018Witchcraft\u2019 by Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong\u2019s \u2018Wonderful World.\u2019 They are my favorite entertainers. Frank had a unique way of singing his songs, you felt it just by listening. Louis made you feel like anyone could sing even if they had an average voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

A supper club musician is like a good marriage: It is all about balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more expensive to have live entertainment in a supper club these days but Billy is worth it,\u201d says House of Embers owner Mike Obois in a separate interview. \u201cHe\u2019s great with families and kids, which are future customers. The old people know him and know the songs. And he\u2019s personable. He\u2019ll take his break and visit you at a table. No matter how busy the bar is, if he wants to visit, he\u2019ll visit with you. And he\u2019s got a memory. He\u2019ll remember somebody from seven years ago on their birthday and he will know their favorite song.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House of Embers has a storied tradition of supper club music.<\/p>\n

When the restaurant opened in 1959, Louise \u201cLou\u201d Stettin began playing every Sunday night on a baby grand piano in the club\u2019s fireplace enhanced Tiffany Roon. She played until the age of 95. She never read music, but could stretch from ragtime to standards.<\/p>\n

No rap, either.<\/p>\n

Born in Chicago on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, Stettin died in June, 2005 at the age of 98. Her favorite song to play was \u201cWhen Irish Eyes are Smiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stettin was the mother of the late Barbara Obois, who was Wally\u2019s wife. Stettin\u2019s tradition was to have one whiskey Old Fashioned and a cup of soup before her gig, something Keith Richards might also have done during his recent residency at the United Center in Chicago.<\/p>\n

In September, 2000 Stettin served as Grand Marshall of the famous Wa-Zha-Wa Days parade in the Dells. She wore multicolored Carmen Miranda headgear and a sparkling rhinestone dress. Stettin waved to everyone along the parade route. She struck a familiar chord. \u201cMy arm hurt,\u201d she told the Wisconsin State Journal in a November, 2000 profile. \u201cAnd I had to play that night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wally's_016\"<\/a>

Cheers! at House of Embers (Photo by Paul Natkin)<\/p><\/div>\n

Billy Anderson was born in 1939 in Waterloo, Iowa.<\/p>\n

His mother Gladys owned a diner called Gladys\u2019s Restaurant. His father William worked at a government factory. They are deceased and Billy is not married. He lives in Nellsville, Wis., about 100 miles from the Dells. During his weekend gigs he stays in the Dells.<\/p>\n

Billy has always been a solo act.<\/p>\n

He was on the road for two weeks when a Milwaukee booking agency found him work at the old Uphoff hotel and restaurant (now part of the new Mount Olympus complex at nearby Lake Delton.) Billy then moved to the Ishnala in the summer of 1966. \u201cThere was this place,\u201d Billy says in describing the 1966 Dells scene. \u201cFisher\u2019s (now Sorrento\u2019s). The Del-Bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

He never left.<\/p>\n

Another thing about supper clubs is their extraordinary sense of place.<\/p>\n

Ask Billy Anderson about the bright lights of Chicago or Minneapolis and he shakes his head no. \u201cChicago, no, no,\u201d he says, and in fact there are more supper club gigs in the Dells than jobs at non-hotel piano bars in Chicago. \u201cThere\u2019s so much work here,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Dells used to close up early, especially in the winter. With the casino and water parks they\u2019re open year round. After the summer it over its a pretty regular crowd that comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billy figures he knows \u201cthousands\u201d of songs. He can play pop standards, boogie-woogie and blues. He played country and western the night Charley Pride came in after Pride headlined at the Crystal Grand Music Theatre down the road from the supper club.<\/p>\n

Billy Anderson is a self-contained operation.<\/p>\n

He owns three Hammond B-3s and usually keeps them at the clubs he is appearing at. The B-3 at the House of Embers is made of dark furniture wood. Billy bought it in 1979 in Waterloo, Ia. \u201cIt\u2019s not that heavy,\u201d he says. \u201cTake the pedals off, flip it and roll it away. I do have a trailer I haul it around in. I take it to Ishnala in the summer.\u201d He also sells CDs from the top of the B-3. Billy Anderson\u2019s latest CD is \u201cGreatness Remembered,\u201d consisting of 11 standards by dead artists. \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d is on the CD as is Bobby Darin\u2019s \u201cMack the Knife\u201d and Lou Rawls\u2019 \u201cLady Love.\u201d But Anderson\u2019s high range floats more like blue eyed soulster Boz Scaggs than the baritone of Rawls.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreatness Remembered\u201d was recorded in a small home studio in Wisconsin Rapids. \u201cI order about 200 at a time,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen they sell out I order 200 more. Its not a million seller. Years ago I did LPs. And cassettes. Now CDs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Times change.<\/p>\n

But Billy Anderson hasn\u2019t changed so much.<\/p>\n

Mike Obois says, \u201cWhen Mom and Dad sold the restaurant to us in \u201898 we were talking about getting entertainment. This is the honest truth. My Dad goes, \u2018See that guy sitting over at the table?\u2019 It was table 35 in the other dining room. My Dad says, \u2018That\u2019s Billy Anderson. He used to play at Ishnala all those years and I don\u2019t know what he is doing, but he is a great musician.\u201d Mike was introduced to Billy. And he has been at the House of Embers ever since.<\/p>\n

The dimly lit Wisconsin supper clubs set the mood for the supper club sound.<\/p>\n

Customers would arrive around 4 or 5 p.m., hear some lounge music, have a couple drinks, adjourn for supper and return to the lounge for more music and a nightcap or three. \u201cSome old timers still do that,\u201d Mike says. \u201cYoung people are in a hurry. The drinking laws changed after-dinner drinking. But now that there\u2019s good taxi services in town, or the designated driver, people are smarter. And we don\u2019t want them to get that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Nov. 5, 1966 Chicago Daily News column asked \u201cWhat Makes a Supper Club Go?\u201d<\/p>\n

Entertainment columnist Sam Lesner wondered, \u201cIs it the room or the show that makes a supper club go? Someone asked it earlier this week in the newly remodeled Camellia House (at the Drake Hotel).\u201d Lesner concluded the talent set the stage, a fact Billy Anderson began backing up at roughly the same period.<\/p>\n

\"supper<\/a><\/p>\n

Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner told me supper clubs were the template for his Playboy Club chain. And remember, he opened a Playboy Club resort in supper clubby Lake Geneva, Wis.<\/p>\n

\u201cA supper club is exactly what the Playboy club was,\u201d Hefner said during a 2010 interview from his Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. \u201cWhen you come into the lobby you were greeted by the bunny (a \u201chost\u201d in supper club parlance) who checked your key. It was double level. You looked down the steps into the bar or up half a floor into the living room. There was a piano bar in the living room and a buffet at the end of the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very supper clubby feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lesner also drew a parallel between supper clubs and the Playboy Club in his article: \u201cIn the Playboy Club where it can be said that many patrons just come to be part of the Playboy scene (not unlike the birthday women at the House of Embers), it\u2019s still the show that brings out the best in the performers and the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis.\u2014Someone calls out a request for \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d from a dark corner of the lounge at the House of Embers. It is early on a cold December night in Central Wisconsin but that doesn\u2019t prevent house entertainer Billy Anderson from wearing a short sleeved brown print Hawaiian shirt. He smiles brightly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[19,18,21,20,72,17],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-supper-club-music","tag-billy-anderson","tag-house-of-embers","tag-hugh-hefner","tag-playboy-club","tag-the-supper-club-book","tag-wisconsin-dells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesupperclubbook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}