Bobby Short

From the 1930s into the 2000s, nightclub performer Bobby Short delivered interpretations of pre-rock standards, concentrating on compositions by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Noël Coward, and Rodgers & Hart while supplying his own piano backing. As the archetypal cabaret figure, the impeccably dressed Short, whose name regularly appeared on best-dressed rosters, rendered lyrics with precise clarity in a husky baritone, charming affluent patrons especially during his long tenure at the upscale Cafe Carlyle inside Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, where he held the stage from 1968 until 2004. Although live appearances defined his primary arena, he also issued recordings on Atlantic Records, Telarc, and additional imprints while making sporadic excursions into film, television roles, and stage musicals.

Born Robert Waltrip Short in Danville, Illinois, as the ninth of ten children to coal miner Rodman Jacob Short and domestic Myrtle (Render) Short, the future entertainer—known from childhood as Bobby—developed an early fascination with the household piano and, aside from limited formal instruction, remained largely self-taught. He launched his professional career in local roadhouses at eight or nine, soon appearing at society gatherings clad in a white tuxedo. In July 1936, at age eleven, booking agents noticed him and, with his mother’s consent, arranged his move to Chicago for vaudeville and radio work. After completing grade school in June 1937, he took engagements in Cleveland and Toledo before reaching New York City, where he performed at the Frolics Cafe in October, at La Grande Pomme, and at additional venues nationwide; he returned to Danville in summer 1938 to begin high school and restricted himself to local performances for several years thereafter. Upon graduating in 1942 he committed fully to entertainment, opening that July at Chicago’s Capitol Lounge and then working in Cleveland, Omaha, and Los Angeles, where he settled in 1943. By the next year he was active in Milwaukee and St. Louis, and in spring 1945 he served as opening act for four weeks at New York’s Blue Angel before heading back to California via Phoenix, appearing at the Haig and the Café Gala for the next several years. While at the Haig in the late 1940s or early 1950s he cut a record sold exclusively at the club; he also supplied an uncredited vocal on the film musical Call Me Mister, released January 1951, performing “Going Home Train.”

Short relocated to Paris in 1952, playing the Mars Club and Spivy’s while also appearing at London’s Embassy Club throughout the year. He came back to the United States for a Chicago run at the Black Orchid, returned to Los Angeles and the Café Gala, and recorded the 10-inch Atlantic album Bobby Short Loves Cole Porter. His first full-length Atlantic LP, Songs by Bobby Short, taped in March 1955 and featuring seven Vernon Duke compositions out of thirteen tracks, carried liner notes by Duke himself when issued later that year. Beginning an eighteen-week engagement at New York’s Beverly Club in February 1956, he established that city as his base. From May 9 to May 27, 1956, he made his Broadway debut in the City Center’s limited revival of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, singing “Too Darn Hot” at the opening of the second act. Atlantic released his second 12-inch LP, Bobby Short, in 1957; material from the same late-summer and fall 1956 sessions supplied his third album, Speaking of Love, issued in 1958. Winter 1956–1957 found him at the Red Carpet, followed by Le Cupidon. Atlantic added a horn section for summer 1957 sessions intended as a two-LP project, yet only the single disc Sing Me a Swing Song appeared as his fourth album in 1958, with remaining tracks later surfacing in 1971 as Nobody Else But Me.

Short resumed top billing at the Blue Angel on November 14, 1957, at a weekly salary of one thousand dollars, continuing there intermittently until 1963. Between late 1958 and early 1959 he recorded his fifth full-length Atlantic release, The Mad Twenties, devoted to 1920s material. Concurrently he appeared at the Living Room and the Weylin Hotel, taping the live Bobby Short on the East Side at the latter in March 1959 before moving to the Arpeggio; additional summer work took him to California, Florida, and Chicago in the early 1960s. In March 1962, alongside LaVern Baker and Chris Connor, he recorded the score of Richard Rodgers’s No Strings for an “After Theatre Version” album. June 1963 brought My Personal Property, an album of Cy Coleman songs. His final Blue Angel show occurred July 10, 1963, after which he transferred to the Café Ambassador at the Sheraton East Hotel. In early 1964 he joined Blue Angel co-owner Herbert Jacoby in purchasing the French restaurant Caprice and began performing there; the venture collapsed after fifteen months, leaving Short financially depleted amid the broader nightclub decline triggered by television and rock & roll. He worked scattered dates across the country, including Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Chicago, and during winter 1965–1966 joined the second edition of Ben Bagley’s off-Broadway revue The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter at Square East in Greenwich Village. Painted Smiles recorded the production live; freed temporarily from Atlantic, Short also contributed to Bagley’s various-artists composer anthologies Cole Porter Revisited, George Gershwin Revisited, Irving Berlin Revisited, Jerome Kern Revisited, and Rodgers and Hart Revisited, Vol. 2. Subsequent club work included L’Intrigue on West 56th Street, a return to the Living Room, Paul’s Mall in Boston, and a ten-week 1966 summer stint at London’s Playboy Club; that same year he appeared in a television production of the revue Pins and Needles.

