The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, NYC

I was half awake this morning while NPR's talking heads were educating me about this and that, when I heard a voice mentioning the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. The Oak Room is closing (I don't know about the hotel), and the story was about some of the people who have played there, the room itself, and why it is such a special place. Even in semi-dreamland, I went back to the one time Max and I went to the Oak Room, a time when I actually saw my friend Terry Teachout instead of just reading his blog or something else he has written, a time when I could simply sit and listen to the thing I love best - good music.

The year might have been 1995, but I can't really remember. I do know that we had, on a whim, decided to go to New York, one of my favorite places, with Bob and Susan, two of our favorite people. Bob and Susan were New York Newbies, and we promised to take in a variety of events while showing them how to get around on their own. Our plans included an obligatory tourist East River tour around the Statue of Liberty, an obligatory tourist trip to The Today Show, the New York City Ballet on its season closing night, Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, and what I was looking forward to most, a trip to the Cafe Carlyle to hear the legendary Bobby Short. I also planned one evening of down time so that I could go see my good friend Terry, who at that time lived on the Upper West Side in a "garden apartment," which turned out to be two floors in a brownstone with a kitchen that had one time been a closet. The "garden" consisted of a small (!) patio surrounded by stacked cement blocks forming a two-foot high, three-dimensional fence upon which sat two flower pots containing straggly flowers trying desperately to find the sun some 200 feet higher than they.

I was in charge of getting tickets and set to my task earnestly, finding good seats for the musical, the ballet, and a special Picasso exhibition at MOMA (where another exhibit was a cherry nineteen-sixty-something Jaguar X-12 that Bob would LOVE). I was striking out, however, on seats at the Carlyle, and took the maitre d's advice to show up one night and something would turn up.

So off we went. Things were going swimmingly, and I was so excited to see Terry after so many years of NOT seeing him. He told us of his life as a writer in New York, doing pieces for The Wall Street Journal, The Congressional Quarterly, even Time Magazine. He was doing music reviews, had fallen into the art world, and was at that point in love with modern dance. He asked about our itinerary, and I gave him the list. In his matter-of-fact voice, with an almost-imperceptible nod to being one in the know, he said, "Oh, my dear, you MUST go to the Oak Room. Susannah McCorkle is playing there, and she is such a wonderful, smart singer. She is doing a program on Cole Porter. It is a fabulous show."

What Terry says must be done, and so when we got back to our hotel, I called the Algonquin Hotel and made reservations for the Oak Room to see Susannah McCorkle. We were going to a real cabaret - a NIGHT CLUB in NEW YORK CITY!!! We got the last table available, and when I reported back to Terry, he said, in the same tone, same voice, "Oh, dear. I'll bet you got the Table of Death." Being one NOT in the know, I asked what that was.

"Well," he said, "the Oak Room is very small, and one table sits about five feet from the singer on the singer's right. I'll bet that was the last table, and I'll bet you got it. For Heaven's sake," he said, as though he were talking to a rube from Thayer (Oh, wait! I AM a rube from Thayer!), "DON'T talk while she is singing. That will drive her crazy and she won't be able to concentrate."

So we got dressed that night and went to the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel to hear Susannah McCorkle sing. We were all somewhat hushed as we entered the room, as it was very tiny, even smaller that Terry had prepared us for. I think that fewer than 100 people would be in that room at one time, even when it was very, very full. The room had a series of tables around its perimeter where some people would eat after-theatre supper. The rest of the room looked more like what I expected a cabaret to look like - several small tables scattered about where patrons would be served the drink minimum and listen to background music while carrying on a conversation. And then we were taken to our table - the Table of Death. We were indeed about five feet from where Susannah McCorkle would be standing as she sang Cole Porter's songs to us and to the rest of the room.

We ordered our drinks, and then the time was upon us where we would hear what Terry called a smart singer making Cole Porter come alive. There was no reason for Terry to have warned us not to talk. Being so close to the singer and being able to watch her piano accompanist move his ten fingers to make beautiful music was nothing short of magic. I don't think any of us said a word during the entire show. It was as if we were holding our collective breath. I did note that she had on the same Bruno Magli shoes I had bought that afternoon, except mine were gold-toned and hers were black. I was entranced, and I will never forget that evening or her performance or the feeling that I had done something really special that I would rarely, if ever, be able to describe or explain.

After that night, we had a really good time at all the other events we had scheduled. We went to the Cafe Carlyle and saw Bobby Short, but that evening was tainted because we had to wait an hour in a really hot lobby to be admitted, and we spent over $200 for eight watered-down drinks, AND the drummer was too loud and Short too, and I mean this, trite. And I at that time was disappointed to have to say that the legend of Bobby Short could not and did not compare with the unplanned evening we spent in a quiet little night club, where we heard a smart singer breathe life into not only Cole Porter's songs, but into Cole Porter himself - a smart singer who, tragically, a few years after we heard her, heard something in her own head, a different kind of music, that sent her to her death from a very tall New York skyscraper.

So things go on: the Oak Room is closing, The New Yorker will list Patti LuPone as the opening act at a new cabaret, and Bobby Short died several years ago. But this will never change: I still have that night that came back to me with stark clarity this morning - sitting at the Table of Death at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, listening to Susannah McCorkle sing Cole Porter. Magic.