Misrepresentation

Dale Elliott, personable pianist for whom life truly was a cabaret

So we are sitting around at Dad’s birthday dinner last Saturday drinking and thinking about all of our lovely experiences together living in Atlanta and Dallas. We were joking around how we used to hit up the 4 Seasons in Atlanta every weekend and celebrate our beloved piano player, Dale. I couldn’t remember his name to save my life, so I decided to just call the 4 Seasons in Atlanta and find out his name. I get in touch with the chic at the front desk who then has to connect me to guest services…And it goes like this: Lindsay: “Hey. My name is Lindsay Lowery, and I just wanted to say hello and see if I could get some information about the piano player in the bar. What is his name?” Guest Services: “Ahh yes..Steve.” Lindsay: “Steve. No. His name wasn’t Steve. It was something else. This gay guy who had dark hair and was just hilarious.” Guest Services: “Oh you mean Dale. Yeah Dale died two weeks ago.” Lindsay: Phone almost drops “What? I’m sorry. Dale is dead. You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Anyhooo it is just par for the course in my life that I would randomly call the 4 Seasons to get the piano player’s name, and of course he’s dead. We just truly enjoyed Dale, so I thought I would share his obituary we found. Dale Elliott had hundreds and hundreds of tunes at the tip of his fingers, so no matter who strolled up to his piano to request a song, he could probably oblige. Show tunes, standards, pop hits, classical pieces — they were all a breeze for the easygoing musician, who entertained at piano bars, cabarets, hotels and clubs around Atlanta for decades. Courtesy of Len Brown (ENLARGE) Dale Elliott would hold court at the piano bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown. And it wasn’t just his versatility that kept crowds coming back for more. Mr. Elliott made audiences feel as if they were settling into a cozy living room, where he was happy to chat them up and play their favorite tunes. “Some pianists in town play great and sound wonderful, but they keep their head down the whole time,” said Len Brown of Atlanta, Mr. Elliott’s agent. “But Dale kept his head up and was always looking around at people and smiling and stopping to say hello to them. He knew exactly who came in the room, and he made friends with just about everybody.” Richard Dale Elliott, 55, of Atlanta died of complications from a stroke Tuesday at Grady Memorial Hospital. The body was cremated. The graveside memorial service is 11 a.m. Monday at Greenlawn Cemetery. Byars Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. The Alpharetta native graduated from the University of Georgia, then traveled to New York City to study at the Juilliard School. “He had a natural, God-given talent at the piano that was just incredible,” said his niece Melanie Martin of Cumming. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Elliott was all over Atlanta’s then-thriving cabaret and lounge scene. His friend and fellow pianist Robert Strickland of Atlanta said he first caught Mr. Elliott in action at the Country Place in Colony Square in the 1970s. “Dale was just holding court and surrounded by people, and you could feel that the room was with him,” Mr. Strickland said. “He would engage his audience and wouldn’t let go, so people would come and want to stay all night.” With thousand of songs committed to memory, Mr. Elliott never bothered with sheet music at a gig. As long as the requests kept coming, he was happy to segue from Rachmaninoff to a Beatles medley, from a Cole Porter standard to one of his favorite Stephen Sondheim songs — all with the effortlessness of a born showman. “Dale was always charming,” Mr. Strickland said. “It didn’t matter if you went with him to McDonald’s and had a hamburger, he was charming. That was just him.” Mr. Elliott played countless private parties and juggled long-running engagements at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, the Swiss Hotel Atlanta, the Crowne Plaza Ravinia and other Atlanta hotels. He was a regular at Gene and Gabes, the Public House, the Ambassador, the Sandpiper and other establishments that have since disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke. In the late 1970s, he left Atlanta for New York for a few years and hobnobbed with Liza Minnelli, Peter Allen, Bobby Short and other cabaret acts. Celebrity sightings became routine from his perch behind the piano at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown, where he had been playing four nights a week since 2003. Every night at last call, Mr. Strickland said, “Dale would have to pry himself away from the piano and make people quit asking him for more songs, because he just loved to play.” “And every time Dale sat down to play anything, it was filled with his own personal commitment and passion,” Mr. Strickland said. “He never phoned it in. He always made it a performance. He couldn’t do otherwise.” There are no immediate survivors.