At 90, Pasco piano man still has that swing

PASCO -- Eddy Mace has been tinkling the keys of a piano longer than most people have been alive.

And the 90-year-old Pasco man has no plans to stop, either.

"My eyes are getting bad but my fingers still work," Mace said with a smirk. "Once in a while I still play at the veterans hall."

Mace, who was born and raised in upstate New York, learned to play the piano at age 7. The trombone and guitar soon followed, but it was the piano that remained his baby.

After joining the Marine Corps during World War II, he spent time directing a Corps band after being wounded.

And for the next 60 years, Mace traveled the globe making a living playing piano for renowned band leaders like Jimmy Dorsey and Les Brown.

Most of those years were spent on the East Coast, where dance clubs like the Copacabana were the hot spots of entertainment.

Mace even found time to compose a few pieces of music during those years, but it was arranging music that was his forte, he said.

"I wrote arrangements for Les Brown when I played with his band after the war, and continued doing that for many years," Mace said.

In fact, when he first joined Brown's band, Doris Day was the singer.

"She was 19 then and I was 23," Mace said. "She was a very sweet girl, and I remember she'd come to rehearsals with her mom as chaperone."

Besides the Les Brown Band, Mace was Jimmy Dorsey's piano man during the late 1940s. He also spent time with the Johnny Long orchestra and played with the Criss Cross band, where Robert Alda, actor Alan Alda's dad, was the singer.

"I have always loved big band music," Mace said. "I grew up with it. I also played in a Dixieland band for a while and I liked that too, but swing is the thing for me."

The nomadic life of a professional musician meant Mace didn't have time to settle down and raise a family. That is, until he drove through the Tri-Cities in 1951.

"I drove a 1937 Chevy when I came out West on the way to play a gig in Alaska," Mace said. "I met my Joan when I drove through Pasco and stopped at the musicians union hall. She played the snare drum. I was a lot older than her."

Eddy, who was 14 years older, and Joan married a short time later and spent the next 47 years together. Joan died last year. They had one son, DeLoy, who's also a musician.

But before Mace settled down in the Tri-City area, he played gigs up and down the West Coast. One of his favorite places to play was the Sherwood Inn in Tacoma, where Tom Houston of Las Vegas remembers hearing him play for the first time.

"I first heard Eddy play in 1981 at the Sherwood Inn, and his performance was so compelling I returned many times with my wife," Houston said in an e-mail to the Herald.

Karen Gulotta, 57, who now lives in Florida, also remembers dropping by the Tacoma nightclub years ago and was entertained when Mace did his piano bar gig.

"He always had a full house and it was fun to sit and listen to him play as he interacted with his audience," she said. "And he always allowed other musicians to join him. He is simply a marvelous entertainer, and audiences loved him."

Mace was humbled by the praise of his fans from yesteryear and recalled the days when he played piano bar tunes at the Sherwood Inn.

"I liked playing those gigs," he said. "You could interact with your audience more personally and I liked that. I could fiddle around on the piano and chat with people at the same time. It was great fun."

Though age and a few health problems have slowed this musician down a touch, he hasn't lost his love for music. He can still remember how to play many of the songs he's played during the past 70 years.

"I don't play every day like I used to," Mace said. "But I remember the long repertoire of songs I used to play, and as long as my fingers can still move, I'll keep playing."