Lasting Notes : Years After He Began Performing, Don Randi Still Packs Them In--and He Still Enjoys It

Though pianist/composer/studio musician Don Randi lives in a light and spacious two-story home in Agoura, you could say his real residence is his dark and tiny Baked Potato nightspot in North Hollywood. There, for four nights each week, Randi sits at a Steinway “B”--hooked up to various synthesizers--playing his own style of contemporary jazz with his group, Quest.

“In past years, I’ve worked six, seven nights,” he said in a conversation in his music room, where plaques of covers from some of his 20 LPs line the walls, and a bank of electronic keyboards and a new 12-track recording-mixing unit occupies one corner. “Now that I can work four, I really love it. I enjoy playing for people.” (Randi is a co-owner of the club.)

And they seem to enjoy him. The 51-year-old pianist, who has been a regular performer in Los Angeles since he was 19, holds forth most Wednesdays through Saturdays, and he continues to draw sizable crowds, more than some bigger names who work the off-nights.

Good Crowds

“A lot of the time, there’ll be artists that you think should do well, and they don’t,” he said. “Then here we are. We’re not getting that much airplay except for old albums, and we still draw good crowds.”

Randi, who was born in New York, started with the classical regimen at 6. Several years later, in 1954, he moved to Southern California. He became interested in jazz when he heard pianist Horace Silver’s “Senor Blues” while working as a stock boy at a record distribution company a year later. And though he still plays classics at home--”I love Chopin and Bartok”-- jazz has won his heart.

“There’s nothing like the spontaneity of playing jazz, where you have the freedom that one doesn’t have playing any other kind of music,” Randi said. “When you’re embellishing on something you’ve already played, and your mind is just going, it’s a wonderful outlet. You take a song and make it different or give it a different feeling. Try playing a Chopin etude at half speed in concert and the audience will shoot you. You can’t take those liberties.”

Favorite Performers

Citing such favorite pianists as Nat “King” Cole, Oscar Peterson, Ray Bryant and Erroll Garner, Randi readily admits to a strong penchant for emotional playing.

“I love blues,” he said. “I also like gospel music, and I worked early R&B; and rock dates, and I have been influenced by those. All that stuff comes into your mind when you’re playing. Blues is a soulful feeling that comes from within. It’s not a minor mode or the blues progression, it’s just that funky feeling. That’s the way I like to play.”

Being ensconced at the Baked Potato is but one item on Randi’s musical menu: He regularly composes sound track material for television--most recently “Mike Hammer” (CBS) and “The Bunjee Adventure” (ABC)-- and occasionally film. He still works as a studio keyboardist, although these days he’s not nearly as busy as he was during his ‘60s heydays, when he appeared on scores of classic rock and pop dates.

The ‘60s

Randi was hot in the 1960s, waxing date after date. “I never saw my wife,” he said, laughing. “One week, I did 26 sessions and did some arranging for 11 of them.”

Randi’s resume includes such now-famous tunes as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans’ “Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah,” the Crystals’ “He’s A Rebel,” Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” and the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.” Many of these were done with producer Phil Spector.

“Phil and I became friends, and I was part of that Wall Of Sound he made,” said Randi, who was the bandleader for many Spector sessions. “He loved and could play jazz. Nobody knows this. He was studying (guitar) with Barney Kessel and Howard Roberts. He knew the guitar as well as anyone.”

Fond Memories

Randi has more than a few memories of those times. “One day, a girl, 16, 17, comes up to me at the back of Gold Star Studios (just off the corner of Vine Street and Santa Monica Boulevard) and asks, ‘Mr. Randi, can you get me into the date?’ ” he recalled. “I said to Sonny Bono, who was Phil’s promotion man, ‘Let her sit in there.’ ‘Her’ was Cher. She’d never been in a studio in her life.

“I did the first Stone Poneys date--”Beat of a Different Drum”--with Linda Rondstadt. I played harpsichord and piano. She came in, her feet were dirty, her hair in knots. And there she was, raw, and she got up and just did it. She’d never worked before an orchestra before.”

While he was working the studios during the day, from 1959-1970, he was leading a trio at Sherry’s, a small room just off the Sunset Strip on Crescent Heights Boulevard. The room, said Randi, was populated by both top jazz pianists--Hampton Hawes, Tommy Flanagan, Mike Melvoin and Pete Jolly, among them--and people connected with the Mafia.

Book Reveals

“My wife was reading a book by (mobster) ‘Jimmy The Weasel’ Fratianno,” Randi said, “and it said, ‘Sherry’s this, and Sherry’s that and the meeting was at Sherry’s.’ She came in and said, ‘What kind of place were you were working in, you never told me,” and I said, ‘You never asked.’ ”

Even though the music business can be tough--”I sometimes call it a root canal without Novocain. There are a lot of dates that are like chalk on a blackboard, and you say, ‘My God, why am I here?’ “--Randi seems satisfied with his career choice. “What else could I do like this?” he asked. “To be able to work at something that’s creative, do something you really enjoy and get paid for it. If I can give somebody a little enjoyment from what I can do, what a gift, how lucky, how fortunate. What would make you want to stop doing that?”