Atlantic City Weekly

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Ron Powell, left, and Willie Saunders at the piano in front of Capriccio on the Dining Level of Resorts Atlantic City, Feb. 10, 2011.

Photo by Nick Valinote

Willie Saunders was having a bad day. It was earlier this year and Saunders was feeling "down in the dumps," according to his friend Christian Pascal.

So the Hillside, N.J., resident took a ride down to Atlantic City and walked into Resorts Casino Hotel.

Once Saunders got inside the opulent casino, he made a bee-line, not to the gaming tables, but to the piano stationed right outside of Capriccio on the property's "dining level."

"From what I understand," says Pascal, "he got on the piano and played for a while and [new Resorts owner] Dennis Gomes heard the music from upstairs and he came down, listened to Will play, talked to him for a while and then took Will out to dinner.

"Then he came home and I said, 'What did you play?' And he told me that Resorts loved it."

Then, on a subsequent visit, adds Pascall, "Dennis Gomes put him up for three days and Will ate at the buffet and played the piano and had a great time. But he's still so modest about his playing. He has a gift."

Pascall, Saunders' long-time friend and fellow church member, describes the extraordinary talented Saunders as "humble, and extremely modest.

"And he's always there for his family," adds Pascall. "Whatever he's doing, if his cell phone rings and it's a family member, he'll stop and answer the phone."

Saunders is a non-gambler, doesn't drink and doesn't smoke, says Pascal. He heads up a charity organization in the Irvington, N.J., area called Christian Fellowship Council Worldwide and he's a devoted family man.

So what drew him to Atlantic City? And how did he know that there'd be an underused piano outside Capriccio?

Saunders had initially come to Resorts with two dollars in his pocket, says Pascal, who believes Saunders chose Resorts to go to out of all the places in Atlantic City because he had once been there before selling "spa products."

And he remembered that piano, parked outside Capriccio in the wide open space surrounded by several of Resorts' fine-dining restaurants and around the corner from the Boogie Nights dance club and the Starlight Ballroom.

Fast forward to Thursday, Jan. 27, the night of Atlantic City Weekly's third annual Reader's Choice Nightlife Awards bash at Resorts' Boogie Nights. 

At around 7pm, about an hour before the event was set to begin, whomever took the escalator leading up to the dining level at that time would have heard superb solo piano playing, which many people would likely assume was being piped out of the speakers throughout the property.

But no, not quite.

True, the new "Roaring '20s-era music" — one of the many recently implemented components of new owner Gomes and his team's vision to re-theme the city's first legal casino with a Prohibition-era, Boardwalk Empire-inspired flair — could be heard coming out of the speakers. 

But drowning it out was the gorgeous piano playing of Ron Powell. 

As several dinner parties, casino patrons and early Nightlife Awards attendees walked by, shaking their heads to the warm jazz sounds being played by Powell on that same piano outside Capriccio, most would stop and ask: "Why aren't they paying you?" 

Powell, in his early 60s, a retired teaching lawyer from Connecticut who has also been playing piano professionally since he was a teenager, visits Atlantic City often. Sometimes, he says, he comes down from New England more than once a week. 

And he's spent many hours playing the piano outside of Capriccio.

So many hours in fact that his playing at Resorts precludes the new ownership, or the "new regime," as Powell puts it. 

"People always come up to me, and I've been playing off and on at this piano for several months, and tell me how I should be getting paid for playing my music here," says Powell.

"Even with the old regime, the concierges, the restaurant and casino employees, the executives would all come by and say how good [my music sounded.] Even the maitre-de here at Capriccio loves it when I play here." 

Despite the applause, hand shakes, fist pumps and "right ons" by Resorts' staff and guests, until the recent "regime change" at Resorts, says Powell, he and other pianists such as Saunders would constantly get chased away from the piano and out of the building by security.

But that's changed. 

Since Dennis Gomes took over as head of Resorts in recent months, he has made some very impressive moves. The Roaring '20s theme re-brand, the Moonshine Follies show and billboard, the casino's support of the drag queen Miss America spoof Miss'd America, which was held in January at Boardwalk Hall, just to name a few.

He's also done things the public doesn't necessarily get to see. 

Things that have nothing to do with public relations or positive press or anything like that.

"Mr. Gomes came through when I was playing one day and he said it sounded great," says Saunders. "Then he took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant here [at Resorts]."

Gomes happened upon Saunders and Powell — who were both talking with this writer as they traded off on the piano bench —  right before the start of the Jan. 27 Nightlife Awards. Gomes was headed into an important dinner at Capriccio. 

But he stopped and shook the guys' hands and everyone said their hellos. Powell asked Gomes if he minded that they play at the piano on occasion.

"You guys are welcome to play here any time you want," Gomes told Powell and Saunders, banging his fist softly on the piano top. "You can come in any time. If anyone gives you any trouble just tell them I told you that you could play here."

Powell, smiling, shook on it with Gomes. Saunders looked up from the piano, shaking his head in gratitude. 

