[78-L] Page Cavanaugh

[Taylor Bowie]

I was lucky enough to hear Page a couple of times in the 90s at the old 
Bicycle Shop in Santa Monica on Wilshire Blvd.    He had a great little trio 
and was still playing and singing as well as he had fifty years before that. 
We are all lucky that he made so many records!

Taylor B

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <soundthink at aol.com>
To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 9:10 AM
Subject: [78-L] Page Cavanaugh


> Page Cavanaugh dies at 86; pianist-singer led Southland jazz trio
> By Dennis McLellan
>
> December 24, 2008
>
> Page Cavanaugh, a veteran pianist-singer whose trio was a popular 
> nightclub and recording group in the late 1940s and '50s and who became 
> one of Southern California's most enduring lounge jazz artists, has died. 
> He was 86.
>
> Cavanaugh, who also was a composer and arranger during his more than 
> 60-year career, died Friday morning of kidney failure at a skilled nursing 
> facility in Granada Hills, said Phil Mallory, Cavanaugh's bass player for 
> 18 years.
>
> During the early days with his trio, Cavanaugh appeared with Frank Sinatra 
> at the Waldorf-Astoria and elsewhere, played for NBC Radio's "The Jack 
> Paar Show" and appeared in movies such as "A Song Is Born," "Romance on 
> the High Seas," "Big City" and "Lullaby of Broadway."
>
> "He was always a creatively fascinating artist throughout his long 
> career," music critic Don Heckman told The Times. "What he did with his 
> most famous group in the '40s and '50s was to develop a new style, in 
> which all three members of the group would sing in unison in a whisper 
> fashion."
>
> It was a time, Heckman said, "when jazz and popular music were in much 
> closer sync than they are today, so that groups like Nat Cole and George 
> Shearing and Page Cavanaugh could play with a distinctly jazz flavor and 
> still reach large audiences and sell a lot of records."
>
> The Page Cavanaugh Trio, which placed in Top 10 polls in Down Beat and 
> Metronome magazines from 1946 to the early '50s, had chart hits such as 
> "The Three Bears" and "She Had to Go and Lose It At the Astor."
>
> Cavanaugh, whose trio also performed at clubs such as Ciro's and the 
> Trocadero in the '40s, had his share of long-run gigs, including regular 
> stints at the Captain's Table on La Cienega Boulevard in the early '50s 
> and at the Money Tree in Toluca Lake in the '80s and '90s.
>
> In the early '60s, he formed a seven-piece group, The Page 7, that 
> recorded for RCA and appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other TV 
> programs.
>
> Around the same time, he opened his own club in Studio City.
>
> But Cavanaugh, who performed solo in Las Vegas for a number of years in 
> the '80s, had his share of career ups and downs. "At the end of the '50s, 
> when rock 'n' roll came in, prices went down, and you couldn't get 
> arrested," he said in a 1992 interview with The Times. "I'd end up playing 
> in bowling alleys. It was a bad time."
>
> Still, he said, "a life in music was a good choice for me. It's been a 
> damn roller coaster, flying high one day, poor as Job's turkey the next. 
> But I can't think of anything I'd trade it for."
>
> Walter Page Cavanaugh was born Jan. 26, 1922, in Cherokee, Kan., and grew 
> up on his family's farm.
>
> Both of his parents played ragtime piano, and he switched from his first 
> instrument -- ukulele -- to piano when he was about 9.
>
> He later won high school solo piano competitions four years in a row and 
> earned a scholarship to Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg, Kan. 
> But he stayed less than a semester and joined a Kansas-based band.
>
> At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Bobby Sherwood band, 
> with whom he toured until he was drafted during World War II.
>
> While serving in the Army Signal Corps, he joined the Three Sergeants, a 
> trio with Al Viola on guitar and Lloyd Pratt on bass, which played for 
> officers' club dances and other functions.
>
> After the war, they became known as the Page Cavanaugh Trio.
>
> The latest edition of the Page Cavanaugh Trio -- featuring Mallory on bass 
> and Jason Lingle on drums -- released its last CD, "Return to Elegance," 
> in 2006.
>
> Cavanaugh made his final appearance with his trio in June 2007 at the 
> Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, where the band had played on Thursday 
> nights for more than a decade.
>
> "He loved to entertain," Mallory said.
>
> Cavanaugh, who never married, had no immediate surviving family members.
>
> There will be no services.
>
> Cary Ginell
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