Under a Plastic Palm

Let me begin by saying nothing went wrong at the Nick Edenetti Show. The sound system did not fail in mid-song, the spotlight did not go up in smoke and we were not plunged into sudden and unexpected darkness. Even the food at Kelbo’s Polynesian hut was good, if you like baked beans and sticky chicken.

There were other positive factors, not the least of which was that no Frank Sinatra lawyer waited to serve Nick with papers for impersonating a living legend. Also, the audience consisted of more than the owner, a cook and three waiters. In fact, the place was jammed and the show, if not glorious, was at least accident-free.

What I’m trying to say is Ol’ Brown Eyes is back and he’s got it all together.

You remember Nick. He’s a saloon singer who does what he calls a Sinatra “playography,” which is to say a series of Frank’s songs interspersed with a little of Frank’s background.

Nick sounds a lot like Sinatra because he’s practiced sounding like him. In the right light, he looks a little like him too, all of which creates a proper mood for the aforementioned playography.

He began doing the show four years ago in a Burbank restaurant called the China Trader. I stopped by one night for Chinese food and was surprised to notice they were serving something called an Edenetti. It was on the menu just above the Szechwan pork.

As it turned out, Nick was a person, not a food, and he sang his heart out. I stayed to listen not because I was captivated by his voice but because I was the whole audience. It would be like everyone in Lincoln Center getting up and leaving in the middle of a Puccini opera.

When you’re an audience of one, you have certain responsibilities.

I got interested in Nick because he’s the last of a breed, a saloon singer playing the small clubs and strip joints from Miami Beach to L.A. Clubs like Gio’s and El Floridita and now Kelbo’s.

He’s been doing this for 25 years, and no matter what happens, Nick takes it with an equanimity of spirit that is rare among people in show biz. It’s a good thing. For awhile, disaster seemed to dog his footsteps.

In just about every club he played, either the sound or the lights went dead just as he was belting out a big Sinatra number, diminishing his voice to a non-amplified whisper and cloaking everyone in confused darkness until the circuit-breaker could be reset.

In one show, the power failed nine times, the meatball dinner went cold and even Nick seemed ready to give up singing and get a job somewhere as a bartender. But, like the guy who sweeps up after the circus elephants, he just couldn’t leave show biz.

He suddenly popped up doing the Sinatra playography at the Las Palmas Theatre in Hollywood. Hardly anyone noticed, however, until Ol’ Blue Eyes did Ol’ Brown Eyes the favor of his life. He threatened to sue him.

A lawyer for Sinatra warned Edenetti to cease and desist doing the Sinatra show, and the owner of Las Palmas shut him down. The irony was exquisite.

Ignored for years by just about everyone, Edenetti was suddenly news from coast to coast. The man he’d been impersonating with loving fidelity had, by a threat of legal action, turned Nick into a Famous Underdog.

It was like he had been touched by the Holy Spirit.

You know the rest. Sinatra finally agreed to let Nick do his show if he got it licensed, which Nick, of course, did. Then he opened last weekend at Kelbo’s, I mean elbo’s.

The “K” light was dead on the club’s neon sign. I noticed it as I drove up and I thought Not again! Was this going to be another night of power failures and dead mikes? Gimme a break.

Kelbo’s is a place in West L.A. which affects a Polynesian motif, complete with fake palm trees and tall rum drinks with little paper umbrellas floating on chunks of pineapple.

It reminded me of a bar in Hawaii where sailors used to go during the Big War to meet fat girls in sarongs. In fact, Kelbo’s has been around almost since the war and, if not famous, it’s pretty well-known.

Nick played in a room called the Coco-Bowl. I was seated next to an ersatz tree trunk with plastic palm fronds overhead. My wife, who accompanied me, saw me looking at the fake fronds, the umbrella drinks and a ring of little lights blinking overhead and said, “Poor Nick.”

Au contraire.

Ol’ Brown Eyes seemed right at home among the plastic palms. He sang with the enthusiasm of a kid, holding the mike in one hand and moving his free hand in a kind of waving motion, like Frank might do if he were playing Kelbo’s.

I don’t know if I’d want to make a living being someone else, but at least Edenetti can say he’s doing it his way.

Well, their way.