Zenith City: Stories from Duluth

At the Flame

the duluth restaurant of legend and lore in my boyhood was the Flame. During its more than four-decade existence, it had three locations in town, most famously the last one, on the bayside waterfront at the bottom of Fifth Avenue West. It was the city’s premier supper club with live music in addition to a pricey menu. For a number of years, a turbaned waiter known as “The Sultan of the Second Cup” poured customers’ coffee. Diners sometimes boarded the S.S. Flame, a cruise boat anchored alongside the restaurant, which would take passengers on tours of the Duluth–Superior harbor. These were especially popular on languid summer evenings; from the lake, passengers could view the lighted city on a hill. Neither the restaurant nor the cruise fell within the Fedo budget, but it was the place to which most of my friends and I aspired. I made it for the first time at a fraternity brother’s wedding reception, and later as an entertainer with my performing partner, Dan Kossoff. While the club didn’t headline celebrity artists, there were times when wealthy Duluthians celebrating birthdays or anniversaries rented the facility for events and imported marquee names like comedian Alan King. Usually the club featured dance orchestras with female vocalists in the main dining room, while the downstairs lounge offered smaller combos or, most of the time, a cocktail pianist doubling on vocals. For several years in the mid- to late s, the lounge was home to an engaging piano player, Billy Samuels. Samuels was born in Mississippi but moved to Chicago, where he formed Bill Samuels and the Cats ’n Jammer Three during the s. The group had a hit record in  with the novelty tune at the flame 134 At the Flame | 135 “Open the Door, Richard,” and Bill’s version of “I Cover the Waterfront ” also landed on some charts. He wasn’t the vocalist on “Open the Door, Richard,” but during his Flame tenure he often treated customers to the Johnny Green waterfront ballad and also performed some good old shouts and blues pieces during late-night sets. Samuels was a popular staple in the Twin Ports during his Flame tenure, which ended when he moved to Minneapolis in the early s and died there at the too-young age of fifty-three. one tuesday morning in August , while Dan and I were between gigs (primarily because Dan was finishing his degree at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis), I received a call from Charlie Kasmir, the Flame’s personable major domo. Club owner Jimmy Oreck had fired his lounge pianist the night before and needed an immediate replacement for the rest of the week. Charlie heard that Dan and I had worked clubs and coffeehouses throughout the Midwest and wondered if we were available to fill the void. He didn’t mention salary, and I didn’t ask. We’d only performed twice in our hometown—at St. Scholastica College and a Snow Week show at the University of Minnesota–Duluth. But this was the Flame, the most prestigious supper club in town, and they wanted us. I told Charlie I had to call Dan in Minneapolis but would get right back to him. “Make it snappy,” Charlie said. “Jimmy wants to see you at two this afternoon.” It was about : a.m. when I phoned Dan and said we might have a job at the Flame, but Jimmy Oreck wanted to see us with our guitars at two o’clock this afternoon. “I’ll jump in the shower and head right up,” Dan said. we arrived at the flame several minutes early, and Charlie said Jimmy would need to hear us, so we should get ready. If he liked us, we were hired. Charlie ushered us to a cluttered room the size of a large closet. It held extra bar stools, coatracks, rolls of toilet paper, and sundry other detritus. We cleared space for our guitars and 136 | At the Flame tuned up, then went back to Oreck’s office. We could hear him from outside on the phone, barking at a vendor about a requisition. We’d heard Oreck was prickly and irritable; we didn’t know what to expect. Finally he beckoned us with his hand to enter his office. He did not speak and remained seated behind his desk, where he...