Armand Hug - pianist
There is something special about a piano bar. First, as music historian Jack Stewart notes, the piano really gets the patron’s attention. “The piano is the entertainment ” they turn off the television.”
New Orleans has always been a good town for piano bars, the piano entertainers of the past left their mark on New Orleans memories.
Piano entertainers past and present all provide different takes on entertaining as a single. One of the best-known jazz pianists of the past was Armand Hug. Even Hug’s 1977 funeral was “a quiet kind of thing,” according to his sister-in-law Lee Baker. “That’s the way his music was. He’d play all kinds of things, but he always played them quiet.”
Armand Hug mainly played in a traditional New Orleans jazz style but he also had ragtime in his repertoire, a wide range of popular tunes he remembered and a fondness for jazz a little outside his usual zone.
Hug could read music but was mainly adept at “faking it.” Once he had a job at the Suburban Gardens in Johnny Dedroit’s band. The band was supposed to play “The Mexican Hat Dance” always a New Orleans favorite but Hug had trouble keeping up with the sheet music. Dedroit was not pleased and admitted he didn’t like “fakers.” On the next number, however, a girl singer wanted to sing “Who’s Sorry Now” but had no music with her. Armand Hug took over and Dedroit had to admit that the ability to fake it could be useful.
In the 1940s, Hug began his career as a solo performer, playing clubs and hotel nightspots. He was a fixture at the Royal Orleans in the St. Louis Street lobby in an area called the “Esplanade Room.” When arthritis stiffened his fingers, he had treatments, exercised and went on playing ” even earning an award from the Arthritis Foundation for his determination.
In a 1965 interview with jazz writer Charles Suhor, Armand Hug said, “Playing ragtime and Dixieland does not give you the full scope that you would really like to have. It doesn’t give you the real, full freedom of improvisation.” Playing solo piano would give an adventurous musician a lot of room to experiment.
From an article by Carolyn Kolb.
Source: Carolyn Kolb
