The State THE INSIDER
Charley Gardner’s Angels The local musician will be accompanying three of his favorite female vocalists in a show this month.
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CHARLEY’S ANGELS: SANDY GARDNER, CINDY CAIN, CHUCK GARDNER AND JANET RUTLAND PHOTO COURTESY CHUCK GARDNER
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ere are a couple of things you should know about Chuck Gardner’s Charley’s Angels show, set for Sunday, June 5 at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame’s Jazz Depot in Tulsa. First, the only person who consistently referred to pianist, arranger and composer Gardner as “Charley” was his old Uncle Lyle from Minneapolis. Second, Gardner has dubbed the concert “Charley’s Angels” instead of “Charlie’s Angels” because he doesn’t want anyone to think it’s a direct representation of the well-remembered late ’70s-early ’80s TV show that made actresses Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and, especially, Farrah Fawcett household names. “However,” he says, “the inference is there. In fact, Janet told me she wanted to be Farrah Fawcett, but I said, ‘No, Tony’s already applied for that.’” “Janet” is Janet Rutland, one of the three angels working with Gardner on his show. The other two are Cindy Cain and Sandy Gardner, Chuck’s wife of 38 years, who’ll also play bass. “Tony” is veteran Tulsa drummer Anthony Yohe, a longtime musical cohort of the Gardners and one of the least likely people in the known universe to be mistaken for Farrah Fawcett. “I’ve been wanting to do a concert with these three gals for a long time,” Gardner says, “and I thought ‘Charley’s Angels’ would make a good framing device to bring us all together. Each one has her own following, which is one of the reasons I selfishly picked them. They’ll all bring in their different crowds. “As a piano player,” he adds, “I get more of a kick out
OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE | JUNE 2016
of accompanying professional singers than I do just playing piano by myself or with a trio. It all comes from when I was in the Air Force, doing the Serenade in Blue Armed Forces Radio shows at Capitol Records in Hollywood. That was during the Vietnam era. I had the great opportunity of working with Rosemary Clooney, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Gisele McKenzie, all sorts of different singers. That’s when I really started enjoying this accompanying business.” He’d gotten his first taste of it about a decade earlier, while stationed at Hickam Field in Hawaii and leading an Air Force group called the Pacificaires. He’d joined the Air Force band program only a few years earlier, in 1957, after working in various musical outfits as a young civilian in his home state of Iowa. Then, in the very early 1960s, an up-and-coming jazz-pop vocalist who’d just recorded her first album for Capitol Records visited the Hawaiian Islands. Her name was Nancy Wilson, and she was scheduled to appear on a Honolulu television show. The station, however, didn’t have a pianist on its staff. “They called us at Hickam, wanting to know if we had a piano player who could come out and back her,” Gardner recalls. “I was sent over, and I remember she was just gorgeous, but I had no idea who she was. “She told me, ‘I have this new arrangement, and I’d like to do it with you.’ I said okay, and we rehearsed it once and then did it on the show, which was just a local Honolulu TV show. The song was called ‘Guess Who I Saw Today,’ and I got to thinking, after I later heard her recording of it, that I might’ve been the first person ever