Short’s fortunes shifted decisively in spring 1968 when the Carlyle Hotel, seeking a temporary substitute for longtime Cafe Carlyle pianist George Feyer, followed Atlantic president Ahmet Ertegun’s recommendation and engaged him for the vacation period. His immediate popularity prompted the hotel to retain him permanently once Feyer’s contract ended, scheduling three shows nightly for eight months annually—later adjusted to two nightly shows across two three-month seasons in fall and spring. In May 1968 he received second billing to Mabel Mercer at Town Hall concerts recorded by Atlantic as the double LP Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short at Town Hall; the success led to a repeat engagement the following year, yielding Second Town Hall Concert. Atlantic commissioned the new solo studio album Jump for Joy, released in 1969. The thirteen-year-old Nobody Else But Me was reissued, and in 1972 Short revisited Cole Porter with the double LP Bobby Short Loves Cole Porter, whose supporting Avery Fisher Hall concert propelled it onto the Billboard pop chart. Atlantic then issued two-disc sets: Bobby Short Is Mad About Noël Coward (1972), Bobby Short Is K-RA-ZY About Gershwin (1973), Live at the Cafe Carlyle (1974), and Bobby Short Celebrates Rodgers & Hart (1975). He published the memoir Black and White Baby in 1971.

Over subsequent decades Short embodied New York elegance and sophistication through his tuxedoed presentation and repertoire of standards, attracting advertisers who cast him in television commercials and print campaigns for perfume and designer jeans. Additional performing opportunities followed: he acted in the February 1979 ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations and served as producer and participant in the May 1980 Broadway revue Black Broadway at Town Hall. Television guest appearances encompassed The Love Boat, Tattingers, In the Heat of the Night, Central Park West, Frasier, and 7th Heaven. Film credits included onscreen performances of Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again” at the Cafe Carlyle in Woody Allen’s 1989 Hannah and Her Sisters and the inclusion of his recording of Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” over the titles of Allen’s 1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery; further soundtrack placements appeared in Savages (1972) and Love Affair (1994). He also acted in the features For Love or Money (1993) and Man of the Century (1999) as well as the television movies Hardhat and Legs (1980), A Night on the Town (1983), and Blue Ice (1992). A second memoir, Bobby Short: The Life and Times of a Saloon Singer, written with Robert Mackintosh, appeared in 1995.

On disc, Short moved to Elektra/Asylum for 1982’s Moments Like This, which charted on the jazz list, before returning to Atlantic for the 1987 tribute Guess Who’s in Town: Bobby Short Performs the Songs of Andy Razaf. Several years passed without new recordings until he joined Telarc in the early 1990s, beginning with the live Late Night at the Cafe Carlyle (March 1992), which reached the jazz charts and earned a 1992 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. Subsequent Telarc releases comprised Swing That Music (August 1993) with the Howard Alden–Dan Barrett Quartet, the live Songs of New York (1995), the jazz-charting Celebrating 30 Years at the Cafe Carlyle (January 1998), How’s Your Romance (January 1999), and You’re the Top: The Love Songs of Cole Porter (June 1999). He recorded the mostly instrumental Piano for the Surrounded by Entertainment label in 2001 and sang the title track on clarinetist Ken Peplowski’s 2004 album Easy to Remember.

Short declared his retirement from the Cafe Carlyle after a final New Year’s Eve 2004 performance yet consented to return in May 2005 for the club’s fiftieth anniversary; instead he succumbed to leukemia at age eighty on March 21, 2005. In a December 1970 New Yorker profile, Whitney Balliett characterized him as “one of the last example (and indubitably the best) of the cafe singer or the supper-club singer or ‘troubadour.’” Although other interpreters such as Michael Feinstein, Harry Connick, Jr., and Peter Cincotti later emerged, Balliett’s judgment of Short’s preeminence in his era remained undisputed.