Background

Background

"I was a musical kid. My yearbook from nursery school referred to me as 'Our Own Sinatra.'"

Eric Comstock, despite his Manhattan veneer, was raised in the suburbs. His parents met and courted in New York City's West Village, but they soon moved to New Jersey, where Eric's father, a newspaper editor, and his wife raised their two children, Eric and Kate. Although brother and sister both eventually made their homes in New York City, Eric's early connection with the city was slim, even though he lived only about a half-hour away.

"I didn't really learn the magic of the city except what I witnessed on episodes of 'The Odd Couple'."

Suburbs or not, there was music and theater in the Comstock genes. Eric's Australian great-grandfather had been a conductor and composer, and Eric's father himself had tried acting for awhile. Eric remembers his father singing, "Swinging On a Star," and "You Call Everybody Darling," and an Ink Spots hit, "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)." Apparently the theatrical bent remained, for even as a child, Eric loved hearing the songs and loved performing them, as he said,

"Showing off and having a good time."

The love of music only increased as Eric grew older, learning as many songs as he could. By age ten, he had become fascinated with the phonograph. His parents didn't have a large record collection, but, as Eric says, paraphrasing Spencer Tracy, what records there was were "cherce." Eric played them all --- Bobby Short, Noel Coward, a couple of Fats Waller, Fred Astaire from the RKO pictures.

"I didn't always understand all the lyrics, but from the moment I heard those things, I knew this was superior stuff... It was always the words. I was singing long before I was playing."

His piano lessons began at age ten, and by 15, Eric was involved in musicals and songbooks. At Ridgewood High School, he performed in shows, never really interested in the acting, and not even singing that much; what he liked best was playing piano for rehearsals. He did not read music very well, and he learned key signatures and chord symbols largely by ear.

"My parents took us to the arts, but it was always New Jersey arts. When Bobby Short played in Hackensack, we went. The Cafe Carlyle was for millionaires, and my parents said, 'We're not millionaires, and we don't go there'. That was their feeling."

As a young man, Eric absorbed that feeling of limitations due to circumstances.

"I am now, just now, transcending (that feeling)."

After graduating from Ridgewood High School, Eric attended George Washington University, where he arranged some musical revues. By now his musical repertoire had grown.

"I still didn't sing much, but I knew a lot of songs, and I was always looking for more."

During his college years, Eric grew more and more interested in theater and Broadway, until finally he transferred to New York University. That first summer in New York City , he went to work at Tower Records in the Village where a fellow employee was another musicologist, Will Friedwald. Eric worked in the vocal section, Will in jazz.

"Through (Will), I got to hear other sounds. Mel Torme was my bridge to another way of singing theatrical music -- more swing-oriented, more interesting harmonies...He did the show tunes in a very exciting, fresh way for me, and I was hungry for that."

After years of concentrating on piano, on arranging, and learning a prodigious number of songs, Eric still tended to keep his singing on the back burner. But now, hearing jazz, and especially, Mel Torme, he changed his attitude and therefore, the course of his life.

"I decided, 'wait a minute,' Mel doesn't sound like Alfred Drake, Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae don't sound like Alfred Drake. They do (theatrical songs) their way and it works."

For Eric, the irony is that back when he was 10, the four singers he'd listened to also had their own untraditional way of singing -- Fats Waller, Fred Astaire, Bobby Short, Noel Coward. And they were successful at it.

"It took over ten years to realize I could do this. And I began to get comfortable in front of audiences."

He saw a career in music ahead of him. And his family supported his ambition.

"My parents have been extremely encouraging to me. I owe it to them that I do what I do."

Career

"I was a clone for several years."

Bobby Short and Steve Ross, Eric admits, were major influences on what he was to do, but when Eric actual began his career, his cabaret performances were not solos, but duets with his sister, Kate. Kate and Eric Comstock They worked in a club called Panache.

"We were written up in our hometown paper as 'The Singing Siblings'."

Today, Kate is married with two young sons. She lives in Manhattan with her family, no longer involved in professional singing. Eric, meanwhile, found work next performing on cruise ships.