"And I don't care if you even put a tip jar right here," Gomes said, as his hands made the shape of a cocktail lounge tip jar in the air over the right side of the piano.

Free entertainment for Gomes. Free entertainment for patrons. And now a paying gig — at least via tips — for the two piano men.

As a result of the serendipitous power meeting at the piano that Thursday evening as Gomes was heading into Capriccio, Powell did indeed place a tip jar atop the piano over the subsequent weekend.

"I put a glass on the piano," says Powell. "Dennis [Gomes] was the first to offer a gratuity!"

Powell, a "keyboard impressionist," according to his business card, and a pianist reminiscent of Ramsey Lewis, Nat King Cole and other sweet-sounding keyboardists, and whose repertoire includes hundreds of songs, from jazz standards such as "Stardust" and "My Favorite Things," to Beatles tunes and Thelonious Monk compositions, has a few tips of his own for Resorts.

First, he says, is that the piano is a bit out of tune.

"It might be in tune with itself, but it's not in proper tuning," he advises. 

Second is that the piano's top shouldn't be opened in its current setting as the dining area's "acoustics are not correct to open the piano up." 

Finally, Powell suggests with excitement, is that a transformation of the entire area into a cocktail lounge / menu room could do wonders for this untapped yet heavily trafficked space in between some of Resorts' restaurants, Boogie Nights and near the skywalk to the Trump Taj Mahal.

Especially in connection with the casino's new and evolving Roaring '20s theme.

Powell says he once suggested, to a Resorts executive no longer with the casino, that the dining corridor could be a place where people who are waiting to be seated at one of the dining level's many fine restaurants, could sit down, have a cocktail, be able to peruse the menus from all of the surrounding restaurants and listen to the piano man of the evening.

"I told him, just dim the lights, add a bar out here in the middle [of the floor] and let people have a drink and listen to the music before they go into the restaurants." 

The former Resorts executive loved the idea, says Powell, but didn't remain long enough at Resorts to see the plan implemented let alone even discussed on a preliminary basis. Powell says the former Resorts executive is now with the Trump organization.

"I've been persistent," says Powell, a few weeks after he was permitted — by the owner of Resorts in person nonetheless — to put a tip jar out on the piano. He says the tips have been nice, but a regular gig to support his limited social-security income is what he is looking for in the near future.

Before the regime change, says Powell, he had "tried for months" to get Resorts officials to allow "more than one piano player" at the piano and to get official paperwork needed to apply as a musician. He says he got nowhere but frustrated. 

Since Gomes has taken over, however, Powell says that he and Saunders have both been told that as long as they don't violate the instrument, the atmosphere and people's ears, that they can play. And now they can play for tips.

And there is no fear of either of Resorts' new piano men violating anybody's ears.

Saunders, says his current piano teacher, Derek Fairclough, is a natural talent and at 53 years old is just beginning to understand how much of a gifted musician and pianist he is. He plays by ear, with jazz, blues, boogie-woogie and Art Tatum-quality musicianship pouring out of his very soul.

"I'm his piano teacher right now, but I'm hoping he can teach me at some point," says Fairclough, a professional classical pianist, veteran rock-band keyboardist and Liverpool native who gives private piano lessons in another part of the Garden State.

Fairclough first met Saunders at a Guitar Center music store in the central part of New Jersey.

"We sort of bumped into each other," recalls Fairclough, who believes Saunders is "good enough" to play the top jazz clubs in New York, even as he is just now learning how to read music.

"He was interested in what I was playing and he asked to take lessons from me, and I was comfortable with that; I never thought I was ever going to see this guy again. Then he sat down and started playing and then I really thought I was never going to see him again! He just blew me away and I was like why does this guy want lessons from me? He should be teaching me. I thought, this guy must be toying with me. I couldn't believe how he played, you know?

"What's most impressive about it is, he's never had any lessons and he's never listened to any jazz — this comes from his soul."

Fairclough soon noticed that Saunders was not the type to sell himself. And that he always puts others' needs before his own.

"Just over the couple [lessons] that we've had so far, I've come to realize that he's the kind of person who puts everybody before himself and who leaves little time for himself. A very generous person and a very good-natured person."

Fairclough has been teaching Saunders to read music, but feels that Saunders' talents are beyond teachable. 

He's already got it.  

"He wants to learn Mozart and Beethoven and is very eager to learn, and he's doing OK," says Fairclough, "but I told him, 'Willie, you need to play in front of people. You can't stifle this talent anymore. You can't just sit in the house and play, you've got to get out in front of an audience.' He does play at his church, but I think his best shot in the long run would be to have a bass player and a drummer with him, because his jazz playing is so authentic. And not being a jazz pianist myself, but from what I've listened to — Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner and those sort of [legendary pianists] — I wouldn't know the difference. I mean Willie is just as good as any jazz pianist."

