During our Southwest Road Trip, we passed through Palm Springs, stopping in to interview Rik DeRose. Rik shared some amazing stories from his musical career, ranging from a stint as a “pipe organ & pizza” performer, to Las Vegas glitz.
Rik’s musical development and early interest in playing the organ started, like it often did for kids in the 1960’s and 70’s, with an electronic home organ at a relative’s home. In Rik’s case, it was his aunt’s. Rik would learn new songs from the little “teach-yourself” songbooks that were often sold for use with those home organs. Later, Rik would get formal lessons, and his teacher insisted that he also learn piano technique, which turned out to be a valuable skill later on.
Rik’s first encounter with a real pipe organ was at Ye Olde Pizza Joynt in Hayward, California – the restaurant that kicked off the pizza/pipe-organ craze.
I was about 14 years old at that time. I was at the Kennedy Park across the street, on a family barbecue, and I saw the big sign with the big pipe organ on it, and I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go see what that’s about’.
And so I went in there and saw this beautiful, ornate, white and gold, three manual organ, which I’d never seen before.
It was during the day, so there was nobody playing, but I returned later in the evening to actually hear the man, Bill Langford, was playing the organ at that time.
It was amazing. I couldn’t believe that he could do what he could do. It was just unbelievable.
He had all the percussion instruments up on the walls and the ceiling, and it’s first time I ever saw anything like that, and so I started going there on a regular basis, and I wanted to take lessons.
Rik was a bit intimidated to ask for lessons, as Bill was quite a celebrity –
I wouldn’t think anybody like that would be teaching anybody, because you would you would go there on a Friday or Saturday night and there’d be a line around the building to get in. He was like a big star.
Eventually, I had the nerve to leave him a note in his tip jug, asking him if he would teach me, and I didn’t figure I’d ever hear from him. And believe it or not, a few days later, he called the house and I just couldn’t believe it – and then I started taking lessons from Bill Langford.
At first, Rik’s lessons were at home, on an upgraded electronic organ that Bill helped Rik’s family pick out. But as Rik continued to improve, the time came to learn on the real thing –
I eventually was given the keys to the Pizza Joynt and the code to the alarm. And the owner, Carsten Henningsen, allowed me to come in when they were closed, which was like after 1 a.m. I used to go up there and practice throughout the night, from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. – until the cleaning crew came in – as often as I could, maybe three or four times a week.
Rik’s first gig as a musician was in a shopping mall, demonstrating the very same home organs that got him started.
I started playing at the Fremont Hub, which is a shopping mall in Fremont, California. There was a music store there called Allegro Music, and they started having me – I believe I was about 15, 16 at the time – playing an organ outside of the store to draw attention, to come into the mall and look at the organs.
Rik continued to refine his theatre organ skills, and began to substitute for Bill at the Pizza Joynt on occasion. A few years on, after Bill moved to Indiana to work at Cardinal Music Palace, Rik received a visit from Carsten Henningsen, offering him a full time job as the Pizza Joynt’s organist.
I had learned all of Bill’s routines that he played there, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo with the train effects, the Wild West Show, the circus song, Space Odyssey, Star Wars, all the novelty things that all the kids liked. I learned everything that Bill did that made the place popular for the kids.
The best part about playing at the Pizza Joynt was that it was small, and it didn’t have any video games or pinball machines or anything like that. It was just the organ at the time.
When it got later in the evening, when the kids left, then you could really play beautiful stuff on the organ. That’s what I was in it for, to do that. I wasn’t crazy about having to play all that other stuff, but you had to. Later in the evening, with just the adults in a small intimate place like that, then you could do all the beautiful things you can do on a pipe organ.
The rigors of performing nightly can be taxing, but Rik had a lot of energy and picked up a day gig to supplement his income, playing a grand piano at Nordstrom to entertain shoppers. This allowed Rik to continue to develop his piano skills.
After his time at the Pizza Joynt, Rik played at other pizza restaurants, such as Bella Roma, Captain’s Galley, Organ Power Pizza, and Pizza Machine. Rik was in such demand that he received an offer to move to Billings, Montana, to open for a new Pipes & Pizza restaurant there. But Montana and Rik weren’t well-suited for each other.
Bill invited Rik to come play at the Cardinal Music Palace in Ft. Wayne, to play a daytime shift, but Rik’s style clashed with the older, more conservative crowd:
There’s like 500 people in the audience, and it’s like a sea of ears and toupees. And I had long hair. And they’re very conservative people. And I’m trying to play current music at the time – I didn’t go over well there.
Rik decided it was time to make the leap into becoming a full-time pianist.
I decided I’d start playing the piano, because at that time there were five-star restaurants which all had pianos, and hotel lobbies had pianos.
I needed to work full-time. This was not a hobby.
I got my first gig at the Hilton. And then I played clubs, bars, whatever I could find throughout the Bay Area for the longest time, the Mayes Oyster House on Polk Street, San Francisco, whatever I could find, whatever I could do.
Rik’s Bay Area piano gigs would lead to a chance meeting resulting in taking a big career leap – and a big risk –
One night, these two guys came in from Las Vegas. They were both musicians as well. And they were telling me what was down there. I took a trip down to Las Vegas, and didn’t have anything lined up. I rented a cheap motel, and it happened to be right across the street from the Debbie Reynolds Hotel.
There was a shopping mall on the Vegas strip, and I didn’t know anybody there. I didn’t have any connection or anything lined up for a job or auditions or anything.
