Louisville Magazine

FEB 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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No Place Like Home I think we served Korean-marinated ribs and roasted asparagus, and probably baguettes from Blue Dog Bakery. Maybe I made that easy-but- impressive flourless chocolate cake that everybody loves. I can't be sure, because what I remember most from that cool spring night was the company around our dining room table. Tere was the attorney and his art-critic wife whom we met at our daughter's school. Tere was the gelato-making couple who live above their shop in our neighborhood. Tere was the interior designer who helped us pick out the very table we sat around — a simple, clean-lined walnut six- top — and his partner, a paralegal. Tere was the teacher and fellow literary nerd (whom I met on Twitter) and her roommate, a writer. None of them knew each other before coming to our house, and we didn't know any of them before we moved to Louisville two years earlier. But something clicked at the table — you know the way a meal can act as sufficient common interest with the right people — and the conversation took off. My husband and I had struggled to find friends in our new city. We moved here after nine years in New York, where we had left some of our favorite people in the world. We both grew up in Kentucky but had never lived in Louisville as adults, as a couple. For nearly a year, we really tried, going out regularly and inviting near-strangers over for dinner in the hopes that we'd hit it off with someone — anyone. Just like dating, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince. But little by little, we had started to make connections with a few people, and we decided they might all like one another. So invitations were issued, bottles of wine (and bourbon) were brought, and the last guests lingered by the fireplace until late in the night. It was at that dinner party that I started to feel as if everything was going to be OK here in Louisville. Tere was one moment when everybody around the table was talking and I wasn't really part of any of the conversations. I sat quietly and looked around from person to person, feeling grateful for each one, feeling grateful for our house and for the food we had served. Whatever it was. — Tara Anderson [52] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.12 I Begin the Beguine t's late at Jack Fry's, and I'm talking with Larry Kaelin, the longtime piano player at the Bardstown Road restaurant. Larry (who has since passed away) asks, "Bill, what's your favorite song?" Well that throws me. I sputter out a couple of titles and give up. "Geez, Larry, I like a lot of songs." Larry fishes through his piano bench and comes up with a sheet-music songbook. Pop standards, big hits from the Swing Era and so on. "Maybe it would help to glance through this," Larry says. And it does. Right away I find "Begin the Beguine," which I never would have thought of, but it's a song that just, well, sounds like a song. Kind of sophisticated and jaunty. Larry says "Begin the Beguine" is a Cole Porter tune that became a big hit for clarinetist Artie Shaw. He also says it's not played much because it's hard. "I'd have to practice it," he says. Time goes by and it's Derby Week. Some friends and I head to Jack Fry's to celebrate. As we come in, Larry spots us and kind of fades out what he's been playing and launches into another tune — and he's looking at me and nodding his head up and down with this big smile. It's "Begin the Beguine." And, boy, that song sounds perfect in Jack Fry's. Te place is buzzing with the Derby, and Larry's notes hop along the booths and bounce off the tin ceiling, all the characters in the old photos seeming to hum along — mayors, boxers, racehorses, a dancing bunny rabbit and even Jack Fry himself, who had the tavern before it became an upscale hotspot. Soon we're in Booth One, which is right by the piano. I pick the filet, as usual. (Tough I might have gone with the cheeseburger, which is conveniently located at the very bottom of the menu so guys can find it when they need to save some dough for the track. Add a Stilton salad.) One gal in our party picks the shrimp and grits, which is a dish you see a lot of places now, but I think made its Louisville debut at Jack Fry's. By and by, chef Shawn Ward comes out to hobnob with the customers. He squeezes in on a corner of our booth and gets right to business: "Who's the Derby winner?" Shawn wants to know. "Silver Charm," I say. Larry has a chair by his piano where patrons may sit down to visit. But I just watch. Larry doesn't bang from the elbows like, say, Jerry Lee Lewis. His fingers stretch out and his hands dance along the keys. Sometimes he touches his thumb on two notes that are right next to each other. Like the bottom of a chord might be a C, but Larry will straddle his thumb over to the next note down, very softly touching the B. Kind of an "inside seventh," you might call it, that adds a tinge of tartness. He also could touch a black key to go with a white key, like a B-flat above an A, which is tricky. It's the kind of thing Duke Ellington could have taught Larry, except Larry never met Duke Ellington. But he did know Babe Ruth. Larry plays my song again, and that thumb thing adds magic to the melody. A wedge of lime to "Begin the Beguine." My friend Rick says I must be going good. He says, "You know you've arrived when they play your song when you walk in the door." — Bill Doolittle

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