Like most milestones of my life, music seems to play a close association with the events.  I never hear one of the Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim basa novas that I don't think of the Playboy Club. And in my memory, I'm 22-years old.

            Hugh Hefner opened the first of his series of private key clubs in Chicago in early-1960.  Two years later, on October 16, 1962, he opened the St. Louis Playboy Club at 3914 Lindell Boulevard. 

            That club was the only one that was built from the ground up, and it was owned and built in a partnership with a wealthy St. Louis real estate investor and insurance man, Max Lubin.

            I was working at a Clayton bank at the time, and frequently played the piano in the evenings, primarily as a substitute at St. Louis hotels and restaurants.

            The city was a very social one in those days; perhaps it still is.  After work, people frequently went out for drinks and dinner, and those people were always in anticipation of the latest nightclub de jour. Fun to see, fun to talk about at the office the next day.

             So naturally, the St. Louis Playboy Club opened with great anticipation and fanfare.

<<===St. Louis Playboy Club Lobby, Circa 1962

            The first night I walked into the club, which was sometime during its first week, the living room pianist was taking a break and the very elaborate hi-fi system was playing Jobim's new hit, "The Girl from Ipanema."

            Several times over the next year, I was called to substitute for one of the regular pianist.  During my breaks, it seemed to me that inevitably, one of the first tunes to play was the Jobim hit.

             So that tune for me became the club's signature.

            Summer came. I left St. Louis for good, and stopped over in New Orleans for a brief vacation.  That first afternoon, I walked from the Royal Orleans Hotel to the New Orleans' version of the Playboy Club.  It was in what had been a carriage house between two famous restaurants - Felix's Oyster Bar and Diamond Jim Moran's Restaurant on Rue Iberville between Bourbon and Royal Streets.

            As I walked through the front door - an elaborate cut glass one --- the hi-fi was playing "The Girl from Ipanema."   The bunny intuitively knew I would sit on the couch in the club's living room and enjoy a cold Tangueray and tonic.  I sat down.  She brought it to me. 

            The last time I had seen her was in St. Louis.

BILL CHERRY, REALTOR

DALLAS

214 503-8563

1 800 314-7110

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