Don Asher's Shoot the Piano Player

The first thing I noticed when reading Don Asher's entertaining memoir Shoot the Piano Player is the author's vivid, verbose writing style. I also noticed that before any serious reflection begins, Asher mostly just describes the bars and music clubs he plays when he's sixteen and the people who run, work at, and frequent them. The places he describes in the memoir - “waterfront dives, backstreet saloons, and turnpike toilets” - ultimately lead him to the “preeminent cabarets and ballrooms of Boston and San Fransisco” (205).

The first place Asher describes is Tiny's, a strip joint. There, he goes into detail about Tiny, the man who runs the bar, and the “Glamazons,” strippers that Asher accompanies on piano when they are performing. Though Asher says that playing at Tiny's was “the happiest time” he's "ever known," playing music becomes complicated for him after the bar closes. The more experience Asher gains, the more he is aware of the compromises being made to his talent and creativity.

 After Tiny's, Asher works at Vincent's, a seedy bar that is frequented by mobsters. Again, Asher gives the reader a good sense of time and place; he describes his surroundings and characters like the owner of Vincent's, Guido, Guido' sister, singer Amy Avallone, and the shady patrons. Asher also uses music lingo, which is a nice touch. But during this section, Asher begins reflecting on playing music for a living and the compromises he has to make to keep his job. Though Asher has to adapt to his surroundings to remain employed, it stifles some of his creativity and talent, and he has to pander not only to his employer's needs, but the audience's as well, an audience that wants him to play the songs straight because his technical playing leaves them confused and an audience that gives him money to play certain songs over and over.

 It gets worse for Asher during the next section of the memoir. Asher moves to Boston and begins studying jazz piano in college. To support himself, he joins Rudy Yellin's Society Orchestra, a “stable” of musicians that play country clubs, weddings, parties, catering halls, and hotels. Many of the musicians he plays with are older and have already compromised. Though they are able players, and Asher picks up useful tips and advice from them, these musicians have settled playing the popular songs of the day with little variation and under humiliating circumstances for money because they have wives and kids to support. In addition, many of Rudy's band leaders “vie for engagements by outfitting their musicians in exotic costumes to fit an ethnic or thematic occasion” (213). These “theme parties,” in Asher's opinion, are “the closet thing the professional musician comes to prostitution” (213). The reader can feel how frustrating it is for Asher as he plays for Rudy and has to deal with careless management that supply him warped pianos with missing keys while performing in a series of ludicrous get-ups and costumes. He experiences all of this at a young age, and it leaves him dispirited. The innocence he had when he was performing at Tiny's is lost. He realizes that “there is less real music to the society-band business than people think” (213).

 By the time of the “Chinatown” party, Asher has had it with Rudy's. He writes, “I thought, Another year of Rudy, collie hats, and assorted monkey suits, of moisture-sodden, rotten-tomato pianos, and I'd be reduced to a shadow of a man, devoid of talent, invention, and testicles. Might as well sew up duck's rectums in a meat market, or trade off with that waiter...at least he wasn't whoring, merely putting in hours. He was doing his own thing” (218). Though the Chinatown scene is humorous, it is also dispiriting, pathetic, and humiliating. Asher is doing what he loves, but it's costing him his dignity, talent, and pride. Though Asher becomes cynical at a young age, it doesn't necessarily drain him of his passion for music. After leaving Rudy's, he goes to San Fransisco. Though Asher doesn't explicitly say where he ends up, hopefully he goes to San Fransisco to perform at one of the “preeminent cabarets and ballrooms” he mentioned at the beginning of the memoir and not at some toga party at a country club.