The singer gave up the big time to marry and raise a family. Now she’s back, with two new CDs, and is opening a new club venture at the famed restaurant Sardi’s.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The swinging era of big band music and girl-next-door-singers like Doris Day and Brenda Lee will come alive again in New York this month when Malibu resident Patty Clark headlines a new club venture, Upstairs at Sardi’s.
The famed Broadway eatery that has been the toast of New York’s theater district for more than 80 years is opening a new lounge venue above its fabled dining room, which is lined with caricatures of celebrities from Tallulah Bankhead to Clay Aiken.
Clark was a small-town North Dakota girl who at age 17 ended up signing with the same local NBC station that had discovered Peggy Lee. CBS drew her to their Chicago TV and radio affiliates, where she won an Emmy Award for best Chicago singer, before touring with Bob Hope and making regular appearances with Lawrence Welk and Glenn Miller.
Her delicate blonde features belied the powerful voice behind the innocent smile and Clark looked ready to join the pantheon of female recording artists that drove labels such as Capitol Records. But then she met Tony Fantozzi.
“The problem was me,” Fantozzi, a former senior vice president of the William Morris Agency, said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “She was a big star in Chicago and I got her to marry me. Then we had kids and she thought she’d take some time off. We moved out here to Malibu and one thing led to another and, finally, a couple of years ago, she thought she’d like to try and sing again.”
A 40-year hiatus didn’t rust up her instrument, however. Her first comeback solo CD, titled “I Love you,” was recorded at Capitol with a 55-piece orchestra. Loaded with American songbook classics like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Good Morning Heartache,” Clark’s rich vocals are offset by a multidozen-string orchestration little heard in today’s more budget-conscious studios.
“I don’t know how it happened that my voice stayed with me,” Clark said. “Maybe it’s because my mother would never let me be a cheer leader. That yelling would have hurt my vocal chords.”
“It was a piece of cake,” Fantozzi said of her comeback. “So Patty started touring in Europe and people were saying, ‘We can’t believe this is a woman in her 70s!'”
Her “I Love You” caught the attention of Oscar Castro-Neves, the Brazilian composer and guitarist largely responsible, along with Antonio Carlos Jobim, for bringing bossa nova to the U.S. Castro-Neves had heard Clark’s album and contacted Fantozzi, saying, “[She] is one of the few American white women who can sing bossa nova.” They signed a deal, employing another, 38-piece orchestra for the gig and produced “Little Lovin’ to Brazil,” a compilation of 12 samba-tinged lounge tunes.
The reemergence of someone who so completely embodied the mood of ’50s club music caught the attention of Sardi’s management.
“Some producer friends of ours in The Shubert Organization [proprietors of the building where Sardi’s is located] asked Patty to open the new venue,” Fantozzi said. “It was a big pain in the *** because we had to move so fast.”
If Clark is nervous about the impending debut, she is sanguine about it.
“Doing a new show after so many years is sort of like returning to work after having babies,” Clark said. “Your shape is a little different.”
Early musical indoctrination was the norm for Clark. Her grandfather sponsored vocal lessons at a young age and she studied music theory in college.
“I studied at colleges all over the country,” Clark said. “Columbia, USC. I would sing at night and study during the day. When you’re young, you can do that.
“I was lucky to work with such fine bands back then,” she continued. “So working with a 55-piece orchestra for my CD was not a big leap. Those strings are so lush. L.A. has the top musicians in the world.”
But is the nightclub scene ready for Hoagy Carmichael and Jerome Kern, music that was hot a half century ago?
“When Patty introduced her new CDs in Europe at places like Pizza on the Park in London and the Coconut Grove in Miami, we had 20- and 30-year olds coming up and telling us they had never heard this music before,” Fantozzi said.
“Inaugurating Sardi’s will be like giving birth,” Clark said. “And I’ve done that before. It’s a big project, but worth every minute.”
Patty Clark opens at Sardi’s in New York City April 28 and will perform there for three weeks. Her CDs are available at www.pattyclark.com