Al Fike The Modern Minstrel Man 1912 - 1996

CHAPTER ONE

Remembering “The Al Fike Show”

“What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play. Life is a Cabaret, old chum, come to the Cabaret…come taste the wine, come hear the band, come blow your horn, start celebrating right this way your table’s waiting…no use permitting some prophet of doom to wipe every smile away. Come hear the music play. Life is a Cabaret, old chum, come to the Cabaret.”

From the 1966 musical and 1972 film Cabaret by John Kander and Fred Ebb

Al Fike, the Modern Minstrel Man, was known for nearly 50 years as the small-town Missouri schoolteacher turned entertainer who kept vaudeville alive long after most folks had forgotten about it.  His renditions of vaudevillian classics and impersonations of stars Cab Calloway, Jimmy Durante, George M. Cohan, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Ted Lewis, Sophie Tucker, and Nellie Lutcher won him legions of fans nationwide.

Visit any one of his shows, such as this sample one that follows (performed on March 12, 1991) and one can easily see why.

Al happened to be entertaining that night for a gathering of business folks at an annual event in Missouri. He began his show just like he had countless times before during his more than four decades of coast-to-coast entertaining. In his semi-retirement years, Al often did shows like this particular one for conferences and dinner meetings. Al’s old high-profile nightclub-circuit days might have been over, but for Al Fike, entertaining somewhere somehow would continue as long as he had breath left to sing.

Sing he did.

Dressed in a bright blue dinner jacket, Al belted out an old favorite vocal in his mesmerizing deep, melodic voice, “So, you met someone who sets you back on your heels, goody goody. So, you met someone and now you know how it feels, goody goody.”

Then, he waved off his musical partner Larry Wegner, who was meanwhile masterfully handling the keyboards, and said to the audience, “If you don’t goody I have you stand up and do it all by yourself. I have five picked out and they are looking at me like this--oh my goodness, we’ve got to goody goody now. It won’t hurt you it will help you, even if you are dressed up! Now get ready. SOOO, you met someone who set you back on your heels, goody goody.  Wasn’t bad. Let’s make it great. The ceiling is low so let’s make a lot of noise.”

Larry sings harmony, and Al says, “Now, we’re getting warmed up. That’s what we want.”

After one more chorus of ‘Goody Goody’, Al begins talking to the audience, almost everyone of them now under his spell. As anyone who ever saw The Al Fike Show live knows, it never took Al long to capture an audience, no matter how cold or hard sell.

Al started nearly every show in his later years with this same introduction, “First, let me tell you I am a native of Missouri. I was born in Forest City, Missouri, population 251, a little town north of St. Joe about 35 miles.  I can see people wonder how old I really am. I don’t tell people but I give them this hint--if you can figure out when the Titanic sank, you will know exactly how old I am. I did that the other night and I saw a lady elbowing the man next to her and saying, ‘When did it sink, when did it sink?’ Those of you, who know, pass it up and down.”

With that, Al’s show was off to a fast start. Before the audience knew what had happened, two hours had passed with not a single number repeated. Al would take a “sandbox” break, as he liked to say, and come back to entertain some more, still never repeating a song.