Video: Grover Kemble as Jimmy Durante
By Kevin Coughlin
Sometimes you have to let an idea… marinate for awhile.
That’s what happened with Grover Kemble’s Durante! tribute show.
About 30 years ago, he put the notion on the back burner. You can see how it’s turned out on Feb. 29, 2016, at the Morris Museum’s Bickford Theatre in Morris Township.
“A little while back an agent we know suggested a Jimmy Durante show for some retirement communities she was booking. Since I’m now the right age to do Durante, and have ‘been around the block’ in the entertainment field, it seemed like a good time to give it a go,” says Kemble, 67.
Best known as a silky-smooth jazz guitarist and vocalist, Kemble built a following in the ’70s with his trio Za Zu Zaz. Later, he toured with Sha-Na-Na. Kemble’s résumé includes stops at Carnegie Hall (with jazz icon John Pizzarelli) and the Newport and Wolf Trap jazz festivals.
So what’s he doing playing a pug-faced, wise-cracking vaudevillian?
“I’ve always appreciated the old school entertainers from the great bygone eras in show business,” says Kemble, a Morris Plains resident.
“Folks in the biz back a few decades ago could do it all… sing a song, dance, crack some jokes, make you laugh and cry and play their butts off on their chosen instrument. They were complete packages of profoundly talented entertainment.
“Jimmy Durante had that and was unique in that he didn’t have the look of a star but used his wiseguy-but- lovable tongue-in-cheek humor and self-deprecating style to great advantage. He was loved by everybody and had no enemies, a rarity in the entertainment business.”
The same might be said for Kemble. He has mentored numerous performers, while easing the burdens of countless patients at the former Greystone Park State Psychiatric Hospital, where he ran art therapy programs for 25 years.
In Durante, Kemble thinks he has cornered the market on an overlooked legend at a time when boomers and seniors are flocking to retrospectives. One-man portrayals of Groucho Marx and Jack Lemmon have drawn fans to the Bickford in recent years.
“No one has done Jimmy Durante so I feel I’ve got a lock on this idea,” says Kemble, who is backed onstage by pianist Regan Ryzuk and bass player Tim Metz as Durante’s sidekicks, Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson.
Durante’s career spanned from speakeasies to Broadway, radio, recordings, Hollywood and television. He was a wilder character than many realize, according to Kemble, who attempts to take the audience back to the Club Durant, Durante’s Broadway Speakeasy in the Roaring Twenties.
“I hit the folks with lots of his original ragtime songs and singalong material interspersed with comedy bits and nostalgic sentimentality.
“I use Jimmy’s own words about his life and also the comedy bits I’ve borrowed liberally from many biographies about him, as well as his TV and radio shows,” says Kemble, who hopes to take the show across the country.
He has fine-tuned his act with 50 shows at local theaters, retirement communities, libraries, and seniors centers. Younger viewers also have responded favorably, he says, though he concedes “they may not always be familiar with who Jimmy Durante was.”
Kemble aims to correct that “Catastratroke,” as The Schnoz would say. And he’s prepared to crack as many jokes as it takes.
“I got a million of ’em!” he says.
DURANTE starring Grover Kemble plays The Bickford Theater at The Morris Museum on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, (Leap Year!) at 8 pm. Tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door. At 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morris Township. Call 973-971-3706.