Not only does Fairclough think Saunders can hang with the best of them on the keys, he's also amazed at Saunders' natural ability to play by ear and without even noticing, his inclination to pick up the key and chords and melody of the music being piped in at Resorts so that his playing is one with the music around him.

"You may see some lounge pianists or those sort of pianists who play one set of stuff with the right hand and some other things with their left hand. 

"Willie has a split brain. He's playing as if he has a brain for his right hand and a brain for the left hand; they are totally separate. And that's nearly impossible to learn, even for a classical pianist. But what Willie does is like he's ambidextrous. It's like he has two instruments. I could never do what Willie does, and I've been playing for 50 years.     

"It's almost like he doesn't know how talented he is. When he plays, like I said, the music is coming from his soul. And listening to him is like looking through a kaleidoscope. You see a beautiful pattern, and then you turn the wheel, and once it's gone it's gone. You can never get it back or hear that beautiful music again. Once Willie's played it, it's gone. I've tried to convince him that we need to record it. It's almost like he's channeling some sort of spirit when he's playing the piano."

Now that Saunders has wowed both Fairclough and Gomes — not to mention the people who have had the opportunity to hear him play at Resorts — Fairclough says Saunders feels as if he needs to learn how to read music in order to become a more well-rounded musician. 

"But personally I don't think that it's even a requirement for him at this stage," says Fairclough. "I would like to see him playing at clubs in New York at least; that's where he belongs. With a trio or something like that. I'm truly convinced that if we give him some structure he could be a really big name. Like I said, both of his hands are coming from soul. He's not thinking in chords, he's just playing from his soul and that's a gift." 

Although Ron Powell and Willie Saunders do not play as a duo, as a pair they could potentially be a new sensation at the retro-themed Resorts. With Powell's experience, extensive repertoire and elegant, romantic style; and Saunders' raging talent, good-nature and extraordinary gifts, the two pianists  — the new piano men at Resorts — could make for an intriguing lounge act in Atlantic City.

For Powell, it's all about the audience.

"I try to play for the audience," says Powell. "My sense is that the kind of people who listen to a solo pianist is not the 35-and-under crowd. There's a 45-and-older crowd who appreciate the concept of a pianist playing dinner cocktail conversation music, and what they want to hear are the tunes. They want to hear songs." 

But there's still plenty of room for improvisation, one of the skills a dedicated jazz pianist must endow. "So whatever it is that you're [playing], you give them a little bit of the melody — 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' 'Misty,' etc., — and then you can improv around it. If you give them a melody, a very simple tune, then they'll stop by and listen. 

"Then you can segue into another melody and, if you want, improvise in between. As long as they can recognize the melody — it's almost comforting."

"I told this guy from player development," adds Powell. "Dim the lights, bring some tables and chairs out here, with candlelight, and give them a little wine list. And now you've got an entire area where people can be reading the menus from all of the restaurants [at Resorts.] I see people stop and linger outside of the restaurants all the time to get a feel for the ambiance and the menu at Cappricio. 

"Even when the gate's closed and they know it's not opened, they still come and read the menu."

Along with studying culinary options for a far-off meal, the Resorts patrons are drawn to Powell's piano music. 

"It soothes them. It's like comfort food," he says. 

On a bitter cold February afternoon, Saunders and Powell are perched along side one another at the piano bench, playing together and having a ball. The tip jar isn't out, a crowd has gathered to hear the music, and all the two men want to do is play music. 

"This guy has talent that you won't believe," says one Resorts guest. And they could be talking about either one of the pianists. 

"I'm here a couple times a week," says Powell. "Usually for a couple hours between 4-9pm." 

Saunders doesn't say when he'll be back, but he has been coming down a few times a month to play. After playing the piano together for a while with Powell, Saunders is on his way upstairs to stop in and say hello to Gomes before he heads back to Hillside.

He'll probably thank Gomes again for the opportunity just to play the piano.

"I don't have a piano," he tells this writer. "So I come here to practice."

But as Fairclough noted during a quick, unplanned interview with AC Weekly — he and Pascal had accompanied Saunders to Resorts on this day to lend their support — Willie Saunders doesn't need to practice; he needs to be heard.

It could be the perfect opportunity for Resorts to capitalize on the two pianists' tremendous talents. 

Just as the Tropicana brought in a new lounge act in 2010 — singer Marc Antonelli from Boston — only to nurture his talent at the property's Tango's lounge for a year before promoting him to headliner status and giving him his own show for several weeks in the Trop's main showroom (Marc Antonelli: From Unknown to Irresistible, which runs through Feb. 26), Resorts could give Powell and Saunders the audience they demand and deserve.

For now, the potential lounge act tag-team is grateful to have the opportunity to play for tips. 

The next time you're at Resorts, take the escalator up to the dining level and stop and listen. 

You may hear some of the most soulful, eclectic and heavenly music around town.

COMING SOON to ACWEEKLY.COM: Hear excerpts and watch video of both Willie Saunders and Ron Powell playing piano at Resorts, on the dining level, outside Capriccio.