If being addicted to the tunes of Cole Porter, the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart means you’re living in the past, 72-year-old Bobby Short is proud to list his address as 1940. “If you really want to raise my ire, you’ll get into the 1990s,” says the legendary pianist, who, like the late Frank Sinatra, describes himself as a “saloon singer.” Short, who as a kid toured as a vaudeville act known as the Miniature King of Swing, has been a cabaret fixture in New York City nightclubs for decades. The Danville native recently finished applying his vaunted voice to an album of Porter standards. He performs at 8 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and at 9 and 11 p.m. March 12 and 13 at Yvette Wintergarden, 311 S. Wacker Drive. Cover is $50, not counting a two-drink minimum; dinner packages are available. 312-408-1242.
Q. Why did you switch to a nine-piece orchestra after so many years with a trio?
A. I thought it was time to change things around. I’ve been with the trio format for a very long time. I was getting very bored with it because of the limitations it imposed. What I really wanted was a big band to punch things out for me. The orchestra energizes me more, and I’m working just as hard as ever before. With all that music behind me I feel compelled to stand up and Cab Calloway myself to death.
Q. What’s the difference between a saloon and a lounge?
A. They’re just labels. I use the word saloon because that’s just a generic term for a place where people go to drink. I think in a true nightclub there is an attention paid to the importance of the performer. In a lounge you find the performer is there as part of the ambience. Cocktail lounges had the music that was meant to be felt if not particularly heard.
Q. You’ve said that when you were growing up in Chicago, the blues were unknown to you. At what point did you go back and study singers like Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith?
A. As a matter of fact, I knew about Bessie Smith when I was 17, 18 years old. I had a friend in Chicago – this is a funny story – who was a North Shore young lady. One day she came over to my house with a stack of 78s – Bessie Smiths. Her mother decided that jazz had poisoned her brain, and she brought all her records to me. That’s how I came to listen to my first Bessie Smith record.
Q. Where in entertainment today do you see the influence of vaudeville?
A. One thing about vaudeville – you didn’t have two singers on the bill, you had two singers, a juggler, a comedian, an acrobat. They’re all gone now. The last of that, I think, was on the old Ed Sullivan show. I can’t think where people would go to find elements of vaudeville in today’s world. I have a man who does upholstery for me from time to time, he’s a nice little fellow, I guess he could be a couple of years older than I. He and his family traveled with a troupe of trained dogs. But that’s over. There are no more dog acts.
