Tommy Purify photo (Thom Loverro) at FAME Studios
Margo Price announced that she recently came to New York for a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. But after leaving the storied building that has been graced by Maria Callas, George Gershwin and the Beatles, Price snuck out to sing karaoke to a room full of strangers in a kava bar in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
During the pandemic, Price shared with New Music Express that she loves a good karaoke bar and used to live next door to her favorite Nashville karaoke bar, Fran’s. One night she and Brittany Howard went to the bar that’s in a tiny house (“almost like a trailer,” Price described) and Howard took the house down. Fran’s cheap beer, pool table and “toothless bartenders,” is the perfect ambience for Price to sing her favorite karaoke song when home, Prince’s “Kiss.”
But for mere mortals who toil with day jobs and dream of stage glory, stepping into karaoke bars is like flirting with fantasy. The alcohol makes us braver but at the end of the night the reality is that we can’t sing like Price or Howard. I will not disclose my own karaoke appearances except to say that I may (or may not) have taken the stage in an out of body experience to channel Elvis Presley in “Suspicious Minds.” The memories of karaoke can linger long past a few minutes of being in the spotlight. I once attended a morning meeting where we passed around a mic and someone paused before introducing himself. Holding the mic for a few seconds, he said “I’m sorry, I just had a bad karaoke flashback.”
For the last month, I’ve been following a developing karaoke story. The Washington, DC sportswriter and Washington Times columnist Thom Loverro has been reporting about his karaoke appearances from the Florida Panhandle where he winters. Since he revealed his alter ego “Tommy Purify” had covered Johnny Rivers’ “Summer Rain” at Kenny D’s on Miramar Beach, Loverro hinted that a recording contract could be close.
“Sammy Panama of El Watusi Records was there,” he reported. “We may do some business.”
Kevin Sheehan, host of the DC podcast The Kevin Sheehan Show where Loverro appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, built up expectations when he dropped a recording of Tommy Purify covering Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” A listener also wrote in to Sheehan that he had seen Purify perform live though his bewildered wife wondered if she was looking at Ernest Hemingway.
It wasn’t the first time Tommy Purify had gotten airplay on the show. His rendition of Lee Michaels’ “Do You Know What I Mean” closed out one of Sheehan’s podcasts and got me through a rough time. To quote Jon Landau upon seeing Bruce Springsteen in 1974, “On a night when I needed to feel young again, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time.”
But things are not always what they seem to be and the dream of a karaoke recording contract came with a hitch. Sammy Panama wanted Tommy Purify (no relation to the storied soul singer Bobby Purify) to put up $1000 to cover production costs. Loverro seemed heartbroken when he appeared on Sheehan’s show to announce that the deal was dead and lamented, “I thought he was a beach guy with a record company.”
The attempted contract that fell through uncovered a scam that Panama had been running throughout the Panhandle, all the way from Mississippi through Lower Alabama, into Georgia and over to Florida. The subterfuge that felt like a real life version of “Ozarks” had more intrigue when Loverro revealed that Sammy Panama wasn’t who he said he was. According to the writer, he was one Angelo Buttafuco, a mob figure purportedly in witness protection with ties to the Lucchese crime family. Loverro broke news of Panama’s arrest by a county sheriff on Sheehan’s show though the intrepid reporter disclosed he could not find anything online to confirm it. He and Sheehan speculated he might be working at a Cinnabon in Omaha by now.
“Should we not be talking about it on the podcast?” a nervous Sheehan wondered aloud about discussing the underworld. But Loverro was nonplussed. As a former crime reporter, he covered the mafia and once published the attendee list of a tribute dinner to mob boss Russell Bufalino in Wilkes-Barre. When the mob figures went into a hotel conference room, Loverro flew in and took the attendee list off the table and ran out as fast as he could. A year later an FBI agent spotted him at a crime commission hearing and said, “You’re the guy who went in and took the list.”
“How did you know it was me?” Loverro wondered.
“We had cameras running in the van across the street for everyone who came in and out,” the agent said.
It didn’t rise to the level of John Lennon declaring “the dream is over” but that the Panama deal fell through seemed to devastate the writer with his dashed dreams of stage glory. A Facebook group of winter snowbirds posted that he went offstage for the final time at Kenny D’s with shouts of “Purify! Purify!” as he left the building.
Loverro controls the masters of his karaoke covers and they are still available on his YouTube channel. Now migrated north with the start of baseball season looming, he seemed resigned to announcing the retirement of one Tommy Purify. He will set his sights on writing about the Washington Nationals and the plight of the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards as their owner Ted Leonsis (whom he has dubbed “Transparent Ted”) tries to move the teams across the Potomac into Virginia.
Mr. Leonsis is said to have tired of the loud street noise outside his Capital One Arena offices overlooking H Street in Chinatown. But below his windows is the heartbeat of a city and one suspects Mr. Leonsis has not ventured out into the neighborhood and experienced its many delights. It boasts the venue 6th and I were Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein spoke about her book and I saw Amanda Shires. Just past the Metro Gallery subway stop is Wok and Roll restaurant where the best dish is not actually on the menu. Their fabulous egg noodle soup (available with beef, chicken or vegetables) will be made just by asking for it. Were Mr. Leonsis to sample it, he would no doubt be a frequent patron and the plans to move the team would immediately fade away. He might also note the plaque on the building which commemorates the site of the Surratt Boarding House which was where conspirators met to kidnap and subsequently assassinate U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Upstairs at Wok and Roll is a karaoke room. As Loverro returns to town, we know he will be sitting outside on the sidewalk of cigar bar Shelly’s Back Room. But the lure of bringing Tommy Purify across town to Wok and Roll could dispel the self-declaration that the karaoke star is done. Loverro could learn a thing or two from Mick Jagger who is out on the road this year approaching the young age of 81 and always quick to remind, “We never said it was the last time.”
Perhaps Loverro could bring Leonsis to the karaoke stage and they could start a charitable karaoke event. Leonsis could pull out a set list from the Tommy Purify catalog and bring a cavalcade of stars with him. In sports parlance, it ain’t over until it’s over. Or as Lee Michaels once asked, “Do you know what I mean?”
Awesome