Free The Copa by Mickey Podell-Raber Page B

recalls, “One time, during closing night, Tony was so happy with the engagement and the band that he had the waiters serve champagne to the musicians. After Tony’s last number, the waiters came up onstage and gave us all a glass of champagne; that was something specialbecause the musicians were usually treated like second-class citizens by the staff at the Copa, but Tony looked out for us…always.”

    Miss Peggy Lee and me. Peggy was another one of my father’s favorite performers—she always put on a great show.
    Peggy Lee
    â€œHer regal presence is pure elegance and charm”—so said Frank Sinatra of Peggy Lee. Lee was a staple at the Copa for many years, and her talent was a perfect fit for the club’s patrons.
    In her autobiography, Miss Peggy Lee, Peggy remembered her days at the Copa and Jules Podell with fondness.
    The Copacabana…I played it many, many times. It was a spectacular place and part of the reason for that was the way Jules Podell, the boss-man, ran his business. Jules used to say in his gruff voice, ‘The mirrors are always clean at the Copa.’ In fact, the whole club and the kitchen were always clean. I can’t say that for the dressing room in the Hotel Fourteen next door, but the Copa itself was kept in top-drawer condition. All of the men, maître d’s, captain and all, wore immaculate tuxedos and their shoes were shiny. The world-famous Copa Girls were known less for their dancing and more for their beauty. They would walk with their hands up and fingers extended as though they were drying fresh nail polish. Doug Coudy, the choreographer, used to teach them to walk in this manner. Three times an evening they dried their nail polish as they walked around the floorshow.
    Phoebe Jacobs, a longtime friend of Peggy Lee, accompanied the singer to many of her Copa engagements. Jacobs recalled:
    I will say that Jules Podell treated Peggy beautifully when she appeared at the Copa. Peggy was on oxygen then and she used to get treatments, so she had to have the doctor come over from the hospital with the tank and all. It was a pain in the neck, but Jules went out of his way to see that things worked well and she was comfortable. Peggy did not like the fact that there were no dressing rooms on the premises of the Copa. The acts had to get dressed in rooms upstairs at the Hotel Fourteen, which was adjacent to the Copa. There was a service elevator that we used in the hotel and then a busboy would meet us and take us to an exclusive elevator that would take you down to the basement-kitchen area of the Copa.
    So once you got out of the elevator you had to walk through the kitchen to get into the main room where they would announce you and then would go on the stage. Well, the problem was that Peggy used to have these voluminous gowns and they were frightfully expensive. In fact I remember one incident when Peggy was wearing a gown that I think Don Lopez made her and it cost maybe a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. So when Peggy had to pass through the kitchen Jules Podell had all the busboys and all the service stopped and everything else for her to go through without ruining her gown. Jules would yell, “Here she comes, here she comes.”
    Peggy Lee continued: “Jules was relatively short and strongly built. His neck was short; in fact, he seemed almost all of one piece, one solid muscle. He drank a lot, but he always knew exactly what he was doing. If Jules wanted attention, he would knock his big ring on the table and everyone would come running. Tough? They don’t come any tougher!”
    Jazz pianist Mel Powell recounted the following story in Lee’s autobiography:
    Once when Peggy was playing the Copa, she was having a big birthday party after the show for Jules Podell. It was a pretty elite mob, including Tony Bennett and Sammy Davis. They were all at a long table with Peg and friend of mine, including Nick, theAfricanologist,