‘Closet Singer’ Overcomes Fear and Finds the Right Chord

These days, it’s no big deal for David Silverman to knock out a relaxed and appealing vocal on a classic pop standard--say, Oscar Levant’s “Blame It on My Youth.” His cool, efficient style recalls such 1950s jazz-oriented singer-pianists as Bobby Troup, or Dave MacKay in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

But what is now pretty much de rigueur for Silverman, now performing with bassist Paul Gormley and drummer Paul Kreibich at the Century Plaza Hotel, was all but impossible four years ago.

Then he almost never sang in public, although he’d been a professional pianist with a jazz leaning since 1974. “I’d wanted to since 1970. I was always fascinated by singers, particularly Frank Sinatra, and always liked lyrics, but I was too inhibited,” he says. “It was a fear. I felt like I was walking around naked. So I was a closet singer--I sang at home.”

Once a year or so, he’d sing at work, doing Cy Coleman’s “Witchcraft,” the only tune he knew all the way through. “And I’d only do that on the last set, when I’d had a couple of drinks,” he says.

In the spring of 1988, however, Los Angeles native Silverman returned to his hometown after five-year stints in Albuquerque and Dallas. He’d taken a job as a singer-pianist at the prestigious Hotel Bel-Air, which at the time was owned by Carolyn Hunt, who also owned Silverman’s last place of employment in Dallas--a hotel called the Mansion on Turtle Creek.

Silverman thought that by accepting the engagement at the Bel-Air, which was purchased by Japanese investors in May, 1989, he could come to grips with his fear of singing.

But he knew he needed the assistance of a vocal teacher. So after arriving in Los Angeles, he called the first name on a list of L.A.-based vocal instructors that a friend, Mark Carroll, had given him in Dallas.

The first name Silverman telephoned happened to be Jeri Southern, a critically acclaimed, jazz-influenced pop singer-pianist who’d had hits with “You Better Go Now” and “When I Fall in Love” in the early ‘50s. It was a call that changed his life, Silverman says.

Southern, who had been teaching since the mid-’60s, when she gave up performing, took Silverman under her wing. “We hit it off right away,” he says.

“I learned so much from her. I was studying seriously for the first time in my life,” he says. “It wasn’t about show biz. It was about music.”

Southern, who died of pneumonia last summer, taught him all the facets of delivering a vocal version of a classic pop standard, from learning the melody inside out to fully comprehending the lyrics so that the tune’s meaning will come across vocally.

“Diction was probably the most important aspect,” Silverman says. “ “Don’t butcher the lyrics,’ she’d say. ‘Sing a song so the audience can hear every word.’ ”

Southern also worked on Silverman’s accompaniment. “She’d say, ‘The song comes first, not the piano. Don’t overplay when you accompany yourself,’ ” he recalls.

As a result of Southern’s tutelage and the confidence he gained through her belief in his ability, his first night of singing at the Bel-Air went remarkably smooth, Silverman says.

“I sang ‘Everything Happens to Me,’ playing a much too long introduction, which Jeri always told me not to do and which I still do today,” Silverman says. “The rendition came out OK. I sang it nice and easy, and the people applauded. So I did another one, ‘Here’s That Rainy Day.’ That was the beginning of the end of the fear.”

Southern and he “became great friends,” Silverman says. “She was the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, and I really miss her.”

Now living in West Hollywood, he has worked as a singer-pianist pretty steadily since his year and a half at the Bel-Air. He traveled to Europe as a single in 1990, and spent 1991 working with Gormley and Kreibich at the Smokehouse in North Hollywood and the Mondrian Hotel in Hollywood. Yet, he says, anxiety isn’t far away. And perhaps that’s good: “A little fear keeps your feet on the ground.”

He is looking for a deal for an album he recorded last year with his trio partners and Southern, who accompanied his vocals. “I still feel the fear before the first tune of the night. I wonder how a tune will go over. Will the audience like it, will I make the sounds of the words, will I remember them?”

But mostly Silverman is just plain happy he’s singing. “I’m like a guy who’s stopped drinking for three years,” he says. “I’m proud of myself. I see this as a great accomplishment.”

Quick to admit he’s no Sinatra or Mel Torme, Silverman calls his voice “a good voice, I think, with a pleasant sound.”

“My weakness is that I don’t have much volume, so I can’t sing loud,” he says. Actually, Silverman’s style calls for telling a song more than belting it out, so this aspect might also be viewed as a positive.

His vocal repertoire--for which Southern advised him to find material “that hasn’t been done to death, which isn’t associated with other singers”--leans toward the obscure, he says. “I’m picking tunes that need to be done, that cater to a more sophisticated audience.” These numbers include Cole Porter’s “Get Out of Town” and “Let’s Fly Away,” Jerome Kern’s “I Won’t Dance” and Cy Coleman’s “I’m in Love Again.”

Silverman, who as a pianist reveals strong traces of his major influences--Vince Guaraldi, Oscar Peterson and Monty Alexander--also purveys such instrumentals as guitarist Wes Montgomery’s blues, “Fried Pies,” and the standard “Lullaby of the Leaves.” Not the most inventive of keyboardists, Silverman still swings easily and drops in plenty of blues flourishes.

It was this combination of foot-tapping piano sounds and amiable vocals that led Steve Diaz, manager of the Lobby Court bar in the Century City hotel, to hire Silverman to inaugurate the room’s recent jazz policy.

“I like David’s style,” Diaz says. “He’s not too flamboyant, yet he’s knowledgeable about his craft. He doesn’t beat the piano, but plays the instrument like it was designed to be played. I think it would be hard to find anybody who would be better in the lobby. Not everyone fits in there.”

Silverman never studied piano formally, but he did get some expert advice, he says, from Tim Innocencio, his band director at Walter Reed Jr. High School in North Hollywood.

Later, he won Los Angeles city schools’ 1972 Battle of the Bands contest, held at the Hollywood Bowl.

While still in high school, Silverman played at the Baked Potato, sitting in with such notables as trumpeter Harry (Sweets) Edison and saxophonist Teddy Edwards.

He began his professional career right after graduation, spending five years on the road with lounge acts before settling into jazz jobs in Albuquerque and Dallas.

The musician says he sometimes wonders whether it’s such a good thing that he’s overcome his fear of singing. “Now people can’t shut me up,” he says.