I saw that the mall had this white grand piano, but it was playing by itself. It was during Christmas time. I went into the office of the mall, and I said, ‘You know, you’ve got this piano playing by itself. Would you mind if I played the piano instead of it playing by itself?’ I told them I just moved here from San Francisco, and if I could hand out resumes for people that might be interested, private parties or whatever, I’ll do it for free.
Working for free for “exposure” is a common way that artists get exploited, but in this case, Rik was instigating the gig, and saw it as an opportunity. Things didn’t go easy at first, as money was running out, and the cheap motel on the strip was about the best living arrangement he could afford. Then, opportunity struck:
One day I was playing, and there was this guy up in the next level watching – watching me for the longest time. And he came down, over to the piano, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Joey Singer. I’m Debbie Reynolds’ stage pianist, and producer of her show.’ He invited me over to see the show. That led me to being able to talk to Debbie. I started playing in her hotel.
Back in those days, they had dinner and a show. And she was doing her show in her hotel. There was a beautiful showroom that her son, Todd Fisher, had put together.
Debbie hired me to be the dinner part of her show, when people were dining before she’d come on stage.
That dinner show gig didn’t pay much, but it came with the two best perks a performer could ask for: A room, and access to the kitchen.
I didn’t have a place. I was living in a motel. And so she gave me a room as part of the deal. She gave me a room in her hotel, which was right next to Rip Taylor, because he was in her show. He was a great, hilarious guy to hang out with and spend every day with.
Incidentally, there’s an Organ Grinder connection here, as Rip Taylor on at least one occasion visited Organ Grinder Denver.
So she gave me my first break – Debbie Reynolds gave me my first break in Las Vegas.
Debbie eventually lost her hotel and moved back to L.A. But before she closed it down, she took all of us who worked there out to dinner. We all had a moment to spend time with her to talk and say goodbye and everything. It was the greatest hotel. It really was. It was really small compared to the big hotels in Vegas. She had her Hollywood museum in there and it was a really cool place.
Anyway, I was telling her that ‘I’m sorry you lost the hotel’. She goes, ‘Oh honey, what am I going to do? I’ve got to do something to make some loot.’ And I told her that I knew that her fans were also really into the show Will & Grace. And I said, ‘Debbie, you’ve got to get on Will & Grace.’ The show was big then. And she goes, ‘Really? You think?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you should’.
And obviously, she then played Grace’s mother on Will & Grace. That was my idea and I turned her on to that. She helped me out when I was looking for work and stuff. So that was that. She went back to L.A. and I moved on.
And by “moved on”, Rik means another leap into an incredible opportunity –
And I was able, right after that, to get an audition for the Bellagio Hotel as one of the pianists there.
It was at the Petrossian Bar, which pretty much open to the the casino and the check-in and the hall of flowers. So it was anybody that walked in your scene – it wasn’t like you had to go into a separate bar room or something like that.
They had this Steinway. Steve Wynn had picked out some redwood tree, and had the piano made from it. I think, a hundred and fifty thousand dollar deal or something. He wanted all-acoustic in this particular part of the hotel. He wanted no synthesizers, no singing, no nothing.
One day I called and a lady picked up the phone. She’s wasn’t the music director. She was Steve Wynn’s personal assistant. I told her I was trying to find a job playing the piano. And she said, ‘Actually, we’re looking for somebody to do a morning shift here. Why don’t you come down tomorrow and talk to me and play the piano?’ I went down there the next day, dressed in a formal tuxedo, and I did my audition and she got up and said, ‘Would you like to come with me and sign a contract?’ I couldn’t believe it. I really wanted that gig so bad. And I got it.
And while Rik was now working in a new, luxurious resort, he also landed a job that was pure, original Las Vegas glitz –
In Las Vegas, in the [Bellagio] contract, you couldn’t play in any other hotel, but you could play in other businesses, privately owned businesses. You could play at Joe Blow’s Bar or whatever.
I saw the Liberace Museum, and I was just visiting it like anybody else. And if you tell them you’re a pianist, they’ll let you play. You have to sign some kind of a little thing – if you did any damage or you’re responsible, blah, blah, blah. And so I played, and they asked me if I would like a job there playing the piano. It was minimum wage, but, I got to play Liberace’s pianos, the rhinestone piano, the mirrored piano, all his pianos that they had in the museum – for the tourists as they came around.
It was amazing, because to idolize somebody like that when you’re so young, seeing him on TV, and then you’re actually playing his pianos, that you saw on TV when you were a little kid.
While those many musical career leaps were occurring, Rik was also dabbling in electronic pop music, and recorded a cassette in the late 80’s, that would be “discovered” decades later –
It’s called ‘Rik, Matter of Time’, and I did it 36 years ago.
It was in some of the Bay Area little record shops and mom and pop shops like that. Well, about three years ago, this record label called Dream Chimney posted a track from it, and I saw it on YouTube. I said, ‘that’s one of my songs!’. So I found out how to get in touch with them and asked, what’s this about? He said, ‘Well, we just found this and we posted it.’
Long story short, the owner of the label wanted that whole album and I signed a contract with Dream Chimney and they handled that. ‘Rik, Matter of Time‘, is a 36 year old solo instrumental synthesized album now.
After all of that, including being a pianist in the Las Vegas limelight, Rik’s heart still belongs to the theatre pipe organ –
You know, a piano is a piano. An organ is an orchestra. Hence the name, the ‘Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra‘. So it was really a letdown for me to have to make the switch to piano. I did it because I had to make a living.
But I’ll never forget the organ days.
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