By Bruce Fessier
Jere Ring and David Maiocco were born in different decades, in different parts of the country. But they’re bonded by their love and respect for all aspects of the legendary pianist, Liberace.
They are headlining “An Evening of Liberace: A Party Celebrating the Legacy of Palm Springs’ Premier Dog Lover” Sunday, Oct. 13 at a walled, Spanish colonial estate called Casa de Monte Vista in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. It benefits the animal protection charity, Amy’s Purpose, which is raising funds for scholarships to assist students with the $3,200 tuition for a College of the Desert course preparing veterinary assistants for $17-an-hour jobs. Amy’s Purpose curates all applications to select students seeking to develop veterinary careers that may help relieve the desert’s veterinary shortage crisis.
Casa de Monte Vista is where Steven Soderbergh shot the 2013 Liberace movie, “Behind the Candelabra.” Ring is a Palm Springs-based singer-pianist who Liberace hired to play his Las Vegas restaurant in 1983. Ring was asked to host an Amy’s Purpose benefit saluting Liberace and he recruited Maiocco, one of the few tribute artists who can navigate Liberace’s arrangements. They’ll headline a plethora of entertainment, including cabaret singer Francesca Amari.
Liberace, who died of HIV-related ailments in 1987 at his Palm Springs home at age 67, is not remembered as a gay icon. He lied to a British court about his sexual orientation at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in England, and he never acknowledged having AIDS.
“He won the battle and lost the war with that because he could never come out, ever,” Maiocco said between shows in New York. “I travel to all the gay icon performance places like Provincetown and Puerta Vallarta and Palm Springs. Liberace is definitely not a gay icon. I really believe that had things been different, had the times been different, with his kind heart, with his philanthropic and humanitarian nature, I think he would have been.”
Maiocco and Ring say Liberace introduced many of today’s show biz elements.
The costumes and bling associated with rappers, rockers and R&B artists from James Brown to Elton John to Little Nas X date back to Liberace’s 1952 Hollywood Bowl appearance in an all-white tuxedo with tails at a time when black suits and tuxedos were de rigueur. By 1986, he filled 54 trunks for his record-breaking two-week run at Radio City Music Hall and his extravagant costumes were valued at $1 million.
Buzzy Vegas residencies, such as U2 at the Sphere, can be traced to the 1955 opening of the nine-story Riviera Hotel when Liberace was hired for a then-record $50,000 a week. TikTok-styled mashups can be linked to Liberace’s 1939 concert in La Crosse, Wisc., when the young classical pianist was asked to play Kay Kyser’s hit big band novelty, “Three Little Fishies.”
“He did it in the style of Strauss, Mozart and Beethoven,” said Maiocco, “and it was absolutely brilliant. He did this 80 years ago and everyone now thinks it’s the coolest thing. He was the forerunner of everything. The Celine, the Cher, the Gaga spectacle in Vegas of a resident show. He had such vision. He would do those supper clubs and they would tell him, ‘Stop flirting with the women. Stop winking at the people. Just play the piano.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, not for me.’”
Ring said you must watch Maiocco to understand Liberace’s brilliance.
“People say, ‘Play something by Liberace,’” he said. “This is something you’ll see by David Maiocco. He has the Liberace style down. I never tried to do that.”
But Maiocco said Ring has an authenticity to Liberace onstage and off.
“I love Jere so much,” he said. “He’s such a connection to my superhero (Liberace). We’re both over-the-top, fearless, ‘here-we-go’ pure entertainers. But in real life, I have people who don’t even think I’m gay. I don’t dress blingy. Jere has that energy all the time. So, it’s a really cool thing, and our energy together, I’m telling you, everyone’s going to have a really good time.”
Ring and Maiocco do have similarities, especially in relationship to Liberace.
Like Liberace, both started playing piano at a very young age without taking a lesson.
