Banging It Out on Beale

Forget the name – it’s all friendly during O’Sullivan’s dueling pianos.

by Chris Herrington

f you’ve never been to the dueling pianos at O’Sullivan’s on Beale, or a similar presentation at other bars around the country, most notably Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans, then the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term is likely the classic dueling-banjos scene from Deliverance.
Or maybe not. This is Beale Street, after all, so maybe you think of legendary blues-guitar duels like the B.B. King/Albert King showdown Stanley Booth describes in Rythm Oil – his collection of writings on Memphis music – comparing that particular duel to a Sonny Liston/Cassius Clay title bout.
Or, because this is Beale Street, maybe you conjure images of a different duel: The climactic scene in Crossroads where the great blues-guitar battle in Hell’s juke joint consists of Steve Vai playing speed metal against the classical stylings of that noted Mannish Boy Ralph Macchio.

PHOTO BY DANIEL BALL

This “musical-comedy” act is about two parts performance and one part audience-participation.

As you might guess, the dueling pianos at O’Sullivan’s, much like Beale Street itself, find a place somewhere in between those two extremes. The “dueling” part of dueling pianos, however, is a misnomer. This is no contest. The pianists at O’Sullivan’s play together, not against each other – not that that makes it any less of a good time, as the standing-room-only crowd on a recent Saturday night can attest.
Dueling pianos is performed nightly from 9 to closing time at O’Sullivan’s, a cozy, shotgun-style bar on the corner of Beale and Third. O’Sullivan’s has featured the dueling pianos since its opening in 1992. The introduction of the pianos was, according to manager Dan Kurina, a conscious attempt to carve a niche for the bar apart from its blues-and-rock-oriented neighbors. “Silky [Sullivan, the owner of the bar as well as its eponymous older counterpart, a Midtown fixture since the Seventies] had been around the country looking for ways to make the bar different from other clubs on Beale,” says Kurina, “and he thought the pianos would be a way to get people involved more [than they would be at other clubs].”
Dueling pianos consists of three players (the regulars are Tim Plunk, Danny Sands, and Joe Anderson) rotating through two pianos. The “musical-comedy” act, as Kurina describes it, is about two parts performance and one part audience participation, offering a nice compromise between the strict audience/performer relationship found at most clubs and the full-blown participation of a karaoke bar. Requests fuel the playlist, audience call-and-response is frequently solicited, and many patrons join the stage to become part of the show. On this night, one customer takes the mike to lead the pianists in a version of the Sixties Elvis standard “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” while a recently engaged couple is brought to the stage and “treated” to some Sam Kinison-style taunting (“What the fuck are you thinking?!” one player screamed to the groom-to-be) and a risque version of the Who’s “Squeeze Box.”
With three Eagles songs in the span of an hour and sophomoric humor like transforming the Danny and the Juniors early rock song “At the Hop” into “Smoke Some Pot,” the dueling pianos would seem to be aimed at the same demographic as the Rock 103 morning show. But then “Smoke Some Pot” leads into a seemingly sincere version of “Candle in the Wind 1997” (Elton vows to never play it live again, so this may be the next best thing), a maudlin moment worthy of Billy Joel’s Piano Man of lore. This mix of the ribald and the maudlin seems to fit the internal rhythms of a bar atmosphere, one place where raunch and sentiment happily coexist. And then some moments are just plain fun, like when a rousing version of the Charlie Daniels Band’s “The South’s Gonna Do It” leads into an equally rousing variation on the blues standard “Sweet Home Chicago.”
O’Sullivan’s dexterous, spontaneous players keep things moving with a seemingly huge song repertoire and a fine rapport with the patrons. The song list is heavy on rock classics (“I Saw Her Standing There,” “Rock Around the Clock”) and local standards (“Walking in Memphis,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On”), but it seems as if literally anything could be thrown in at any time, and, like listening to a good mix tape from a friend, anticipating what might come next is part of the fun.
As with many things in life, only more so, how much one enjoys the dueling pianos at O’Sullivan’s probably depends, to a large degree, on how prepared one is to enjoy it all. The bar’s other drawing card certainly doesn’t hurt in this regard. It isn’t a stretch to suggest that there is a symbiotic relationship between the good spirits flowing from the stage and those flowing from the bar. The patrons are caught in the middle, and most probably couldn’t think of a better place to be. n

Dueling pianos
9 p.m. to closing time nightly
O’Sullivan’s, 183 Beale
522-9596