CARMEN CAVALLERO GETS HIS DUE

Carmen Cavallero was, along with Eddy Duchin, the ultimate antecedent and role model for Liberace, an arpeggio-spinning, glissando-wielding, sustaining-pedal obsessed 'light' pianist. As part of my continuing education in the world of 'society pianists'--which is my planned next career--I offer this faintly absurd 45RPM recording of Cavallero doing selections from the immortal 'Guys and Dolls' score by Frank Loesser. I can only imagine Loesser's reaction to the record--though he may well have liked it as it doesn't jazz things up and thus impinge on his vaunted melodies. The Latin playboy Cavallero, by the way, was in fact born in Brooklyn as Max Calvinsky and was the son of a singing waiter on Delancey Street named Baruch Calvinsky. His mother was a seamstress named Sadie Calvinsky (nee Porchnik). And Bob' Cavallero's your uncle.

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