They Love Those Swingin’ Sounds Music From Another Era Echoes At Hobart’s

The big-band sound starts at Hobart’s at 8.

She takes the microphone, tells Jeri the key, a Fats Waller tune or “Kansas City”; then she’s on - mouth open, eyes closed, diaphragm expanding, under the lights, on the stage, in the spotlight. Once again.

Mona Clark’s arthritis disappears.

Dottie Muncy transforms.

“When I get up there, I’m nobody’s mother, I’m nobody’s grandmother; I’m Dottie and I love to sing.”

Once a month at Cavanaugh’s Fourth Avenue, the Hal Poffenroth-Jeri Brown trio is host of what may be the most professional open mike in town.

Instrumentalists and vocalists come here from another era. From the Ridpath Roof and Chinese Gardens, from the Davenport lobby and the Moulin Rouge, from Woody Herman’s bandstand and Jim Baker’s, from an end of the radio dial that for them never has gone quiet.

“We’re a room full of friends,” says Muncy. “Hal calls and we say we’ll be there.”

Whirling dancers slow to listen. “We’re noticing almost everybody here is a talented performer,” says Floyd Klozar.

The gathering has evolved over the years from occasional meetings to a regular monthly gig of about 50 at Hobart’s Jazz Lounge. Some still perform in Spokane. Most just perform here.

With a wave of his arm, Poffenroth, 77, starts the musical chairs, calling patrons by name to the microphone, to Brad Jeanes’ drums or his own bass guitar.

He snaps his fingers, says “it’s party time.” For four hours, the sound swings from Cole Porter to George Gershwin to Patsy Cline.

“We play the standards, the tunes that will live forever,” says Jeri Brown. The 74-year-old vocalist and pianist who played with Woody Herman in 1947 still plays aerobically in gold lame. Her finesse draws Steve Ellington, drummer for New York’s Hal Galper Trio, who is playing Hobart’s the following night. He takes the mike for one, then another.

One-liners fly with the notes. “Sweet Georgia Brown” turns into a duet in Chinese by comic Larry Lee. He’ll be 80 in November.

“I’m still a performer,” says Lee, veteran of cruise ships and three shows a day in Las Vegas. “It really is amazing how much talent there is in this town.”

“Hal draws a very different, very special crowd,” says Hobart’s music director Gary Edighoffer. “Warm fuzzies all night.”

Few drink much. Most nurse coffee or cranberry juice and the room is almost smoke-free. Years of performing in clubs have left a trail of allergies and second-hand smoker’s coughs.

But voices rise strong enough for comparisons. “He sounds like Bing Crosby. She’s this side of Ella.” Performers, ages 45 to 80, follow suggestions or do signature tunes - drawing applause just by taking the stage.

“It gives me a great lift. The next day I feel good. I get up and think ‘Didn’t we have fun!”’ says Muncy.

“Music is like an incentive to live,” says Clark, a mother of six who managed bars and hotels from Anchorage to Spokane.

Poffenroth says the important thing now is making this crowd feel at home, with family.

Here, they’ve held cancer benefits for one another and mourned the deaths of three close friends. As the evening fades, a bit of the spark does.

One vocalist arranges to leave through an emergency exit. She’s sung like a torch singer, but isn’t strong enough to make it up the stairs. She pauses for one last song.

“No matter how old you get, the music doesn’t leave you,” Clark says.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: The Hal Poffenroth- Jeri Brown Trio will perform again at Hobart’s May 1.