"It was a great way to get road chops and learn to play better, and learn how to entertain -- night after relentless night. During a four-month or six-month season, you get three nights off in port. The rest of the time you're working."

He always traveled with a stack of music to study and lots of cassettes to listen to. Traveling around the world, he found that the great American song recordings were available in most countries, and admits he wasn't the greatest tourist in the world, since he was primarily interested in hunting up new recordings.

He worked on the ships for about two and a half years before returning to Manhattan and settling down. Or so he thought.

"In 1994, I got an offer I couldn't refuse. That was to lead a Peter Duchin Orchestra on a world cruise. I thought, 'I am an idiosyncratic solo pianist, and they are going to pay me to work with a rhythm section. I 'll get more jazz chops and just relax, knowing the rhythm section's just going on."

He accepted the offer and so it was back to sea for four months, and now a new influence came into his life, superceding even Bobby Short and Steve Ross, the music of Duke Ellington.

"I never claim to be a jazz man...Some people would think I don't swing. But I think I swing a lot more than a lot of guys who do what I do. I love Noel Coward and Duke Ellington equally, and I don't think there's any inconsistency there. They both have a lot in common, actually. They're both bon vivants."

Like you?

"I hope so. I have a good time."

Working in a piano bar has its own hazards. A quick wit helps. That he has. If a champagne cork pops -- Eric retorts. People chatting, well, he knows that's part of the game. He has a photographic memory, and if he recognizes a songwriter or musician in the room, even someone not well known, he will connect the person with a favorite song and work his name into it. But there is one annoyance -- when someone he doesn't know perches beside him on the piano bench. Worse yet, if they sing, understandably distracting, especially if Eric is doing a ballad.

Like the ballad that is, he admits, the "Melancholy Baby" of his repertoire, a song that reaches deep inside. His "Melancholy Baby" is a song called, "If I Love Again." This is one of the songs that he presents as a gift to his audience.

"Number one with an audience is acceptance of what I love, the songs that I love, and I hope they love the way I perform them too. What I crave the most is an audience of interested people, fellow song freaks for whom the song's the thing."

At one time, Eric was more "pandering," as he puts it, playing anything to catch the attention of even the most uncaring, ungiving listeners. Surprisingly, one night another pianist heard Eric playing what he calls, "The lowest common denominator of songs," anything to get to first base with these people. The other piano player came over and told Eric, in the most basic way, "You're treating us, and yourself, with contempt. You've got to (expletive deleted) us with love. Play what you love the most. Someone's out there listening, and they'll say, 'Wow, the guy cares about what he does.'" Then he went back to the bar. Eric never forgot that.

"Now, I care much more about the lyrics and more openly emotional material, not a lot of chestnuts. People don't seem to mind, which is great, because I believe in them so much. I believe I have good taste, and people seem to like these songs the first time that they hear them, which isn't true about a lot of songs."

Eric is always searching for new songs that reflect his life and experiences. While he admires the genius lyricists like Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter, more often in his shows, he plays the newer music of writers like John Wallowitch and some Portia Nelson. He mentions "And So It Goes," written by Billy Joel, and "Don't Touch Me There," by Jess Korman. Eric’s most recent CD, No One Knows, includes songs by Paul Simon, Oscar Brown, Jr., Billy Strayhorn, Charlie Haden, Benny Carter and Duke Ellington.

He has also moved into coordinating shows with other performers, notably the successful, Our Sinatra, which opened in The Blue Angel as an off-Broadway show in 1999, has since moved to another theatre, and has a tour on the road. In 2001, he joined jazz talents Bill Henderson and Dena DeRose to present, Made For the Movies: A Hollywood Songbook, which received critical acclaim.

"My heroes still are Astaire and Coward, and those songwriters and performers who primarily flourished in the '30's. But I don't have an interest anymore in performing a lot of my repertoire in that style."

Following his own progression seems to be working out for Eric Comstock , who says,

"I've been very lucky and have generally made a pretty good living at it."

-Elizabeth Ahlfors