“The first time I really played, on a farm in Ohio, we came home from Sunday school and they had an Acrosonic spinet in the living room,” Ring said. “I had heard ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and I just sat down and played it. They all turned around and went, ‘Whaaat? Can you do that again?’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘What you just did!’ My cousin said, ‘Can you play with both hands?’ So I did. Then they decided I should have lessons. I could play what I heard and I didn’t like the things they were teaching me. I didn’t like Bach and Beethoven and scales. I thought that was a waste of time. In church, I started playing the hymns. I loved that. The pastor brought me up because he heard me play ‘How Great Thou Art’ at my mom and dad’s house. My feet wouldn’t even reach the pedals. I got up and couldn’t remember how to play it. So I played ‘Alley Cat’ instead.”
Maiocco adds, “I grew up without a piano for most of my early life. But all my Italian relatives had pianos and every Sunday, we’d go to church in the morning and go visiting all day to all the different relatives. My feet couldn’t even touch the pedals, but I’d be sitting at the piano at 3 years old playing back every hymn I heard in church. Once I discovered the radio, I could just hear songs and start playing them. But I didn’t have formal training until I was 8.”
Ring saw Liberace perform at the Starlight Musicals theater in Indianapolis at 8.
“I was truly mesmerized when he came out,” he said. “All that adulation, and the glamour and the bling. And he played piano! Well, I play piano!”
Maiocco saw Liberace for the first time at age 8 at the Oakdale Music Theatre in Wallingford, Connecticut. But the costumes and the bling had an opposite effect on him.
“I was terrified,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, is that what you have to do to be on stage and play the piano?’ It wasn’t like a lot of people, even children, who saw him and were in awe.”
The young Ring visualized meeting Liberace and brought that to fruition after growing up and moving to Los Angeles. He met Liberace’s stage director, Ray Arnett, who introduced him to Liberace in Las Vegas. Ring recited the words he’d dreamed of telling Liberace and impressed him with his piano skills and his vast knowledge of his life. When the pianist at his Tivoli Gardens restaurant griped about working there, Ring urged him to leave and Liberace hired him.
Maiocco went the conservatory route and became an accompanist and Broadway pit pianist. He didn’t become a tribute artist until eight years ago, at age 48, when friends dared him to do a Liberace show. His mother made him two Liberace costumes and he began researching the late entertainer. That’s when he discovered his brilliance.
“It was a study in pure genius,” he said. “Nothing he did was random. Every single note, every arpeggio. Everything was so calculated and designed by him, it was like, ‘Oh God, what did I get myself into? Nobody can be him.’ None of us are him. We capture some element of it, but no one will ever be him.”
Ring discovered Liberace’s love of dogs upon his first meeting with Liberace.
“There was a person with four dogs, and we all got in the elevator,” he said. “The dogs went up with us and we all went to the dressing room because Liberace wanted his dogs in his dressing room. The dogs went everywhere. I think he had 17 dogs at the house in Vegas.”
Maiocco said a love of dogs is another thing he, Ring and Liberace have in common.
“Liberace with his 19 to 20-something dogs at any given time is absolutely one of the most beautiful loves ever,” he said. “I am a huge dog lover. I don’t have any anymore because I travel so much. That’s why I’m excited this (benefit) is for this charity. Animal lovers are my people.”
Fessier is the first newspaper journalist named to the Coachella Valley Media Hall of Fame and the producer of “An Evening of Liberace.” Contact him at jbfess@gmail.com and follow him at facebook.com/bruce.fessier
INFO BOX:
Tickets for “An Evening of Liberace”
When: Sunday, Oct. 13, 5-9:30 p.m. Dinner 5 p.m.; shuttles to the party at 6:30 and 6:45 p.m., returning at 9:15 and 9:30 p.m.; party 6:30-9:30 p.m. with 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. shuttles returning at 9:15 and 9:30 p.m.
Where: Dinner at Eight4Nine, 849 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs; party and car drop-offs at Casa de Monte Vista, 696 N. Via Monte Vista, Palm Springs; parking at the nearby Temple Isaiah lot, 332 W. Alejo Road.
Cost: $250 for the party, $450 for dinner + VIP party seats, $3,200 for scholarships. Benefits the Amy’s Purpose animal protection charity.
More info: Amyspurpose.net or call 760-220-8713 Amy’s Purpose, Inc is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to pet safety and predator awareness by providing community-based education programs and offering full local student vet assistance scholarships to help rectify the current emergency veterinarian care crisis.
